Tag: Life

Like an elephant

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In one of his insightful talks Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said that in your practice you should walk like an elephant.

It means to move at a comfortable pace. No rushing toward a goal. No push to make it all meaningful. The … texts of Taoism and Zen teach that it’s important to do what you do without trying to accomplish anything.

You don’t have to get anywhere. There are no goals and objectives: nothing to succeed in, and nothing in which to fail. You can sit in your house, as Thoreau did, and be attentive – his suggestion. “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it – a little? . . . If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?”
 

Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

Sunday Quote: Underneath all the noise

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Water is free from the birth
and death of a wave.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Undisturbed

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I gaze on myself in the stream’s emerald flow,
Sit on a boulder by a cliff.

My mind, a lonely cloud,
Leans on nothing, needs nothing
From the world and its endless events.

HanShan, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist poet

The dance

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The invitation is to throw yourself into the dance,

whether the music is always of your choosing or not,

as if it were both an experiment and an adventure.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Opportunities for joy

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Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form

Thich Nhat Hanh

A flash of lightning

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A lot of thunderstorms these days in Ireland

The Buddha often used images to try to convey some of this sense of all appearances arising, with nothing we can hold on to. He said life is like a rainbow, an echo, a dream, a drop of dew on a blade of grass, a flash of lightning in a summer sky.

What does a deeper glimpse into this truth of change offer us, ultimately? We see that there is a tender, exultant beauty to every hour, in fact to every minute we have just because we are alive. ..The fragility and dynamism of life is what makes it so vital. Every experience, every encounter, every realized desire, and every unfulfilled longing that comes into our lives is moving, changing…

Life is short, and it is sacred

Sharon Salzberg, Real LIfe: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom