Tag: Mindfulness

Attention

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It is hard to believe that the practice can be reduced to something so simple, paying direct attention to the present moment – to this breath, this person, this walk, to this washing of the dishes. We imagine it should be something grander. It may be simple; however, it is not easy

One day a man asked Zen master Ikkyu, “Master, will you please write for me some pointers to the highest wisdom?”

Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word: “Attention.”

“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more ?”

Ikkyu then wrote : “Attention. Attention. Attention.”

Practice eternity

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Use your own light

and return to the source of light.

This is called practicing eternity.

Lao Tzu

The best day

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Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday Quote: our fears

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Tell your heart that the fear of suffering

is worse than the suffering itself.

Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

The final Freedom

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We hurry through the so-called boring things in order to attend to that which we deem more important, interesting.

Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that everything in every moment is ‘essential’ and that nothing at all is ‘important.’

Helen M. Luke, 1904- 1995, Jungian therapist and writer

One purpose

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In the Sufi Master Rumi’s “Table Talk”, there is this fierce and pointed passage:

“The master said there is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else, but forgot that one thing, you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever.

It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all.

So each person has come into the world for a particular task, and that is their purpose. If they don’t perform it, they will have done nothing.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,