Tag: Meditation

Where is our home

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Most of nature – plants and animals – have periods of rest. We find it hard.

All of our unhappiness comes from one thing only, which is the inability to sit quietly, in a room alone. Pascal

[Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.]

I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass….

I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.

Wendell Berry 1934- American poet, environmental activist and farmer, Stay Home

Sunday Quote: Inner work

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When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything.

The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything

Shunryu Suzuki roshi, Zen Mind, Beginniers Mind

For the good

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Albert Einstein once said that the most important question a human being could answer is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we are willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth. As soon as we begin to …..open to faith in a friendly universe, the proverbial path opens before us. The people, events and teachings we need are supplied. This is the action of grace.

Joan Borysenko, Fire in the Soul: A New Spirituality of Spiritual Optimism

What are we nurturing?

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The environment we create

will determine what prevails.

In other words, what we nurture and encourage wins

Jane Goodall, 1934 – English primatologist and anthropologist.

Unhurried

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Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work.

 Søren Kierkegaard, 1813– 1855), philosopher.

Like an elephant

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In one of his insightful talks Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said that in your practice you should walk like an elephant.

It means to move at a comfortable pace. No rushing toward a goal. No push to make it all meaningful. The … texts of Taoism and Zen teach that it’s important to do what you do without trying to accomplish anything.

You don’t have to get anywhere. There are no goals and objectives: nothing to succeed in, and nothing in which to fail. You can sit in your house, as Thoreau did, and be attentive – his suggestion. “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it – a little? . . . If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?”
 

Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World