You who want knowledge,
Seek Oneness within
There you will find
the clear mirror already waiting
Hadewijch II
Tag: Meditation
On using our time responsibly
Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time left to confront the real issues. If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called “responsibilities” accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to “housekeeping in a dream.” We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time. Helpless, we watch our days fill up with telephone calls and petty projects, with so many responsibilities – or should we call them “irresponsibility’s”?
Sogyal Rinpoche
Running from shadows
I remember, when I was a very small child, often trying to jump into the middle of my shadow, but however hard I jumped I just landed on the shadow’s feet. And I would run after my shadow and then jump – but where would I land? Just in the same place all over again. And this is what we do with our lives – the things that we desire, it’s like running after shadows. You try to catch hold, reaching for the desire so close, and then you grasp it and then . . .and you haven’t really got it. Somehow it’s not what you expected, it’s different, not what you really wanted. And then to run from your shadow – to be afraid, you keep turning around: ‘It’s still behind me, run faster, got to get away.’ When we stop and look though, we realize: ‘Well, it’s just my shadow.’ You can’t get away from it, but there’s nothing in it to be afraid of, it’s just a shadow. So when we stop and rest in the stillness of knowing, we know in our hearts that all we desire, all we fear, are just shadows. There is no substance there – nothing which can make us more complete and nothing which can threaten us. This is the real freedom of mind.
Ajahn Amaro, Real Freedom
Accepting whatever comes next….
Now are the rough things smooth, and the smooth things stand in flickering slats, facing the slow tarnish of sun-fall.
Summer is over, or nearly.
And therefore the green is not green anymore but yellow, beige, russet, rust; all the darknesses are beginning to settle in.
And therefore why pray to permanence, why not pray to impermanence, to change, to – whatever comes next.
Willingness is next to godliness.
Mary Oliver, prose-poem
Caring for what is troubling
In matters of soul,
it is advisable never to compensate or to try to escape,
but instead to tend better
the very thing that is causing trouble.
Thomas Moore, Soul Mates
Don’t get caught up today
What we need is to be interested and to watch, but not interfere or be caught up in what we are thinking. Don’t think of the past, don’t anticipate the future, don’t get fascinated by the present.
See it as it is. Just be there with it. A thought is just a thought. An emotion is just an emotion.
It is like a bubble. It will burst and another one will come up.
Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake
