When we can be centered in ourselves,
even for brief periods of time in the face of the pull of the outer world,
not having to look elsewhere for something to fill us up or make us happy,
we can be at home wherever we find ourselves,
at peace with things as they are, moment by moment.
Jon Kabat Zinn
A similar idea to yesterday…
Let yourself be open and life will be easier.
A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable.
A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.
Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s little Instruction Book
The great Suzuki Roshi’s classic image on how meditation develops space in our lives and allows us work with whatever challenging thoughts arise:
The way to control your sheep or cow is
to give him a large, spacious meadow .
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge.
When you complain, you make yourself a victim.
Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Eckhart Tolle
This morning, thousands rose early to catch the birdsong at dawn in an annual celebration entitled “Dawn Chorus Day” which went out live on radio from locations all over the world
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
There must be a time of day when the man who
makes plans forgets his plans,
and acts as if he had no plans at all.
There must be a time of day when the man who has
to speak falls very silent.
And his mind forms no more propositions,
and he asks himself:
Did they have a meaning?
There must be a time
When the man of prayer goes to pray
as if it were the first time in his life
he had ever prayed,
when the man of resolutions puts his
resolutions aside
as if they had all been broken,
and he learns a different wisdom:
distinguishing the sun from the moon,
the stars from the darkness,
the sea from the dry land,
and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.
Thomas Merton
