Try not to resist the changes that come your way.
Instead, let life live through you.
And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to
is better than the one to come?
Rumi
How do you know?
Tag: impermanence
Not looking from outside
9th century Zen master, Tozan Ryokai, attained enlightenment many times. Once when he was crossing a river he saw himself reflected in the water and composed a verse, “Don’t try to figure out who you are. If you figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself.”
Actually, you are in the river. You may say that is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warm-hearted feeling, that is you. You may think you are very warm-hearted, but when you try to understand how warm, you cannot actually measure. Yet when you see yourself with a warm feeling in the mirror or the water, that is actually you.
And whatever you do, you are there.
from the great Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen
A mind at rest
Without a story, the fragments won’t settle.
Lia Purpura, 1964 – , American poet
Our inner dramas
Nasrudin was standing on the bank of a river, and watched as a dog came to drink. The dog saw its reflection in the water and immediately began barking at it. It barked until it was foaming at the mouth, and exhausted, fell into the river – whereupon it quenched its thirst, climbed out, and happily walked away.
Nasrudin said, “Seeing this, I realized I have been barking at my own reflection all my life“.
Sufi teaching story
Still we stumble
A Full moon this evening.
A single moon
Bright and clear in an unclouded sky:
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
Have a good look:
stop the breath, peel off the skin,
and everybody ends up looking the same.
No matter how long you live,
the result is not altered.
Who will not end up as a skeleton?
Cast off the notion that “I
exist.” …. Entrust yourself to the windblown
clouds, and do not wish to live forever
Ikkyū, 1394 – 1481, Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet, in John Stevens, Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu
Beyond
It is not a matter of looking for happiness
or trying to avoid suffering
but of going to the place beyond happiness or suffering
Ajahn Chah
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