Surrender to the way things want to happen next, even though this often involves a vast and terrifying loss of control.
Trust the magic that was born into your soul.
Martha Beck, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World
Surrender
Tag: Meditation
Freely given
I unlatched the shutters. The light was as intense as a love affair. I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as a world can be.
We are the ones obsessed by measurement. The world just pours it out.
Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
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Sunday Quote: Patience
Sometimes it takes time for the meaning of things to emerge or for us to develop a deeper understanding.
The ox is slow, but the earth is patient.
Indonesian Proverb (or maybe, as some say, Chinese)
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Present and fundamentally kind
Zen speaks of “expressing a dream within a dream”, acknowledging that we never quite rid ourselves of delusion and confusion, yet we can be present and fundamentally kind. There is so much bounty, so many tangled and twining vines, as well as so much lostness. Practice isn’t abut escaping any of it. It is about putting our feet on the ground, feeling the moist grass, knowing the wet stream of tears on a cheek…and not wandering off, looking for something better. “Here is the place; here the Way unfolds”, Master Dogen wrote.
Summer asks that we not confuse enlightenment with distraction. Where there is a dream of intractable pain, Buddhas show up to be a salve to that suffering. They show up for you. They are not other than you. “Just as cages and snares are limitless, emancipation from them is limitless” Dogen also wrote.
Bonnie Myotai Trace, A Year of Zen
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Going forward
This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.
Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481, Zen Buddhist monk and poet.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
Samuel Beckett, 1906 – 1989, Worstward Ho!
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Loving well and living fully
In the stress and complexity of our lives, we may forget our deepest intentions. But when people come to the end of their lives and look back, the questions that they most often ask are not usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or “How many books did I write?” or “What did I build?” or the like. If you have the privilege of being with a person who is conscious at the time of his or her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple, “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?”
These simple questions go to the very center of spiritual life. When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears have limited us, and we can see the many opportunities for our hearts to open. Have we let ourselves love the people around us, our family, our community, the earth upon which we live? And, did we also learn to let go? Did we learn to live through the changes of life with grace, wisdom, and compassion? Have we learned to shift from the clinging mind to the joy of freedom?
Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
