From a different tradition, but saying the same thing as the last two days. “Erasing”, letting go of preconceived constructions, frees us up to write a new story with each moment.
Only the hand that erases
can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart
Tag: impermanence
Our limiting thoughts are just a creation
Whatever assumptions you have about yourself, no matter how reasonable they might be, they are still a creation in the present. By believing in them, by thinking and holding to them, you’re continually creating yourself as a personality.
Awakeness is not a creation.
It’s the immanent act of attention in the present.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Problem with Personality
Not holding on
Things are continually changing and change in ways that we do not expect. The human tendency is to fix ourselves and each moment into something expected and define it by how it has to be, rather than how it is evolving. The great adventure is to live each moment fully, as a gift which has arrived without us expecting it.
A person who has clarified their real state sees only
each thing,
each thing,
each thing,
and lets go of understanding an underlying nature for each thing.
Dogen, Uji
Sunday Quote: Fundamental truths
Whatever is subject to arising,
is also subject to passing away
The Buddha, Collection of Middle-length Discourses, 56
That magical sense of being at rest
Just a beautiful autumn poem…
Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.
With the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.
The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.
What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1999, VII for LV
The preciousness of our lives.
To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support. Life and death are connected by vulnerability. The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives. Let’s not forget the preciousness and vulnerability of life.
Henri Nouwen
