Sometimes it is better, when we we feel groundless and uncertain, to resist the drive to make a situation right or wrong, and instead to trust in an underlying flow.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
All things end in the Tao, like a river flowing home to the sea.
Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 32
Zen is the opposite of withdrawal from the world. It’s a radical acceptance of life, the pain and suffering no less than the beauty of the dawn skies, of the sea in rain, the mountain dark under morning clouds, and the shopping list. Unless a path leads us back into the world — reincarnates us, as it were — it’s not a complete path. For Zen, this life, this world, is the very absolute. Making a cup of tea, fetching milk from the fridge, standing outside on the front step, watching the remains of a storm drift across the dawn sky, and hearing the drip-drip of rainwater into a puddle from a roof are miracles. The miraculous, in the end, is the fact of anything existing at all.
Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir
Tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it;
…..each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.
Andre Gide
Without a story, the fragments won’t settle.
Lia Purpura, 1964 – , American poet
what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
Rumi
We have had bright Summer weather all week here, spacious blue skies, something of a rarity in Ireland
I thank God for most this
amazing day; for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.
e. e. cummings
Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions… Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called “jai pongsai”, our natural lightness of heart.
Wise attention has a gracious witnessing quality, acknowledging each event – whether boredom or jealousy, plans or excitement, gain or loss, pleasure or pain – with a slight bow. Moment by moment we release the illusion of getting “somewhere” and rest in the timeless present, witnessing with easy awareness all that passes by. As we let go, our innate freedom and wisdom manifest. Nothing to have, nothing to be. Ajahn Chah called this “resting in the One Who Knows.”
Jack Kornfield, A Mind Like Sky Meditation
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