Tag: Meditation

Letting go of the things that change

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Things change so quickly. On Friday the news was dominated by weddings and dresses, by pomp and circumstance. Yesterday we awoke to news of  death and differences,  and to the insecurity it provokes.  Such changes can make the ground we stand on feel quite uncertain. However,  it is not just change on a world level but how we deal with the smaller changes in our lives that determines our ongoing  sense of inner peace and calm. We expend quite a lot of energy each day in trying to hold on to what is familiar and in attempting to make the world conform to how we would like it to be. The problem with this – other than the futile waste of energy – is that  we limit our ability to experience joy in the present moment as it actually is. If we approach moments with fear,  rather than opening to how they are, we cannot see the richness in them.

A contrary strategy works best: Stop trying to grasp, to control the world around you or the day ahead of you. In doing so you loosen the grip of fear and  give each experience the possibility to bring its richness.   Letting go of control lets go of suffering.

It is not because of impermanence that we suffer

But because of our ideas about permanence.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The world is complex – deal with it

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It is through the messiness of our own individual histories –  and the complexity of the world  with all its divisions and differences of opinion – that we come to a full contentment in our lives, not by running away or denying parts of ourselves or what has happened in the past:

The way through the world

is more difficult to find

than the way beyond it

Wallace Stevens

What is, is good enough.

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In both Western and Eastern traditions, happiness is less about feeling good than about an attitude of acceptance of life the way it is. Happiness comes from accepting what is , in contrast to pursuing what is not yet. To penetrate life means to get into it with a focused power and precision, like a laser beam. As Thoreau indicated, it means “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”. If we truly practice his favorite principle –  less is more, simpler is better – we sooner or later come upon the subtler principle it reveals: what is,  is good enough.

 Less is more, simpler is better, works precisely because whatever exists without our inflating and overcomplicating it, is good enough. Zen alludes to this principle when it says  “The beauty of a mountain is that it is so much like a mountain, and of water, that it is so much like water”.  Simply stated, life is simply good.

Michael Gellert, The Way of the Small

Keeping our work in perspective

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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown

is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell, British Philosopher.

Ending confusion: How to find the meaning in life

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Separated by centuries and traditions,  but the same message:

The meaning of life is to see

Hui Neng ( Chinese Zen monk, 7th century).

The whole of life lies in the verb “seeing”

Teilhard de Chardin, (Jesuit priest, 20th Century).

Devotion proceeds through various stages of unmasking until we reach the point of seeing the world directly and simply without imposing our fabrications.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Sunday Quote: ….. Creating our future

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Both our present and our future depend on us.

From moment to moment, we are creating our future.

Tenzin Palmo