Contentment: Letting it land

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One or two practices from different traditions on letting go after work, or at the end of a day or a week, or maybe endings in general. They remind us of the wider perspective mentioned at the start of the week. It is linked to a sense of release, the opposite to the continual striving and adding on which we think will bring contentment.

[When] you get to the end of the meeting, the day, let that unravel. You cultivate the wisdom of no-performance and no-result. You listen to any judgements that are rattling in your mind, establish mindfulness on the mind-state and its feeling, then let the defenses and identities go. It’s a matter of acknowledging the inner helicopter that is hovering over ‘If only this’ and ‘I should have said that’ and ‘How dare they do this!’ and steadily touching the ground. Allow the feeling to be felt and breathe through it. Let it end, even let the wish that it all end come to an end. When the rotor blades stop, just here, on the other side of failure, is purity and release.

Ajahn Sucitto, Happy Deathday

photo muffet

Fall and get up

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The reality is that,  despite our best efforts, life can be challenging sometimes, and we can fall short and not fully measure up. Thus, some way of starting over is an essential practice. The mind likes to have ideas about things and people, and they are often ideas of perfection, which is probably not possible in this world.  This can makes it harder to be at ease with vulnerability or have patience with a world that has ups and downs

We’d so much rather be kind, generous, loving and wise all the time – not to mention calm and peaceful – [but…] our major task as persons of the Way is to accept our human-ness...which includes greed, anger, ignorance and all the other emotions, thoughts and behaviors that we’d rather not feel, think or do.

How to cope with this paradox?  It’s very simple, really, although not easy…we rely on the practice of vow and repentance.  We vow to do our best, and then, when we make our inevitable mistakes, we repent.  We recognize that we have done harm, and then we vow again to have as big a view as possible under the circumstances, so that maybe the next time….and on and on, endlessly, forever. This practice is not something we can learn and complete…it’s a lifetime’s worth of, as we sometimes say, 9 times fall down, 10 times get up.  Or, an infinite number of times fall down, and an infinite number of times, plus one, get up.

Melissa Myozen Blacker, on her Blog Firefly Hall

photo brian snelson

Sunday Quote: Still heart

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In the still heart that refuses nothing,

the world is twice born.  

Jane Hirshfield

Release

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Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans

— I release my hold on all of it.

I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be.

I come home to the great peace of the present moment.

Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open, How Difficult Times Can Help us Grow

photo Daniel Mayer

Who Knows?

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We don’t know a lot. We don’t know much more than we know.

And it’s a relief to let go of our attachment to views, our attachment to opinions, especially about things we don’t know.

A new mantra began to form in my mind: “Who knows?”

This not-knowing is not a quality of bewilderment; it’s not a quality of confusion. It actually is like a breath of fresh air, an openness of mind.

Not knowing is simply holding an open mind regarding these very interesting questions to which we might not yet have answers.

Joseph Goldstein

photo Taro Taylor

Where to stay anchored

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The past is a memory,

the future is uncertain,

now is the knowing.

Ajahn Sumedho

photo glacierNPS