If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was.
I would only open my eyes a little more
Jules Renard, 1864 – 1910, French author
Sunday Quote: time to see
Tag: Life
Earplugs
Being preoccupied with ourselves is like being deaf and blind.
It’s like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads.
It’s like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Here
It is not an easy or automatic thing to be fully at ease in the place or moment we are in our lives….
My favorite poem from David Wagoner is “Lost” :
Stand still, the trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.
The truth of this poem is an old truth. There are the places you wish to go, there are the places you desperately wish you never left, there are the places you imagine you should be, and there is the place called here. In the world of Wagoner’s poem, it is the rooted things – trees and bushes – that tell the truth to the person who is lost, the person with legs and fear who wishes to be elsewhere. The person must stand still, feel their body on the ground where they are, in order to learn the wisdom. This is not easy wisdom, it is frightening wisdom.
In Irish, there is a phrase “ar eagla na heaglab” that translates as “for fear of fear.” It is true that there are some things that we fear, but that there is, even deeper, a fear of fear. So we are prevented from being here not only by being frightened of certain places but by the fear of being frightened of certain places. So “stand still” the poet advises. Learn from the things that are already in the place where you wish you were not.
Hello to the fear of fear
Hello to here ..
Padraig O’Tuama, in his lovely book, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World
Just be ordinary
As I see it, there isn’t so much to do.
Just be ordinary — put on your robes, eat your food, and pass the time doing nothing.
Master Linji, [Linji Yixuan, died 866, founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism] Teaching 18
When we learn to stop and be truly alive in the present moment, we are in touch with what’s going on within and around us. We aren’t carried away by the past, the future, our thinking, ideas, emotions, and projects. Often we think that our ideas about things are the reality of that thing….The true person is an active participant, engaged in her environment while remaining unoppressed by it. … She lives in awareness as an ordinary person, whether standing, walking, lying down, or sitting. She doesn’t act a part,
Thich Nhat Hahn’s commentary on this Teaching
Sunday Quote: Wholeness
Non est vivere, sed valere vita est
Life is not just a matter of being alive, but living well
Martial, Roman Poet, c 40 – 102 AD, Epigrams Book VI, 70:15)
Our chance selves
For intervals, then, throughout our lives
we savor a concurrence, the great blending
of our chance selves with what sustains
all chance.
We ride the wave and are
the wave.
And with renewed belief
inner and outer we find our talk
turned to prayer, our prayer into truth:
for an interval, early, we become at home in the world.
William Stafford
Mindfulbalance 