Tag: impermanence

A poem for the start of autumn: to be a witness

Karl Duffy5 Comments

File:Apples on Ground (8399553959).jpg

I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.

I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine
remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.

I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall’s gathering or if the
bluejay remembers the meaning of snow.

I do not know if the air remembers September or if the night remembers
the moon.

I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring or if
the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.

Perhaps that is the reason for our births — to be the memory for
creation.

Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.

Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
“What can you tell me about September?”

Burton D. Carley, September Meditation

photo leslie seaton

 

Knowing oneself gently

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File:Mmmmm lunch (4977315962).jpg

Dogen Zen-ji said, “To know yourself is to forget yourself.” We might think that knowing ourselves is a very ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are — we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling separate from everything else and everyone else, are made up of opinions. They are made up of dogma; they are made of prejudice. These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves. There is a Tibetan teaching that is often translated as, “Self-cherishing is the root of all suffering.” It can be hard for a Western person to hear the term “self-cherishing” without misunderstanding what is being said. I would guess that 85% of us Westerners would interpret it as telling us that we shouldn’t care for ourselves….. But that isn’t what it really means. What it is talking about is fixating.

Pema Chodron, To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself

photo U.S fish and wildlife service

Taking things personally

Karl Duffy1 Comment

lakes

It’s true that different people have different mind stuff to work with, but essentially there comes about a realization that the core of the feeling of suffering comes from something we all do: we take things personally. And you can’t stop doing this simply as an idea. The practice involves cessation – letting go of “self” through directly knowing “self”. This must occur by feeling out and examining some pretty well-known positions ….”I cant do it” is one of them, and the list goes on through every kind of self-view about “I’m not worthy/good enough”, “It’s not good enough for me” ” I have a lot of karma to work out”…In the course of practice, all of these self-views come and go continually until gradually the realization of their impermanence begins to sink in.

Ajahn Sucitto, The Dawn of the Dhamma

What distracts us

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File:Window shopping.jpg

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves:

the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

photo Karin Beate Nøsterud/norden.org

Withdrawing permission

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Tree still standing - geograph.org.uk - 964093.jpg

In standing still and receiving life with all its adversity and sorrow, you have withdrawn your permission for suffering to define your life. You have also withdrawn your consent to living in fear. Something profound happens in your heart when you turn with kindness toward all the circumstances of pain which you have previously repressed, dismissed or fled from. There is a softening, an opening, a deepening capacity and willingness to understand sorrow and its cause.

Christine Feldman, Compassion

photo shaun ferguson

The wrens nest

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File:Troglodyte-sylvain haye.jpg
Wrens 
make their nests of fancy threads 
and string ends, animals 
abandon all their money each year. 
What is it that men and women leave? 
Harder than wren’s doing, they have 
to abandon their longing for the perfect. 
The inner nest not made by instinct 
will never be quite round, 
and each has to enter the nest 
made by the other imperfect bird.
Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words
photo sylvain haye