Tag: impermanence

Keeping things in perspective

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The mind seems to prefer drama, and a lot of the movies we play in our minds have us at the center of the story, exaggerating the impact of potential future scenarios, as we silently rehearse our lines to ourselves. This is also true in how we relate to the external world.

Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the world. Are not our heightened times the important ones?  Are we not especially significant because our century is? There must be something heroic about our time, something that lifts it above all those other times.

Plague? Funny weather? Dire things are happening… 

Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy – probably a necessary lie – that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods!

But can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

We make our own problems

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When you are completely absorbed in your breathing there is no self.  What is your breathing?  That breathing is not you, nor air.  What is it?  It is not self at all.  When there is no self you have absolute freedom.  Because you have a silly idea of self you have a lot of problems.  So I say your problems are homemade.

Suzuki Roshi, teaching June 1st, 1966

Welcome what is

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As long as the mind is in conflict – blaming, resisting, condemning – there can be no understanding.

If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

J. Krishnamurti.

Allow them to come, allow them to go

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If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go.

Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.   

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

When we fall down

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A student asked master Sozan, “The teachings say that everyone who falls down on the ground must stand up again by relying on the ground. What is the meaning of to fall down?”

Sozan said, “If you affirm the situation, that is the answer.”

The student said, “What is the meaning of standing up?”

Sozan said, “Just stand up!”

“What is it to fall down?”

Sozan, Chinese Chan/Zen master, died 606 AD

We think hitting the ground, knocking over the barrier is a mistake, but the ground we hit, the failure we experience is not a mistake. The world is endlessly mysterious, experience is profound to a degree that will always surprise us. But it is never a mistake. To foster even a meager appreciation of that (and when we’re in the midst of a fall, meager is pretty big) is to begin to practice… It is the decision to stop complaining and to start paying attention. Contained in the fall is exactly what we need to stand. Everything we need is available, but we have to invite it. What is it to invite reality? 

Bonnie Myotai Treace Sensei M.R.O, Dogen Cubed

Juggling your life

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This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.

It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.

Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.

Rose Cook, A Poem for Someone Who is Juggling Her Life