Tag: impermanence

As we are

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When Zen Master Joshu was a young monk he asked his teacher Nansen, “What is the Way?” His teacher replied “Your Ordinary Mind is the Way”. By “ordinary” Nansen meant the mind Joshu already had; he didn’t need to turn it, or himself, into something else. He didn’t need to put, as the Zen saying goes, another head on top of the one he already had.

Unfortunately, these days, when we hear the word ordinary, we are inclined to think it means “average or typical” or even “mediocre”. We contrast ordinary with special, and decide, given the choice, we rather be special. But our practice wont make us special; it will keep bringing us back to who we already are.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Sunday Quote: Veiled

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Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

Haruki Murakami

Returning

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After the cold and the storms, bright Spring-like days in Ireland for the weekend.

And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn’t matter,
the hills weren’t going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit.

Louise Gluck, Sunrise [extract]

Attention

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It is hard to believe that the practice can be reduced to something so simple, paying direct attention to the present moment – to this breath, this person, this walk, to this washing of the dishes. We imagine it should be something grander. It may be simple; however, it is not easy

One day a man asked Zen master Ikkyu, “Master, will you please write for me some pointers to the highest wisdom?”

Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word: “Attention.”

“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more ?”

Ikkyu then wrote : “Attention. Attention. Attention.”

Sunday Quote: our fears

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Tell your heart that the fear of suffering

is worse than the suffering itself.

Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

One purpose

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In the Sufi Master Rumi’s “Table Talk”, there is this fierce and pointed passage:

“The master said there is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else, but forgot that one thing, you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever.

It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all.

So each person has come into the world for a particular task, and that is their purpose. If they don’t perform it, they will have done nothing.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,