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
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.
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
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.
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
How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Zen monk, hermit and poet
