Tag: impermanence

A daily practice

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There is dying in the sense of letting this body go, letting go of feelings, emotions, these things we call our identity, and practicing to let those go.

The trouble is, we don’t let ourselves die day by day. Instead, we carry ideas about each other and ourselves. Sometimes it’s good, but sometimes it’s detrimental to our growth. We brand ourselves and imprison ourselves to an idea.

Letting go is a practice not only when you reach 90. It’s one of the highest practices. This can move you toward equanimity, a state of freedom, a form of peace.

Waking up each day as a rebirth, now that is a practice.

Brother Phap Dung, Plum Village senior disciple, Thich Nhat Hanh’s final mindfulness lesson: how to die peacefully

Too small a story

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People often discover at the time of their death that they’re much more than the small, separate self they’ve taken themselves to be. What’s amazing to me is that we take all that we are and shrink it down to such a small story. And then live into that story as if it were true. At the end of their life, people realize they were living in too small a story.

We have this term that we use “later”. Its very comfortable, this term “later”. It’s always gonna be later: “I’ll get to that later” or “Death will come later”. I think it gives us a comfortable distance from this experience that’s rather mysterious to us. Death is not just happening to us at the end of a long road. Its always with us. It’s in the marrow of every passing moment. I call it “the secret teacher that’s hiding in plain sight” that helps us to discover really what matters.

Frank Ostaseski, What the living can learn from the dying

White and black

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The start of November has traditionally been a time to reflect on themes of letting go and impermanence and for remembering those who have passed on on before us.

In life, nothing dwells. The wind blows and then stops. The blossoms burst forth and then fall.  Things come and go. The melody drifts back onto  an aching E flat and then back to E again. The song of your life is played on white and black keys. Sadness is … an essential truth of human life. But let’s not dwell there. Not while the song is still playing.

Karen Maizen Miller, Be Sad

Sunday Quote: Wholehearted

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The eve of the feast of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season. It was the most important of the four Celtic Festivals, the start of winter and the darker part of the year. Bonfires were lit as a reminder of the victory of light over the increasing dark days.

When you do something,

you should burn yourself completely,

like a good bonfire,

leaving no trace of yourself.

Shunryu Suzuki

Try to remember

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This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Mary Oliver, Fall Song

Moving through life

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next.

Jack Kornfield