Tag: impermanence

First step

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Move and the way will open

Zen proverb

Drop into being

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The act of taking your seat in your own life, which could also be seen as taking a stand of a certain kind, on a regular basis, is in and of itself a profound expression of human intelligence. Ultimately it is a radical act of sanity and love —namely to stop all the doing that carries us through our moments without truly inhabiting them, and actually drop into being, even for one fleeting moment. That dropping in is the exceedingly simple, but at the same time, hugely radical act undergirding mindfulness as a meditation practice and as a way of being. It is easy to learn. It is easy to do. But it is also equally easy to forget to practice, even though this kind of dropping in takes literally no time at all, just remembering.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Meditation is Not what you Think

A wonderful day

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The purpose of life is to be defeated by ever greater things.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame.

I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.

Rabbi Joshua Herschel

Aligning with the truth

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Rilke urges us: “want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears”

Exquisite image! Why does he exhort us to want the change? Because change is the way it is. We harbor notions of what is good for us and what is not, and try to organize and strategize accordingly. Yet life does what it does without our concern for our preferences, so Rilke is urging us to look beyond the parade of circumstances and events to the fundamental fact of change itself. In wanting the change, we are aligning ourselves with truth, with what is already happening. 

Roger Housden, Dropping the Struggle: Seven ways to love the life you have 

Healing the heart

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If the purpose of life is to ‘feel the rapture of being alive,’ and if our capacity to feel is crippled by old wounds and a lack of emotional education, then it follows that an important part of the spiritual path is to heal the heart and to become emotionally intelligent. As we work on opening the heart, we will confront, over and over, our fearful habit of closing to pain. The price for staying heart blind is a life unlived. The Dalai Lama has gone as far as saying that ‘the tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.’ Heartfulness work is the cessation of avoidance. Jung said, ‘What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate,’ and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of the heart

Elizabeth Lesser

Listen and Question

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We tend to bestow our judging mind with unquestioned power and authority, but this risks an inaccurate self-perception. Instead, listen and question, without believing every word. Take back your right to evaluate the credibility of judgments and your own self-worth. By clarifying your relationship to the judging mind, you can reclaim your power to establish a more accurate self-perception and stable sense of well-being.

Mark Coleman, From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness