When meditation frees us, ot does not turn us into something better or different, nor does it get us somewhere. Rather, meditation allows for an undoing of our controlling behavior, an undoing of limiting beliefs, an undoing of habitual physical tensing, an undoing of defensive armoring, and ultimately, an undoing of our identification with a small and threatened self.
Tara Brach
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
There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.
There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent.
And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?
There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed;
when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken,
and he learns a different wisdom
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
We are often instructed to surrender to the present, but what does it mean really? When we surrender, we are relinquishing our demand that the present be something other than it actually is and we are fostering a willingness to be present with what is. Surrendering to the present entails surrendering to our current limitations, both internal and external.
Philipp Moffitt, Surrendering to the present
A skillful reflection is: ‘This is the way it is’. Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, the renowned Thai sage, said, “If there was to be a useful inscription to put on a medallion around your neck it would be ‘This is the way it is’.” This reflection helps us to contemplate: wherever we happen to be, whatever time and place, good or bad, ‘This is the way it is.’ It is a way of bringing an acceptance into our minds, a noting rather than a reaction. The practice of meditation is reflecting on ‘the way it is’ in order to see the fears and desires which we create.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is
Sitting alone in peace before these cliffs
the full moon is heaven’s beacon
the ten thousand things are all reflections
the moon originally has no light
Han-shan
