Think of things that you do not have to do anything to earn or receive from anyone else – things you are already receiving from life before doing anything.
This is a powerful practice to greet each day and helps you to feel centered in the privilege and gifts of life.
Kristi Nelson, Wake Up Grateful, The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted
A glimpse is not a vision.
But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon
C.S. Lewis
Waiting and patience are two of the main themes of Advent
Let the apple ripen
on the branch
beyond your need
to take it down.
Wait longer
than you would,
go against yourself,
find the pale nobility
of quiet that ripening
demands;
watch with patience
as the silhouette emerges
and the leaves fall;
see it become
a solitary roundness
against a greying sky,
let winter come
and the first
frost threaten,
and then wake
one morning
to see the breath
of winter
has haloed
its redness
with light.
David Whyte, Winter Apple [extract]
We can often feel that our inner nature is rather dim or discouraged or that we are wandering in darkness, hoping sometime soon to reach clarity.
Today, December 8th, is Rohatsu, the day that the Buddha is said to have awakened, or attained enlightenment. In other words, he saw into the true nature of life, and through this, we are told, “the mind found its way to peace”.
It is said he meditated all through the night and in the predawn hours he looked up, saw the morning star, and exclaimed:
How Wonderful, Everything is already awake. How magnificent!
Thoughts prompted by a dharma talk given by David Rynick entitled Transcendent Enlightenment
Forget distinctions
Leap into the boundless
and make it your own.
Zhuang Zhou, Chinese philosopher, 4th century BC
December 6 is the feastday of the legendary Saint Nicholas, traditionally a big celebration in the Low Countries, Germany and Eastern Europe. Most children have a natural sense of wonder and adventure which life has a tendency to erode.
Twenty years from now
You will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do
than by the ones you did.
Mark Twain
Mindfulbalance 