Tag: impermanence

Being at ease with the messiness of life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

With mindfulness practice, you learn to see how the untrained mind is agitated by the human condition and how not to allow this general anxiety to fuel your fear in a specific situation. You also gain tolerance for the unpleasantness of uncertainty and also the naturalness of your own imperfection. You have confidence that “life is like this.” You cannot and are not supposed to miraculously fix it; rather, you gain the insight that happiness and peace come from relating to life just as it is.

Philipp Moffit, Freedom from Fear

No perfect way

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Two quotes for today from the great Suzuki Roshi.

Life – or work – can contains elements of mess or chaos and we often approach them with a belief that a resolution can be, or should be arrived at. However, in reality, most of the time, it is rather a question of holding the irresolution or the problem in a new awareness.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

There is no way set up for us. Moment after moment we have to find our own way.

Some idea of perfection, or some perfect way which is set up by someone else, is not the true way for us. Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.

Shunryū Suzuki Roshi, 1904 –  1971

Do not resist

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Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.

Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.

Let reality be reality.

Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like

attributed to Lao Tzu

Whichever happens, be patient

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In Tibetan Buddhism there’s a set of teachings for cultivating compassion called mind training, or lojong. One of the lojong teachings is, “Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.” This means if a painful situation occurs, be patient, and if a pleasant situation occurs, be patient. This is an interesting point. Usually, we jump all the time; whether it’s pain or pleasure, we want resolution. So if we’re happy and something is great, we could also be patient then, and not fill up the space, going a million miles an hour — impulse shopping, impulse talking, impulse acting out.

Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace

Keep going

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Posted this once before but I really like the encouragement at the end of a working week which contained 10,000 things arising and passing away:

He has shown you what is good,  and what is required of you: To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

 

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. 

Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now. 

You are not obligated to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it.

The Talmud

Do not doubt your goodness

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Often individuals who have experienced insecure attachments in childhood have high shame and self-criticism as companions in adulthood. The dominant role of their overdeveloped threat and protection system means that they have an underdeveloped capacity to use the soothing and safety system, whose function is to allow them feel safe and cared for.

In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting “in” something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.

Dr. Jeremy Hayward, First Thought