The seed of suffering in you may be strong,
but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Tag: Joy
Dealing with reality, step by step
What is actually important is here and now. Now is definitely now. There’s no point in thinking that the past that exists we could have now. This is now. This very moment. Nothing mystical, just now, very simple and straightforward. From that nowness however, arises a sense of intelligence, always, that you are constantly interacting with the reality, one by one, spot by spot, constantly. We actually experience fantastic precision, always. But we are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future. That’s the problem. And that is not trusting the nowness properly. Now possesses a lot of powerful things. It is so powerful that we can’t face it, therefore we have to borrow from the past to invite the future, all the time
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Seeing the secret
Another writer, Eugene O?Neill, describing a moment – when he looked up at the stars in the night sky – when he saw something as if for the first time. Although difficult, we try to bring some of this quality to each encounter and each moment, not meeting them through the filters of our conditioning, fears or preconceived notions:
For a moment I lost myself – actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the…high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life.. – to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way…. For a second you see the secret – and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning!
Eugene O’Neill, Long Days Journey into Night
Having two hearts, and a choice
The early Church Fathers had a simple way of expressing our struggle. They taught that each of us has two hearts, two souls:
In each person, they affirmed, there is a small, petty heart, a pusilla anima. This is the heart that we operate out of when we are not at our best. This is the heart within which we feel our wounds and our distance from others. This is the heart within which are chronically irritated and angry, the heart within which we feel the unfairness of life, the heart within which we sense others as a threat, the heart within which we feel envy and bitterness, and the heart within which greed, lust, and selfishness break through. This too is the heart that wants to set itself apart from and above others.
But the Church Fathers taught that inside of each of us there was also another heart, a magna anima, a huge, deep, big, generous, and noble heart. This is the heart we operate out of when we are at our best. This is the heart within which we feel empathy and compassion. This is the heart within which we are enflamed with noble ideals. Inside each of us, sadly often buried under suffocating wounds that keep if far from the surface, lies the heart of a saint, bursting to get out.
Not everything can be fixed or cured, but it should be named correctly. Nowhere is this more important than in how we name both the size and the struggles of the human heart. We are not petty souls who occasionally do noble things. We are rather noble souls who, sadly, occasionally do petty things.
Ron Rolheiser, The Size of our Hearts
The body needs a song, a soul….
Have posted this poem before, but I saw this bird – the American Northern Cardinal – for the first time last week. Although, unlike Mary Oliver, I did not hear it sing, its bright colour still taught something about life, the heart, and the relationship between the body and the mind .
And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.
Do you understand? for truly the body needs a song, a spirit, a soul.
And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable beauty of heaven where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent,
to teach this to your heart.
Mary Oliver, Red Bird
Developing self-compassion
Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself.
You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with.
The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
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