At any moment you have a choice
that either leads you closer to your spirit
or further away from it
Thich Nhat Hanh
Tag: Life
Saturday winding down
The first condition [required] is peace and calm; without that, it’s very difficult to see anything. That’s why a lot of our practice is actually to bring the heart to a state of balance and calm. Most people are in a constant state of reactivity. But someone who has seen the suffering of reactivity calmly comes to realize that it’s not the best way to relate to life; it is very limited – always the experience of ‘Self’, ‘Me’ and ‘You’. But as the sense of ‘Self’ decreases, the reactivity decreases also. It’s not so much the sense of Self that is the obstacle, its our identification with it.
Ajahn Sundara, Simplicity
photo jeff chenqinyi
Fixated
There are actually two reasons why people in general are out of touch with their subjective experiences: They have ‘low definition’ bodies and they are continuously fixated in thought, especially verbal thought. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with thinking. Indeed complex thought is evolution’s wonderful gift to humankind, giving our species special powers that the others lack. Thought per se is not the problem. The problem is the driven and fixated way in which we think.
Shinzen Young, Bringing the Monastery Home
Simplifying our activities
Mindfulness meditation helps us work against the fragmentation which is a by-product of the modern world, with its speed, constant demands, and abundance of stimuli. We practice in slowing down and simplifying life in order to be able to savour it more deeply. We drop into a natural goodness by letting go of the chatter of the mind and judgmental thoughts.
Sitting [in meditation] is essentially simplifying space. Our daily lives are in constant movement: lots of things going on, lots of people talking, lots of events taking place. In the middle of that, it’s very difficult to sense what we are in our life. When we simplify the situation, when we take away the externals and remove ourselves from the ringing phone, the television, the people who visit us, the dog who needs a walk, we get a chance to face ourselves.
Charlotte Joko Beck
photo Doolin, Co Clare, Nicola Mondinelli
Taking the leap
As I sit at my computer in the South of Kildare this morning and look out my window, I see low clouds, a grey landscape, somewhat wet and windy. By constrast, yesterday was a lovely sunny day, which I find normally prompts me to see things in an open, uncomplicated way. The immediate reactive effects of the low clouds are less positive. It is interesting to notice the effects of these different changing conditions on our mood and our motivation. one opening us up, the other closing things down. When we are not completely open or when we are under pressure we can have negative or doubting chatter in the background of our minds, sometimes without noticing. One of the effects of mindfulness training is to allow us spot our habitual reactions and see them for what they are, types of mental energy that pass through, which we can hook into or not.
Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now.
The conditions are always impossible.
Doris Lessing
A simple way of not adding anything
Saying “like this” is just a way of reminding oneself to see this moment as it is.
Ajahn Sumedho
