I feel gratitude to the Buddha for pointing out that what we struggle against all our lives can be acknowledged as ordinary experience.
Life does continually go up and down. People and situations are unpredictable and so is everything else.
Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers. I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.
Pema Chodron
There is a road always beckoning.
When you see the two sides of it
closing together at that far horizon
and deep in the foundations of your own heart
at exactly the same time,
that’s how you know it’s the road
you have to follow.
that’s how you know
it’s where you have to go.
That’s how you know.
It’s just beyond yourself,
it’s where you need to be.
David Whyte, Just Beyond Yourself
The ten directions converging,
Each learning to do nothing,
This is the hall of Buddha’s training;
The mind is empty, all is finished.
P’ang Yün (Layman Pang) 740-808
Recognizing and welcoming what is here in front of us, instead of always waiting for things to be “better” than the situation we are actually in:
The mind and external conditions are just as they are (“such”).
The gate of liberation is open.
Dogen, 1200-1253, founder of the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism, Commentary on the Precepts
This is not your week to run the Universe.
Next week is not looking so good either.
Susan J. Elliott
We sometimes need to change our understanding of strength to include yielding and gentleness. Not fighting with the reality of wind and being able to bend and go back are realities we can learn from the natural world.
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
Bruce Lee
The tree is made strong and resilient by its grounded root system. These roots take nourishment from the ground and grow strong. Grounding also allows the tree to be resilient so that it can yield to the winds of change and not be uprooted. Springiness is the facility to ground and ‘unground’ in a rhythmical way. This buoyancy is a dynamic form of grounding.
Aggressiveness is the biological ability to be vigorous and energetic, especially when using instinct and force. In the immobility (traumatized) state, these assertive energies are inaccessible. The restoration of healthy aggression is an essential part in the recovery from trauma.
Peter Levine, Walking the Tiger
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