Tag: impermanence

Seeing piece by piece

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.

And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tranquility

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Tranquil, undisturbed, unified.: a nice plan for this day

My body was tranquil and undisturbed, my mind concentrated and unified. The Buddha MN 4.22 (i 21)

In the body, tranquillity is like a deep, clear lake with a wide, still surface.

In the mind, it’s like the soft, quiet, fresh air over the lake at dawn.

Gil Fronsal, Tranquility

Sunday Quote: Before

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Can you remember who you were,

before the world told you who you should be?

Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994, American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

The nature of our presence

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To meditate is often to move through a land without paths.

In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves – There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind’s eye much wider…

Mindfulness …means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.

from Christophe Andre’s lovely book, Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment through Art

Happiness is an inside job

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If you look for the Buddha outside of your own mind,
the Buddha becomes the devil

Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.

Relax the resistance

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There is a saying attributed to Lao-tzu in which he defines a great being as someone who encounters difficulties – but never experiences them.

This is because problems are problems when we’re trying to find an answer to them or when we’re trying to get away from them. Problems are problems as long as we have the idea that there shouldn’t be any. But when problems, difficulties, obstacles and hindrances are taken as food – something that you learn to chew over, digest and take in – they become part of life, rather than something outside attacking you, something to be blamed.

But as long as we think about ourselves as being separate from what happens and from each other, we remain tiny and frightened. Handled wisely, the problem that confronts you, the issue or the person you want to keep out offer opportunities for you to grow larger.  Relax the resistance, learn, and you’ll grow.

Ajahn Sucitto