Separated by centuries and traditions, but the same message:
The meaning of life is to see
Hui Neng ( Chinese Zen monk, 7th century).
The whole of life lies in the verb “seeing”
Teilhard de Chardin, (Jesuit priest, 20th Century).
Devotion proceeds through various stages of unmasking until we reach the point of seeing the world directly and simply without imposing our fabrications.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
The confused heart, having lost joy within itself, seeks…..consolation outside.
The more it seeks exterior goods, the more it lacks the interior joy to which it can return
Hugh Feiss, osb
Both our present and our future depend on us.
From moment to moment, we are creating our future.
Tenzin Palmo
A central truth of practice is that in order to come to the present, we must go through the past. This does not mean we have to relive or analyse our childhood, but it does mean that when our attention steadies itself in the here and now, we will be met with the residue of our past conditioning. Awakening means exposing and investigating areas of this past conditioning where the sense-of-self remains identified within a pattern, thought or emotion.
Rodney Smith, Stepping out of Self Deception.
The paradox is indeed that new life is born out of the pains of the old.
Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.
To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
Mark Nepo
Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us.
Wayne Muller, Legacy of the Heart
