No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
Annie Dillard
photo peter dowley
Tag: mental health
Sunday Quote: Fixed outcomes
No Appointment
No Disappointment
Swami Satchidananda, Indian religious teacher, 1914 – 2002
photo Cbaile19
A firmer place
The simple practice of sitting still or steady walking bring you to a firmer place in yourself, your still centre. This is because “mind” is a mixture of heart and brain functions, in which the heart is predominantly involved with the steady receptivity we call mindfulness and clear comprehension. The heart is not just a metaphor for emotions and perceptions. So when we “tune in” to a still body or to the rhythm of breathing, the message we receive is that things are fine and the brain quietens down. This is the often overlooked function of the heart: it is a major contributor to direct experience (rather than figured out, learned or abstract knowledge).
Ajahn Sucitto, Meditation, A Way of Awakening
You are all possibilities
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard
… Look back down the path as if seeing your past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
David Whyte, Mameen
The basics of Mindfulness practice 3: Use the breath to centre yourself
Breath is the bridge that connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold again.
In our community, where people are practicing the mindfulness of doing laundry, washing dishes, eating, walking and so forth, everybody learns to use breath as a tool for restoring mindfulness.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Work with your day as it is
To practice we must see exactly where we are. Of course we can always imagine perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone else should behave. But it’s not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.
Ajahn Sumedho
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