Tag: Joy

Taking in the good things that happen

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Some writers state that this is the week when people find their mood low, as the excitement of Christmas and New Year fades and they find that not much has actually changed in their lives. It does not seem that there is much scientific findings for their claim – indeed the term ” Blue Monday”, coined for the first day of the week, seems to have come from a Travel Agency’s campaign to get us to book our summer holidays around this time. That being said, there does seem to be good scientific support for the brain’s tendency to focus on the difficult things in our lives and remember or amplify them. Because of that, this week and every week,  we have to consciously work against that leaning, both by becoming familiar with  our negative stories and by practicing the way we pay attention.

Here is one good way of doing that, outlined by Rick Hanson, the author of the excellent Buddha’s Brain. Sincere thanks to regular reader Kathy at http://pocketperspectives.wordpress.com/ for bringing this series of videos to my attention.

…but rather, looking inside

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One of Tony De Mello’s stories, with a similar theme – We often think that what we want is outside us. Rather, the real work we need to do is within:

One day God got tired of being pestered by people asking for this and for that, so God calls a meeting of the most trusted angels and asks for suggestions as to where one can hide from pestering people. One angel advises God to hide on the highest peak of the highest mountain because no one will search there. Another angel says, “No, hide in the depth of the deepest ocean in the world and no one will search for you there.” Finally, God turns to the most trusted angel and asks: “Where do you suggest I should hide?” And the angel responds: “Hide in the human heart! No one will search for you there.”

Sunday Quote: Open a window

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Keep knocking,

and the joy inside will eventually open a window

and look out to see who’s there.

Rumi

Not waiting for some future perfection

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Maybe we think that someday we will have gained perfect maturity from the lessons of our lives. Subconsciously,  we are lured by the expectation that we will reach a stage where we don’t have to fix anything ever again. One day we will reach “happily ever after” We are convinced of the notion of “resolution”. It’s as if everything that we’ve experienced up until now, our whole lives up to this moment, was a dress rehearsal. We believe that our grand performance is yet to come, so we do not live for today. For most people this endless managing, rearranging, upgrading is the definition of “living”. In reality we are waiting for our life to start. When prodded, most of us admit that we are working toward some future moment of perfection – retirement in a log cabin in Kennebunkport or in a hut in Costa Rica. Or maybe we dream of living out our later years in the idealized forest landscape…serenly meditating …..overlooking a waterfall and koi pond.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, What makes you not a Buddhist.

Faith in the possibilities of this day

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Being alive necessarily means uncertainty and risk, times of going into the unknown. If we withdraw from the flow of life, our hearts contract. We hold back so much that we feel separate from our own bodies and minds, separate from other people, even people we really care about. In the grip of other intense emotions, like grief and jealousy, we might feel anguish, but fear shuts us down, arrests the life-force. To be driven by fear is like dying inside. When the suffering is overwhelming, we may try to recoil from how bad it feels by numbing our reactions. Many of us survived childhood in just this way. But, ultimately, cutting ourselves off from what is happening locks us into fear and makes us unable to see that we might find another way to respond outside the small section delineated by the dots, defined by our assumptions.

Faith, in contrast, reminds us of the ever-changing flow of life, with all its movement and possibility. Faith is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment’s experience to the fabric of all of life. It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capable of doing.

Sharon Salzberg, Faith

The Beauty in the cracks

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Hemingway

Most of us are trying to live an authentic life. Deep down, we want to take off our game face and be real and imperfect. There is a line from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” that serves as a reminder to me when I get into that place where I’m trying to control everything and make it perfect. The line is, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” So many of us run around spackling all of the cracks, trying to make everything look just right. This line helps me remember the beauty of the cracks (and the messy house and the imperfect manuscript…). It reminds me that our imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together. Imperfectly, but together.

Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection