Tag: Life

Unanswered Questions

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Life is so full of mystery, answers are so few, I do not trust them. I prefer unanswered questions. At the end of the answers there is usually a person who enjoys the power of appearing to know.

I have come to like things that are left unfinished. Its the question that shines the light, that seeks. The answer’s often just a dim reflection of the vastness of the question. There are no answers that satisfy. This is a small life and everything comes to nothing at the end. I like that. I like the idea of smallness and the wonder of basic human things.

from the lovely little book, Marc Hamer, A Life in Nature, or how to catch a mole

It doesn’t matter

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If we don’t pay attention to every little this, we miss the whole thing. And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, talking to one we don’t want to talk to. It doesn’t matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute. That’s all there is, and all there ever will be. If we could totally pay attention, we would never be upset. If we’re upset, it’s axiomatic that we’re not paying attention. If we fill our days and we miss not just one moment, but one moment after another, we’re in trouble.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Sunday Quote: real progress

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What progress, you ask, have I made?

I have begun to be a friend to myself.

Hecato of Rhodes, c. 100 BC, Stoic philosopher, quoted in Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium  VI

The end of negative patterns

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One of our frequent chants includes this phrase: May this holy life lead us to the end of this whole mass of suffering.

Essentially, we’re looking at a way of life, of living. It’s not a particular detail but the whole thing. Of course, we can have special sessions, retreats or occasions within that, but they’re all part of the bigger picture. The big picture is one of purifying kamma, and ending kamma. This means that through our actions and intentions, we purify from delusion, hatred, greed, fear, jealously, mistrust, avarice, ambitions, the whole lot of obsessiveness. It is through this that the mind can be level, open, and realize. Realization can occur; deathlessness. The beauty of this is the very web of training – the forms and instructions we use in order to open and let go – cover our entire way of living.

Ajahn Sucitto

Be patient

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Sometimes things work out when you do not force them, but rather let your inner wisdom make itself clear through a period of quiet or rest.

If any one cannot grasp this matter,

let them be idle

and the matter will grasp them.

Henry Suso, German Dominican friar, 1295- 1366, The Exemplar

Tensions are part of life

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We could say that New Age people in general are addicted to harmony.

The alchemical woodcut says that a child will not become an adult until it breaks the addiction to harmony, chooses the one precious thing, and enters into a joyful participation in the tensions of the world.

Robert Bly, Iron John