Always seeking

What does seeking look like?

If it seeks an external object, we focus our attention on becoming something. We look for something pleasant or unpleasant to focus our attention on, to generate a view or an opinion about, to generate a sense of importance around the sense of “I,” “me,” and “mine.” Or, the becoming mind seeks an internal object, a subjective sense of “me” being something, me being a success, me being a failure, or at least me being somebody. But all of this – internal or external—is in the
realm of becoming.

We need to able to let go of the fear of letting go, the fear of not being something, not getting what one wants, not being what one thinks one should be or would like to be or have to be, have to get, have to become. There’s a tremendous, almost primal fear, of actually being peaceful, of really letting go, of putting stuff down, of putting identity down, of putting the compulsions down. We want to be able to watch the fear, to see it, and to identify it, to know “that is the source of suffering” the becoming towards, the pull towards becoming and being.

Ajahn Passano, On Becoming and Stopping

Stop trying

Freedom doesn’t come from getting what we want.

It comes from no longer needing life to be a certain way.

The moment we stop trying to control, we meet life freshly.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Living Zen 

Natural

Happiness is our natural state.

Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.

To regain happiness, you don’t have to add anything; you’ve got to drop something.

Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!

Anthony de Mello sj, Awareness

no effort needed

Why do we strive at all?

Is it not because we are trying to escape from what is?

But if you begin to understand what is, then all striving ceases.

Then there is no effort, only pure observation.

Jiddu Krisnamurti, The Book of Life

Instruct myself in joy

It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –

to instruct myself over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Mary Oliver, Mindful

Sunday Quote: as you go

To be a pilgrim is to notice the way the light changes the color of the hills,

to listen for the stories embedded in the path,

to let the journey rewrite you

Rebecca Solnit, The Blue of Distance