Every person has a vocation to be someone:
but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation
he can only be one person: himself.
Thomas Merton
Master Rinzai said ‘Place no head above your own’.
That is, to look outside of ourselves for true peace and satisfaction is hopeless.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it.
In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are
Rilke, Letters
Do not seek perfection in a changing world.
Instead perfect your love.
Master Sengstan, Third Zen Patriarch, 7th C AD
The hardest thing I have learned and still struggle with
is that I don’t have to be finished
to be whole
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Today is the feast of Imbolc, one of the four seasonal festivals in the old Celtic calendar. The meaning of Imbolc is unclear but it may derive from an old Irish word meaning “in the belly”, referring to sheep being pregnant. Whatever the meaning, the feast was celebrated because it is the midway point between the winter and the spring solstice, was connected with the budding of new life, the time when hope begins to stir because Spring will soon be here.
Midway points…Something is always coming to birth. We are always in transition and yet always fully ourselves. The challenge is how to hold fully both aspects.
As human beings we share a tendency to scramble for certainty whenever we realize that everything around us is in flux. In difficult times the stress of trying to find solid ground – something predictable and safe to stand on – seems to intensify. But in truth, the very nature of our existence is forever in flux. Everything keeps changing, whether we’re aware of it or not.
What a predicament! We seem doomed to suffer simply because we have a deep-seated fear of how things really are. Our attempts to find lasting pleasure, lasting security, are at odds with the fact that we’re part of a dynamic system in which everything and everyone is in process. So this is where we find ourselves: right in the middle of a dilemma. And it leaves us with some provocative questions: What is it like to realize we can never completely and finally get it all together? Is it possible to increase our tolerance for instability and change? How can we make friends with unpredictability and uncertainty – and embrace them as vehicles to transform our lives?
This anxiety or queasiness in the face of impermanence isn’t something that afflicts just a few of us; it’s an all-pervasive state that human beings share. But rather than being disheartened by the ambiguity, the uncertainty of life, what if we accepted it and relaxed into it? What if we said, “Yes, this is the way it is; this is what it means to be human,” and decided to sit down and enjoy the ride?
Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change
My dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
The one who has thus prepared himself, whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind; but those who live for hope alone find that the immediate future always slips from their grasp.
Seneca
