A life of joy

The first day of Spring in most calendars in the Northern Hemisphere

We learn in our guts, not just in our brain, that a life of joy is not in seeking happiness, but in experiencing and simply being the circumstances of our life as they are.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

Both rain and sun

The cloud weeps, and then the garden sprouts.
The baby cries, and the mother’s milk flows.
The Nurse of Creation has said, Let them cry a lot.

This rain-weeping and sun-burning twine together
to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot
and your grief glistening,
so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little child.

Rumi

Sunday Quote: Resist

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Martin Luther King

Plenty of Practice

Even on the calmest, most uneventful day we get many opportunities to see the clash between what we want and the way it really is.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

One thing at a time

Never bear more than one trouble at a time.

Some people bear three kinds – all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

Edward Everett Hale, 1822 – 1909, American author, historian, and Unitarian minister, 

Natural spaciousness

Silence refers to the fact that we are originally free from all narratives and constructs of self. Mind precedes everything; it is the precursor to experience. So in understanding the nature of mind and gaining insight, you see that all things are impermanent, all things have no abidance, and are intimately connected. That is the realization of no-self, selflessness. This true nature of our mind is free from the coming and going of fragmented, scattered, discriminating thoughts....You don’t have to do anything to make them to disappear. I often give the analogy that this room we’re in – its spaciousness – is really not affected by all the furniture and the people in it. 

Guo Gu, Silent Illumination