Maggie and I are doing our best. Our parents did their best. Everyone is doing their best.
What if we assumed that about each other?
What a gentle world it would be.
Elizabeth Lesser, Marrow: A Love Story
A gentle world
Tag: Joy
Let things take their course
The second in three posts from the Thai Forest Tradition, this one from their most influential teacher who has had a significant impact on Western mindfulness practice, through the many Western monks who trained under him.
Try to be mindful, and let things take their course.
Then your mind will become quieter and quieter in any surroundings
It will become still like a clear forest pool.
All kinds of wonderful and rare animals will come to drink at the pool,
and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go,
But you will be still. Problems will arise and you will see through them immediately. This is the happiness of the Awakened One.
Ajahn Chah A Still Forest Pool
A bigger body
Today, give yourself permission to be supported by something larger than personal strength. Suffering decreases when phenomena are allowed to move through rather than be contained.
Your body is holding all of this.
Give it to a bigger body.
Give it to the sky.
Jaiya John, author, poet, speaker
The World is always partly Veiled
Komorebi (木漏れ日) is a beautiful Japanese word for the light filtering through trees – everchanging – reminding us of the fleeting uniqueness of each moment.
Understanding this leads to a contentment with the Universe and with oneself.
Not a bad philosophy for a New Year…
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees
What am I looking for?
The symbol of the heart has often been used to express love…… Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart
Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? …All these questions lead us back to the heart.
Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos
Sunday Quote: dancing
When I am grateful,
I am neither rushing nor slouching through my day-
I’m dancing.
David Steindl Rast
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