Monks, eight worldly winds spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight winds: Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. These are the eight worldly conditions that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly conditions.
The Buddha, Lokavipatti Sutta
A falling leaf does not hate the wind
Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976, Chinese philosopher, linguist, novelist, and translator.
Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years.
Everyone hurries their life on
and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present.
But the one who bestows all of their time on their own needs,
who plans out every day as if it were their last,
neither longs for, nor fears, the next day.
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae [On the Shortness of Life] AD 49
We all have moments of agitation in our thoughts and feelings. We tend to identify with these as us. We are also always grasping after something that we think will finally complete us. The legendary Bodhidharma points here to a fluid way of working with the mind: See it, and the self, as a process, not a solid, unchanging entity.
Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is always restless. Please give it some calm.”
To which Bodhidharma replied, “OK. Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.”
Huike said, “Although I have tried to find it, I cannot hold it fast”
Bodhidharma then said, “See, there, I have just stilled your mind.”
Case 41 in the Gateless Gate, “Pacifying the Mind”.
If you let yourself be blown to and fro
you lose touch with your roots.
If you let restlessness move you
you lose touch with who you are
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 25
The first of the leaves are beginning to fall…
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it,
but to enable it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Try to live simply.
A simple lifestyle, freely chosen,
is a source of strength
Quaker Faith and Practice: Advices and Queries, 41
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