Creatures of a day, what is anyone? What are they not?
We are just a dream of a shadow.
But when there comes, as a gift from heaven, a gleam of sunshine
Then rests on the heart a light of glory,
And blessed are the days.
Pindar (518-438 BCE)
Tag: Joy
Having and being enough, today
We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.
Lynne Twist, The Surprising Truth of Sufficiency
On seeing some beautiful flowers
We are dust and to dust return.
In the end we’re
neither air, nor fire, nor water,
just
dirt,
neither more nor less, just dirt,
and maybe
some yellow flowers.
Pablo Neruda, Ode to Some Yellow Flowers
Trusting the ups and downs of life
Due to the current overlay of therapy terminology in our language, everyone now seems to wish for “closure.” This word is unfortunate: it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skins and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word completion is a truer word. Each experience has within it a dynamic of unfolding and a narrative of emergence. Oscar Wilde once said, “The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.” When a person manages to trust experience and be open to it, the experience finds its own way to realization. Though such an ending may be awkward and painful, there is a sense of wholesomeness and authenticity about it. Then the heart will gradually find that this stage has run its course and the ending is substantial and true. Eventually the person emerges with a deeper sense of freedom, certainty, and integration.
The nature of calendar time is linear; it is made up of durations that begin and end. The Celtic imagination always sensed that beneath time there was eternal depth. This offers us a completely different way of relating to time. It relieves time of the finality of ending. While something may come to an ending on the surface of time, its presence, meaning, and effect continue to be held into the eternal. This is how spirit unfolds and deepens.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Sunday Quote: The cure for unhappiness
There are people who are unhappy regardless of the work they do or the relationship they are in, and yet they continuously fool themselves into thinking that an external makeover will affect them internally.
Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
Looking for treasure
What is the most precious gem in the world? Certainly this life is precious — the opportunity to be alive is an irreplaceable gift — but can we really appreciate this life for what it is? If we want to find the precious gem in our life, where do we begin? Where do we look? Should we look outside somewhere, or should we look inside? And what does it mean to look inside? Are we really going to find something of value in our body, perhaps in our head or our belly? By pursuing these questions with your whole body and mind, you can discover the truth …. for yourself. But no matter how hard you try, you will never find what is truly precious if you look outside of yourself. You have to look within.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, The Path of the Human Being: Zen Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way
