Tag: impermanence

In the West, many of us can live in physical comfort, yet, because we are continually being presented with more refined commodities or changing standards by which to measure ourselves, there is not much contentment.

People can become depressed if their bodies don’t match up to the current standards of beauty, or if their personality is not smart enough – whatever the current fashion is. So there can be a nervous feeling of inadequacy and insecurity which deprives us of a sense of trust in our innate worth as a human being.

So because of just this , its important that we sense and define ourselves as “being” apart from those currents, if only to get onto some firmer ground...what really helps is to be able to calm and collect the mind …How you attend creates the dwelling place of the mind.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma

A lovely image of the solid ground we strive for:

By effort and conscious awareness [Apramāda],

discipline and self-mastery,

a wise person makes for themselves

an island which no flood can overwhelm.

The Dhammapada, 2.25

One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite teachers: “Most things do not matter very much. The rest do not matter at all!” (Stylianos Ateshlis, aka Daskolos). I read it not cynically, but in the form of a statement not to worry so much over this and that. There is a bigger picture, and, I imagine it to be one in which all is well, and all will be well.

Right within each and every one of us the whole creation is thrumming freshly formed and alive. Enjoy that!

Gil Hedley, founder of the Somanautics Workshop approach to the body. [from the Alive on All Channels blog]

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

Janisz Szuber, 1947 – 2020, Polish Poet, About a Boy Stirring Jam