Two quotes from Mazu, 709–88, one of the greatest of the ancient Chinese Chan (Zen) masters, to remind us to live in the immediacy of the present moment and not in how our thoughts tell us what our life should be like:
When successive thoughts do not await one another,
and each thought dies peacefully away,
this is called absorption in the oceanic reflection.
A monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of Buddhism?”
Mazu said, “What is the meaning of this moment?”
Christmas and New Year can give rise to a lot of “I am” or “I am not” thoughts…
We tend to just react and take it for granted that all the ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’ is the truth. We create ourselves as a personality and attach to our memories. We remember the things we learned, we remember what we’ve done – generally the more extreme things; we tend to forget more ordinary things. In meditation we are bringing awareness to the conditions of the mind here and now, just by being aware of this sense of ‘I am, I am not’. The thought ‘I am’ is an impermanent condition. The thought ‘I am not’ is an impermanent condition.
Ajahn Sumedho, Investigating the Mind
Sitting in meditation is a way of clarifying the ground of experience and resting at ease in your Actual Nature.
It is called “ Revealing the Original Face” and “Bringing to light the landscape of the basic ground.”
Put aside all concerns. Let go of all the things that hook you.
Simply, do nothing at all.
Don’t create things with the six senses.
Clear water has no back or front, space has no inside or outside.
Objects of mind and the mind itself have no place to exist.
Zazen Yojinki, one of the two founders of Sōtō Zen in Japan, late-13th/early-14th century AD, Notes on what to be aware of in Zazen
The days begin to lengthen, and we look forward….
Our biggest shadow issue is not evil. It’s that we live small and adaptive lives. And Jung put it this way in a very homey metaphor. He said, we all walk in shoes too small for us. And I think that way of saying, all right, we had to learn early as children, the world’s big, and we’re not. The world’s powerful and we’re not, now, how are you going to survive a few decades with that?
And so the, the biggest shadow issue for us is how much fear governs our behaviors,…And how often we’re serving the sort of archaic messages from long ago and far away, which is walking down the street backwards. And, how seldom we step into the largeness of our own journey, because frankly it’s intimidating.
James Hollis
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days
Jane Hirshfield, A Blessing for a Wedding
Enjoying each moment to its fullness, without binding ourselves to how it is, or to our thoughts as to how it “should” be…
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise
William Blake, Eternity
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