The beauty even in the most ordinary.
Wonder even in the most commonplace:
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it
and whispers, “Grow, grow”.
The Talmud
Tag: Life
Sunday Quote: Be still and move forward
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion.
T.S. Eliot, East Coker
Seeing through
The process of practice is to see through, not to eliminate, anything to which we are attached. We could have great financial wealth and be unattached to it, or we might have nothing and be very attached to having nothing. Most practice gets caught in this area of fiddling with our environments or our minds. ” My mind should be quiet”. Our mind doesn’t matter; what matters is non attachment to the activities of the mind. And our emotions are harmless unless they dominate us – that is, if we are attached to them- then they create dis-harmony for everyone. The first problem in practice is to see that we are attached. As we do consistent, patient practice we begin to know that we are nothing but attachments; they rule our lives. But we never lose an attachment by saying it has to go. Only as we gain true awareness of its true nature does it quietly and imperceptibly wither away; like a sandcastle with waves rolling over, it just smooths out and finally Where is it? What was it? …
Charlotte Joko Beck
Our ongoing relationship with fear
Fear is our first, and if we are not careful, our last love. It is our most enduring relationship. It never leaves our side. It tells us where to go, what to wear, what to say and what not to say. We surrender all other options to it. Before, after and during most of our relationships we are concerned above all not with the other party but with what we fear he or she will do…. We are unavailable for any truly loving and fulfilling relationship so long as we are in a committed relationship with the most controlling part of our own mind – our fear. Our fear of what will happen and our fear of what will not.
Nearly everything we are afraid will happen is going to happen anyway, so what’s to fear? There is no secure or underlying ground, so we make ourselves safe only when we see and accept the way life is. Utterly spontaneous and impermanent. When it is time to laugh, we laugh. When it is time to weep, we weep. We are cheated of nothing in life except that from which we withhold ourselves by ego’s narrow bounds. These bounds were meant to break; indeed they must, if we ever hope to be whole again
Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold: Care instructions for an ordinary life.
Learning to be
Meanwhile, we miss the fact that we are losing the main point and that what we are doing has turned into a self-based program. We get caught in the illusion, trying to make the self become something other. We can relax without switching off, and consequently we can enjoy the fruits of our work. This is what we mean by letting go of becoming and learning to be. If we’re too tense and eager to get to the other end, we’re bound to fall off the tight rope.
Ajahn Amaro
Endings give rise to new beginnings
I know that when I struggle with the pain of any loss, the struggle preoccupies my mind and leaves no room for hope. However, when I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.
Sylvia Boorstein
