High winds do not last all morning
Heavy rain does not last all day
Why is this? Such is Heaven and Earth!
If heaven and earth cannot make things eternal
Why do we think it happens for us?
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Tag: impermanence
Take three breaths.
Start by recognizing that you are caught in reactivity – to a perceived slight, unwashed dishes, misplaced eyeglasses, feelings of indigestion, something you regret saying. When you recognize you are stuck, stop everything and take three long, full breathes. These breaths help you disengage from the momentum of your thoughts and activity and make space for your inner experience. Investigate by asking yourself, “What am I feeling?” and bring your attention to your body – primarily your throat, chest and belly. Notice what sensations (tightness, heat, pressure) and emotions (angry, afraid, guilty) are predominant. Let your intention be to befriend what you notice. Try to stay in touch with your breath as you contact your felt sense of what is happening.. Sometimes it’s easy to locate your felt sense, but at other times it might be vague and hard to identify quickly. What is important is pausing and deepening your attention. See if it is possible to regard yourself with kindness.
Tara Brach, True Refuge
How we learn
I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.
Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.
Toni Morrison
The first step
Without meditation, where do we even begin to find a place to stand and speak the whole truth? The four noble truths teach that there is suffering, that it’s caused by human ignorance and selfishness, that it stops when these attitudes stop, and that we have to live in accordance with that. Maybe the truths of suffering and its origin don’t lead to the ceasing of suffering on the sociocultural level right now. But through meditation, through directly accessing the heart, one can at least see and speak the truth of how suffering feels in this moment, where you experience it in your heart and body. A way of action can evolve from that, but the first step is to speak truth, feel truth, live truth.
Ajahn Sucitto, Heart light in Dark Times
The one who sees
What a liberation to realize that the voice in my head is not who I am.
Who am I then? The one who sees that.
Eckhart Tolle
Hope is a choice
The other spiritual discipline and way to stay grounded is that however seriously we must take what’s happening in the world and what the headlines are reflecting, it is never the full story of our time. It’s not the last word on what we’re capable of. It’s not the whole story of us. And we have to take that other narrative that’s not reaching the headline point, which is a very specific bar. Journalism, the way it came down to us from the 20th century, is absolutely focused, utterly and completely, on what is catastrophic, corrupt, and failing. And then, at the same time, there are good people. There are healing initiatives. There is a narrative of healing and of hope and of goodness, and we also just, as a discipline, have to take that in, as well — not instead of, but the both/and of humanity and of our world.
And I think it’s only in doing that that we keep flexing and strengthening our hope muscle. Hope is a muscle. It’s a choice. It is a vigorous choice, to see what is wrong and what needs healing and needs repair and needs our attention and also to keep our hearts and our imaginations and our energy oriented towards what we want to build, what we want to create, what we’re walking towards.
Krista Tippett, On Being Blog
Mindfulbalance 