Don’t pick them up

One day a visitor to Ajahn Chah’s monastery said to him “You have so much going on here! You have dozens of monks and nuns under your guidance and now this big building project going on. And you have these 30 to 40 branch monasteries all around.

So many things to do. So many responsibilities….

It must be really hard work for you?

In response, Ajahn Chah pointed to some nearby stones. “Do you think they are heavy?”

And the visitor replied, “Oh yes, really heavy”

To which Ajahn Chah replied, “Not if you don’t pick them up”

As told by Ajahn Amaro, Amaravarti podcast talk, Chapter 3.20 – Practicing Dharma

Sunday quote: A holistic life

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade,

it makes the hand bleed that uses it

Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 -1941, Indian poet, writer and philosopher

Big Mind

From the great Suzuki Roshi. A lot to ponder here but I do like the idea of seeing all that happens as an unfolding of big mind:

Because we enjoy all aspects of life as an unfolding of big mind,

we do not care for any excessive joy.

So we have imperturbable composure.

Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 

Finally, instructions for life

We waste a lot of time seeking someone to tell us what life will be like once we live it. We drain ourselves of inner fortitude by asking others to map our way.

At the end of all this stalling, though, we each have to venture out and simply see what happens. 

The instructions are in the living,

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

To know what one really needs

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows ‘what he wants,’ while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.

In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

Time to start living

The fool, with all his other faults, has this one also,

he is always getting ready to live.

Seneca