Tag: impermanence

The one assumption

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 Life doesn’t match our image of how it should be, and we conclude that life itself is wrong. We relate to everything from the narrow, fearful perspective of ‘I want’ — and what we want is to feel good. When our emotional distress does not feel good, we recoil from it. The resulting discomfort generates fear, then fear creates even more distress, and distress becomes our enemy, something to be rid of. Let us instead examine our basic requirement that life should be comfortable. This one assumption causes all of our endless difficulties.

Ezra Bayda, Saying Yes to Life ( Even the Hard Parts) 

Sunday Quote: Let go

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What’s needed is self-surrender, not endless effort.

Rumi

Step by step

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A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home,
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to turn back;
But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

 Dogen, 1200 – 1253

Not in control

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To be immersed in mystery can be very distressing at first, but over time I have found immense relief in it. It takes the pressure off. I no longer have to worry myself to death about what I did right or wrong to cause a good or bad experience- because there is no way of knowing. One of the biggest lessons is the realization that I’m not as much in control of life as I’d like to be. This is not an easy learning, especially for take-charge people like me, people who think they can- and, more important, should- be in control of things. Mysterious as it may be, there is something wonderful at the heart of our existence, and it is about nothing other than love: love for God, love for one another, love for creation, love for life itself.

Gerald May

Mental noise

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In the absence of presence there is only that repetitive mental noise,  and part of that mental noise is the story of me. It’s the problematic story that is hoping that at some point in the future that it will no longer be problematic,  not realizing that what it calls ‘future’ has no actual existence

Eckhart Tolle

It’s the little things

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Ask the large questions, but seek small answers.

A flower,

or the space between a branch and a rock,

these are enough.

Kent Nerburn