Another month ends. Our rituals and practices, like sitting in meditation, are like a well-worn path which allow us to deepen our capacity to see
To learn something new,
take the path that you took yesterday.
John Burroughs, 1837-1921, American naturalist, quoted in Pico Iyer, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells
Ester asked why people are sad.
“That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”
Paulo Coehlo, The Zahir
When Bodhidharma was asked, “What is the first principle of the holy teaching”, he didn’t say suffering. He said, “Vast emptiness. Nothing holy.” This is what the Heart Sutra says, too. The Heart Sutra says, “Things are founded on emptiness.”
This means really that things don’t truly have a cause. Things have a virtue in themselves beyond anything we can say that causes them. So you have a virtue in yourself beyond anything that brought it about. Any suffering that arises in you because of your history, any gifts you have because of your history, these are strong things, yet they are also just a pure appearance of Buddha nature. Even your suffering and also your joy. I think in some sense we can’t take credit for either. We just have to learn to love our lives so deeply that we welcome whatever comes.
John Tarrant, Poison and Joy
We imagined [the divine] as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu
When you get up in the morning, let the world wait.
Defy it a little.
First learn something to inspire you. Take a few moments to meditate upon it.
And then you may plunge ahead into the darkness, full of light with which to illuminate it.
Tzvi Freeman, Canadian rabbi and author
Here’s my new favorite meditation: Load up your washing machine, press the buttons, and then sit by the magical cube as it does its magic. When it roars and sloshes, hear the echo of your fear, anger, and despair. When it spins, recognize your own times of confusion, of apparently pointless repetition. When it seems to have finished, only to rev up again, think of the times you’ve had to start over. And realize that all this bashing and crashing is your soul being cleaned, renewed, and made fresh again.
Once you relax into the process, you’ll learn the great secret: It is through doing the laundry that we find our way to the ecstasy.
Martha Beck, Blog, The Turbulent Secrets to Soul Renewal
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