When things come up, deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the stillness of water, like the clarity of a mirror. Whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly approach, you don’t make the slightest move to avoid them. Then you will truly know that the mindless world of spontaneity is inconceivable.
Ta Hui (1088-1163)
When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly, we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going, arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux. There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment – not just poetically or figuratively, but literally – every moment we are dying and being reborn, we and all of life.
Sharon Salzberg, Loving-Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen
The last month of this year begins. Sometimes we can be more conscious of the passing of time, as when we visit home after being away, or go back to a place where we used to live and find that things have changed. We can sometimes find that the event or the return did not live up to what we had looked forward to. Often what happens is that we form fixed ideas or expectations about some things in the future or we look forward so much to seeing someone or doing something that we play out in our minds how it will be. When the actual event turns out differently, we can find that our mood changes. Such expectations are part of a normal mechanism of the mind which thinks that happiness depends on conditions turning out exactly as we imagine or want them to be. We attach our happiness to a fixed expectation, and close out other possibilities. We do it unconsciously many times each day, fixing the manner in which things should turn out. But, as Philip Moffit reminds us here, we are continually changing, and by the time we arrive at any future moment a whole set of conditions have altered. Let us practice today being open to whatever way things happen, not fixing possibilities into determined expectations.
Always the rationalization is the same -“Once this situation is remedied, then I will be happy.” But it never works that way in reality: The goal is achieved, but the person who reaches it is not the same person who dreamed it. The goal was static, but the person’s identity was dynamic.
Philip Moffitt
Happiness is accepting and choosing life, not just submitting grudgingly to it. It comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment of our lives; we choose life at it is, with all its joys, pain and conflicts. Happiness is living and seeking the truth, together with others in community, and assuming responsibility for our lives and the lives of others. It is accepting the fact that we are not infinite, but can enter into a personal relationship with the Infinite, discovering the universal truth and justice that transcends all cultures: each person is unique and sacred. We are not just seeking what others want us to be or to conform to the expectations of family, friends, or local ways of being. We have chosen to be who we are, with all this is beautiful and broken in us. We do not slip away from life and live in a world of illusions, dreams, or nightmares. We become present to reality and to life. We become present to reality and to life so that we are free to live according to our personal conscience, our sacred sanctuary, where love resides within us and we see others as they are in the depth of their being. We are not letting the light of life within us be crushed, and we are not crushing it in others. On the contrary, all we want is for the light of others to shine.
Jean Vanier, Essential Writings
We practice so that every moment of our life becomes real life. And therefore when we meditate. we sit for sitting. We don’t sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, these twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. We have to be alive with each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us. The same kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize, is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace in the world.
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of Understanding
