Discovering what needs to be let go of.

No matter how fortunate your circumstances are, life can at times be stressful and challenging. We often try to ignore this fact and therefore feel frustrated and disappointed when we don’t get our own way. Just as we did when approaching compassion, it can be useful to think back to the blue sky analogy when you reflect on acceptance.

The journey to acceptance is about discovering what we need to let go of, rather than what we need to start doing. By noticing moments of resistance throughout the day, you can start to become more aware of what prevents acceptance from naturally arising. This in turn will allow you to view the thoughts and feelings that arise during your meditation with a much greater sense of ease.

Andy Puddicombe, Ten Tips for Living more Mindfully

Where we learn

Whatever is arising in this moment becomes the curriculum for liberating ourselves from the shackles of greed, hatred and delusion. We do not need some ideal or romantic fairy tale of what would be best for us. What we need most is what is already given to us: the actuality of things as they are in the only moment we will ever have –  this one.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners.

Travelling lightly

It’s like a dance. And we have to give each being space to dance their dance. Everything is dancing; even the molecules inside the cells are dancing. But we make our lives so heavy. We have these incredibly heavy burdens we carry with us like rocks in a big rucksack. We think that carrying this big heavy rucksack is our security; we think it grounds us. We don’t realize the freedom, the lightness of just dropping it off, letting it go. That doesn’t mean giving up relationships; it doesn’t mean giving up one’s profession, or one’s family,or one’s home. It has nothing to do with that; it’s not an external change. It’s an internal change. It’s a change from holding on tightly to holding very lightly.

Tenzin Palmo, Into the Heart of Life

The light of Summer

File:Summer Solstice Sunrise over Stonehenge 2005.jpgWe can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Plato

Demystifying the relationship we have with our mind, our thoughts and emotions, is the essence of the mindfulness practice. It is like switching on the light in a dark room; no matter how long a room has remained in a state of darkness, once we turn on the light, everything is illuminated.

Dzigar Kongtrul, Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence

The basic instructions

 

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver, Sometimes

Attentive to all around

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light,

there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself,

and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. . . .

I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life

I too dip myself toward the immeasurable.

Mary Oliver,  Winter Hours