All time is here in this body.
The past exists in its memory and the future in its anticipation, and both of these are now, for when the world is inspected directly and clearly, past and future times are nowhere to be found
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
This is the mystery and the pain of our lives: every one of us is exactly where we need to be, but we don’t know it. We’re looking for somewhere else to be. The spiritual odyssey, life’s deepest and most significant undertaking, involves a great effort and inevitably it leads us on through many disasters and troubles in the checkered course of our living and growing. And where to we end up? Back where we started from. Back to ourselves. Only now maybe with more wisdom.
Norman Fischer
How do we cultivate the conditions for joy to expand? We train in staying present. In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and maitri (friendliness) : in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts. We stay with our own little plot of earth and trust that it can be cultivated, that cultivation will bring it to its full potential. Even though it’s full of rocks and the soil is dry, we begin to plow this plot of patience. We let the process evolve naturally. . .
The deepest words of the wise …teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing
Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, 1875 – 1939
As the days begin to shorten, we are reminded that darkness is as much of life as is light. And each day we have moments of birth and moments of loss. They give an opportunity in the practice of taking some aspects of ourselves and our lives with less importance, of letting go or dying to our fixed sense of self:
Die while you’re alive
and be absolutely dead.
Then do whatever you want:
it’s all good.
Bunan, 17th century Zen Master.
The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves. By “cessation” we mean the cessation of hell as opposed to just weather, the cessation of this resistance, this resentment, this feeling of being completely trapped and caught, trying to maintain huge ME at any cost.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness
