Following on from yesterdays post…Issa’s poems are very simple and very beautiful
Simply trust:
Do not the petals flutter down,
Just like that?
Issa (1763-1828), Japanese Buddhist poet
photo: cogdogblog
Tag: Life
Sunday Quote: Hear the bird’s song
The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you?
You hold on to things, causing your confusion.
Let nature teach you.
Hear the bird’s song, then let go.
Ajahn Chah
Understand that things change, drop the struggle
The line from the Dhammapada, a compilation of sayings attributed to the Buddha, that seems the best expression of wisdom, is: “Anyone who understands impermanence, ceases to be contentious.”
Does that make sense to you on as many levels as it does to me? I understand it, primarily, as meaning “I have only a certain span of life allotted to me, so I don’t want to waste a single moment of it fighting.” Other times, if I catch myself on the brink of contention, the instruction reminds me, “Whatever is happening will change, and what I add to this situation is part of the change. Agonizing makes it worse.” And sometimes, if I remember that whatever is happening will cause results that I really cannot anticipate (although I often do and worry needlessly), I say to myself, “I have no idea whether this changed circumstance, which I resent, is actually a good or a bad thing in the long run. I can wait to see.”
Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an Inside Job
The teachers we need
Life always gives us
exactly the teacher we need
at every moment.
This includes every mosquito,
every misfortune,
every red light,
every traffic jam,
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss,
every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction,
every piece of garbage,
every breath.
Every moment is the guru.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Four smiles: a practice for this day of work
This exercise is called the four smiles exercise.
Basically all you do is take a moment, let your mouth soften into a smile, then expand that smile for each of the next three breaths. First, expanding it so you feel your whole mouth, not just your lips, but your whole inner mouth soften and rise into a smile. Your forehead, your throat, and you keep feeling that smile expand until you feel it in your heart. That literally takes four breaths and you’re feeling a lot more buoyant.
Tzivia Gover
Each day is a new day
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof. Matthew 6:34
Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.
Abba Poemen Egyptian monk (c. 340–450)
