Today is Gaudete Sunday
Joy is not to be found in things;
we find it inside ourselves
When we are free of all created things,
we find the uncreated joy of God.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 12, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit”
Sunday Quote: joy
Tag: Meditation
What am I looking for?
The symbol of the heart has often been used to express love…… Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart
Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? …All these questions lead us back to the heart.
Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos
Weather and suffering
The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.
By “cessation” we mean the cessation of hell as opposed to just weather – the cessation of this resistance, this resentment, this feeling of being completely trapped and caught, trying to maintain huge ME at any cost.
The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the … instruction that we have all received- the golden key – is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather – the quality and the energy of the weather itself.
Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness
finding a place of rest in the midst of things
now air is air and thing is thing
now wind is wind
on forever’s very now we stand.
e.e.cummings, from No Thanks
Remind yourself when you are being blown about
After a very wild and windy day in Ireland….
The Tao is always at ease.
It overcomes without competing,
answers without speaking a word,
arrives without being summoned,
accomplishes without a plan.
Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 73 [Mitchell translation]
Longings and limitations
Happiness is not a reward for virtue, nor a gift of the gods.
It is the natural state of a mind that has learned to balance its longings with its limitations.
The rituals of religion once taught this; we must now learn it consciously
Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists
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