The reason why men are so anxious to see themselves,
instead of being content to be themselves,
is that they do not really believe in their own existence.
Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life
Reassurance
Tag: impermanence
Nothing fixed
A monk asked “What is the substance of a true person?”
The Master said “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter”
The monk said “Put like that, it is hard for me to understand”
The Master said “You asked about the substance of a true person, didnt you?”
Traditional Zen koan dialogue
The accumulation of unnecessary goods
As the author says, we need to change our stories.
[The] four stories at the heart of western imperial civilisation….have profound ecological implications.
There is the ‘prosperity story’ which promotes worship of material acquisition and money, the ‘biblical story’ which focuses on the afterlife rather than the world around us, the ‘security story’ which builds up the military and police to protect relationships of domination, and the ‘secular meaning story’ which reduces life to matter and mechanism.
These are not, however, stories in the usual sense of narratives. They exist behind and between the lines of the texts that surround us – the news reports that describe the ‘bad news’ about a drop in Christmas sales, or the ‘good news’ that airline profits are up…
[…] underneath common ways of writing and speaking in industrial societies are stories about unlimited economic growth as being not just possible but the goal of society, of the accumulation of unnecessary goods as a path towards self-improvement, of progress and success defined narrowly in terms of technological innovation and profit, and of nature as something separate from humans, a mere stock of resources to be exploited.
Arran Stibbe, Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By
always analysing
My immediate response to most situations is with reactions of defensiveness, control and analysis.
I am better at calculating than contemplating.
Lets admit that we all start there
The false self seems to have the “first gaze” at almost everything
Richard Rohr
Sunday Quote: Allowing
If you begin to understand what you are
without trying to change it,
then what you are undergoes a transformation.
Krishnamurti
become quiet
Another Atlantic storm passed over the country overnight, with strong winds and heavy rain. After the winds the stirring becomes quiet.
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me, like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Wendell Berry
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