Peace:
To accept what must be,
and to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Lao Tzu
Peace
Tag: Life
No place for our doubts to land
The mind’s preference to fix things into a permanent form even applies to how we see our “flaws”. We easily see ourselves as having enduring negative aspects to our personality – “I am very bad at ….” rather than recognizing the changing nature of our weaknesses. That things are always changing is one of the fundamental truths which we try to understand at a deep personal level. The line from the Dhammapada – Anyone who understands impermanence ceases to be contentious – reminds us of a fundamental way to stop fighting with reality and with ourselves. We are continually changing. Our life path is continually changing. Sometimes agonizing about it only makes things worse.
The expounding, practising and realizing of impermanence
by the impermanent
themselves all must be impermanent
Dogen
Not dividing things into A and B
The Western mind likes to categorize and put labels, defining what is and what is not. In Eastern approaches to life we often find that this “either-or” division is not as strong, and that a more seamless acceptance of opposites is the preferred way of seeing things. In this approach, contrary energies and ideas can be seen to be complementary or interdependent. If we grow in this, we develop a mind which does not need to form an evaluation of an experience immediately, to come to a quick conclusion about how things are going in our lives. Most experiences are never clearly just black or white, and yet we long always for conviction, for things to be definitive, for solidity. However, it can be richer if we come to an edge in our lives and work at staying there, in the present moment, holding an open space for how things will turn out, not fixing on a particular outcome. This challenges us to find a sense of coherence that is not based on a necessary result but on a relational sense with whatever is happening. This flexible open space is what leads to greater freedom.
Things are not as they appear to be, nor are they otherwise.
The Lankavatara Sutra
With thanks to Patrick Choucri at the Yakushido Centre in Geneva for prompting these thoughts.
Home
When you rest in God, you just go home to yourself like the wave on the water. If the wave continues to search, she will never find the water. The only way to find the water is to go home to herself. When she realizes that she is water, she has peace. She practices resting in God in the here and the now. Although she continues to rise and fall, she is peaceful. We can practice Love as the ground of our being: Home.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Our use of time today
When you treat your time as though you are a machine; a doing machine;
you are committing violence against the sacredness of life itself.
Philip Moffit
Sunday Quote: No dress rehearsal
Treat every moment as your last.
It is not a preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi
