Tag: Meditation

The light is greater

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La festa di Santa Lucia. Today is the feastday of Saint Lucia of Syracuse (283–304) a martyr revered for her courage in secretly bringing food to those who were hiding from persecution in the catacombs under Rome. Legend tells us that she wore a crown of candles to light her way so that her hands were free to carry the food.

Before the calendar was changed, her feast fell on the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice. It is still a big celebration in Nordic countries, marking the turn in winter and the return of light

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

let your preference go

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I clearly remember deciding that from now on,

if life was unfolding in a certain way,

and the only reason I was resisting it was of a personal preference,

I would let go of the preference

and let life be in charge.

Michael A. Singer

Greet each day

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Think of things that you do not have to do anything to earn or receive from anyone else – things you are already receiving from life before doing anything.

This is a powerful practice to greet each day and helps you to feel centered in the privilege and gifts of life.

Kristi Nelson, Wake Up Grateful, The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted

Sunday Quote: We don’t always see the whole picture

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A glimpse is not a vision.

But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon

C.S. Lewis

Watch with patience

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Waiting and patience are two of the main themes of Advent

Let the apple ripen
on the branch
beyond your need
to take it down.

Wait longer
than you would,
go against yourself,
find the pale nobility
of quiet that ripening
demands;
watch with patience
as the silhouette emerges
and the leaves fall;
see it become
a solitary roundness
against a greying sky,
let winter come
and the first
frost threaten,
and then wake
one morning
to see the breath
of winter
has haloed
its redness
with light.

David Whyte, Winter Apple [extract]

What we are looking for is already here

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We can often feel that our inner nature is rather dim or discouraged or that we are wandering in darkness, hoping sometime soon to reach clarity.

Today, December 8th, is Rohatsu, the day that the Buddha is said to have awakened, or attained enlightenment. In other words, he saw into the true nature of life, and through this, we are told, “the mind found its way to peace”.

It is said he meditated all through the night and in the predawn hours he looked up, saw the morning star, and exclaimed:

How Wonderful, Everything is already awake. How magnificent! 

Thoughts prompted by a dharma talk given by David Rynick entitled Transcendent Enlightenment