Just when the worst bears down
You find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon
And outside a bird says “hi”
Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;
It is coming your way. It touches your shoe.
William Stafford, It’s all Right
Tag: impermanence
Right here
When you encounter things, you should know that right there the true teaching reveals itself.
You should know that place
Suzuki Roshi
Fresh eyes
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Kierkegaard
Stories
We human beings have the ability to think of things not in front of us. We create stories in our minds in which the hero or heroine is always us. We evaluate what happened in the past, we analyze our present conditions, and we anticipate what should happen in the future…… But this ability leads to many problems. We have certain expectations of our stories. If things go as we expect, we feel like heavenly beings, but if not, we feel we’re in hell. Often we desire more and more without ever experiencing satisfaction, like hungry ghosts. It’s important to see that it’s not life that causes suffering but our expectation that life should be the way we want. We can’t live without expectation, but if we can handle the feelings caused by the difference between our expectations and reality, that’s liberation.
Kosho Uchiyama, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
No substance
The “10, 000 things” is a shorthand way of talking about all the experiences – good and bad – which arise and pass away in our lifetime.
The ten thousand things are all reflections
The moon originally has no light
Han shen, 9th Century
Stand up
The current of life requires us to stand up, again and again, and we are not defeated when we are worn down, just exposed anew at a deeper level. We are meant to live in between the two. In this way, life keeps getting more and more precious. It is a natural law like gravity or osmosis: Stand up to be worn bare. It is how everything in the way is thinned, so that we can feel just how thoroughly alive we are.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
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