Tag: impermanence

Being useless

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It takes time and patient practice to develop qualities that make for a lasting effect. This idea is not easy to hold on to in a society that prizes immediate results. Emptying the mind of the need to be noticed, or thought as special,  allows us to just be ourselves in a simple way:

The sage Chuang-Tzu was walking with a disciple on a hilltop. They saw a crooked, ancient tree without a single straight branch. The disciple said the tree is useless, nothing from it can be used. Chuang-Tzu replied: That’s the reason it is ancient. Everyone seems to know how useful it is to be useful. No one seems to know how useful it is to be useless. 

Masks

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Everyone has a life that is different from the ‘I’ of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the ‘I’ who is its vessel. This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches; there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self-serving fictions, and my true self. The soul is like a wild animal; tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions.

Parker Palmer, Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Sunday Quote: Where we are

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Our humble way… is to root ourselves –  

beneath the thousand dreams and excuses

that keep us from the ground we walk.

Mark Nepo.

Distractions

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A lot of modern society is driven by the distraction industry – advertising, shopping, surfing the net. It is not a new phenomenon. Nietzsche wrote in 1874 that “haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”,  but modern technologies of escape, like the smartphone or the tablet, make it even more pervasive and difficult to develop the silence within which is necessary for good health.

All mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion  – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep.

People don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief;  a cure is painful.

Anthony de Mello sj, Spirituality means waking up.

The wisest choice

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Yesterday’s clarity is today’s stupidity
The universe has dark and light,  

Entrust oneself to change.

Ikkyu, 1394 -1481, Japanese Zen Buddhist priest

Why awareness is good

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Watching the show, without getting swept up in it, leads to greater peace of mind

Life does not consist mainly  – or even largely – of facts and happenings.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Mark Twain