The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart. Then we scramble to get another zone of safety back together again. We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart.
That’s samsara: The cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.
Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape
In the old Irish, Celtic, calendar, Autumn begins in August, so now we are reaching the end of the second month of the season. In Irish the word for September is Meán Fómhair, which means the ‘middle of the harvest’. What do we harvest? The fruits of what we have planted in our lives.
There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.
Henri Nouwen
This week marks 15 years of writing this blog. A lot of changes in that time. I said 5 years ago that the reason I post is to remind myself to begin anew every day and that has not changed. Thanks to all who follow and I continue to hope that the thoughts selected help you also to see the world in new and fresh ways.
Without accepting the fact that everything changes,
we cannot find perfect composure
Shunryu Suzuki, roshi
As long as we are breathing, there are infinite possibilities. A good
starting point is with a question: What if I completely let go of the fear
body and were released from the gloomy future it predicted? And
then another question: In the absence of fear, what would I want my
life to be about? And then another: In the absence of fear, what
would motivate me toward that life?
Tim Burkett, Nothing Holy about it
Very like the warm Indian Summer weather we have been having in Ireland this last week, along with a full moon, as the Autumn Equinox approaches:
The rain has ceased, the clouds have passed away, and the weather is bright again.
If your heart is clear, all things in your world become clear.
Hold this passing world lightly, hold yourself lightly
and then the moon and the flowers will guide you along the way
Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Japanese Zen monk and poet
The 14th-century Tibetan master Longchenpa said there are five characteristics we should cultivate in order to practice the four immeasurables:
(1) A fundamental attitude as vast as space;
(2) A mind as constant as the depths of the ocean;
(3) Seeing all occurrences, inner and outer, as mist floating in the sky;
(4) A compassionate attitude as even as the rays of the sun;
(5) Sensing negativities to be like specks of dust in our eyes.
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Journal, 2019 The Four Immeasurables Leave Nothing Untouched
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