Tag: Life

Not looking from outside

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9th century Zen master, Tozan Ryokai, attained enlightenment many times. Once when he was crossing a river he saw himself reflected in the water and composed a verse, “Don’t try to figure out who you are. If you figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself.”

Actually, you are in the river. You may say that is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warm-hearted feeling, that is you. You may think you are very warm-hearted, but when you try to understand how warm, you cannot actually measure. Yet when you see yourself with a warm feeling in the mirror or the water, that is actually you.

And whatever you do, you are there.

from the great Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen

Sunday Quote: Joy

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what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
 

Rumi

Blue

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We have had bright Summer weather all week here, spacious blue skies, something of a rarity in Ireland

I thank God for most this
amazing day; for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.

e. e. cummings

Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions… Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called “jai pongsai”, our natural lightness of heart.

Wise attention has a gracious witnessing quality, acknowledging each event – whether boredom or jealousy, plans or excitement, gain or loss, pleasure or pain – with a slight bow. Moment by moment we release the illusion of getting “somewhere” and rest in the timeless present, witnessing with easy awareness all that passes by. As we let go, our innate freedom and wisdom manifest. Nothing to have, nothing to be. Ajahn Chah called this “resting in the One Who Knows.”

Jack Kornfield, A Mind Like Sky Meditation

Today

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May you take time to celebrate
the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

May you experience each day
as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.

John O’Donohue, Benedictus

Finding the way back home

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Its important for me to meditate…to let go of my thoughts breath by breath and instead slowly lean back into that which was inside me before I was born, and which will endure when the rest of me dies. For me its like something I’ve longed for all my life, without knowing what it was. As though someone, for as long as I can remember, has been sitting on my shoulder whispering “Come home”

So how does one find the way back home? The best answer to that question I’ve come across so far comes from Meister Eckhart, a German priest in the early fourteenth century who was supposedly enlightened. After a Sunday sermon, an elderly member of his congregation came up to him and said “Meister Eckhart, you have clearly met God. Please help me to get to know God like you do. But your advice must be very simple as my memory is failing me”

“It’s very simple” Meister Eckhart replied. “All you need to do to meet God the way I have, is to fully understand who is looking out through your eyes”

Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.

Beyond

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It is not a matter of looking for happiness

or trying to avoid suffering

but of going to the place beyond happiness or suffering

Ajahn Chah