Tag: impermanence

Not dwelling in thoughts

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When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly, we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going, arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux. There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment – not just poetically or figuratively, but literally – every moment we are dying and being reborn, we and all of life.

Sharon Salzberg, Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

Trusting and falling

Karl Duffy1 Comment

If we surrender
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things
because they are in God’s heart
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall patiently,  to trust our heaviness
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

Rilke, Book of Hours, II, 16

Sunday Quote: All you need to know

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Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge

and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you,

you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

A. A. Milne

Letting go of the old moment

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In the Christian calendar,  this day is the last one of the liturgical year. With sunset this evening, Advent begins,  and the start of a new year.

With every breath, the old moment is lost, a new moment arrives. This is something meditators know. We breathe in and we breathe out.  In so doing we abide in the ever-changing moment. We learn to welcome and accept this entire process: we exhale, and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In so doing, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and we breathe in the moment that is becoming: we repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. It is also life

Lama Surya Das, Practicing with Loss

Life is complex

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I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don’t think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.

Anne Lamott,  Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life

Deciding to stay present

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The state of not-knowing is a riveting place to be. We encounter not-knowing when , for instance, we meet someone new, or when life offers up a surprise. These experiences remind us that change and unpredictability are the very pulse of our existence. No one really knows what will happen from one moment to the next: who will we be, what will we face, and how we will respond to what we encounter.  We don’t know and there’s a good chance that we will encounter some rough, unwanted experiences, some surprises beyond our imaginings, and some expected things too. And we can decide to stay present for all of it.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, Open Stillness.