Tag: Life

Look to our teachers

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In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top – the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation – and the plants at the bottom.

But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.”

We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn – we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Not our doing

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We have a deep need to feel as if we are in control ….

We are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has its inner light, even from a distance —

and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Stirring things up

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Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself.

It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.

Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

Let be

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To let go does not mean to get rid of.

To let go means to let be.

When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own

Jack Kornfield

Sunday Quote: What we feed

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When we meditate,

we are training the mind to stop feeding a pain pattern

Ruth King, Meditation teacher, Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible

Beware

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Ordinariness is a simple presence in this moment that allows the mystery of life to show itself. When Thoreau warns us to “beware of any activity that requires the purchase of new clothes” he reminds us that simplicity is the way we open to everyday wonder.

Ordinariness is interested in what is here and now….the ordinary mystery of breathing or of walking, the mystery of trees on our streets or of loving someone near to us. It is not based on attaining mystical states or extraordinary powers. It does  not seek to become something special, but is emptying, listening.

Jack Kornfield, Bringing home the Dharma