Everyone gets sick sometimes,
feels bad sometimes.
This is not a hindrance to Dhamma practice.
The hindrance is to take it personally.
Ajahn Sucitto
Our narrative
Tag: Mindfulness
Every step today
If you look for the truth outside yourself
It gets further and further away
Today, walking alone, I meet him everywhere I step
He is the same as me, yet I am not him
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.
Dongshan, 9th Century China, Chan Buddhist monk (Stephen Mitchell translation)
Sunday Quote: Always changing
This dewdrop world –
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet
Kobayashi Issa, 1763 – 1828, Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest, after the death of his daughter
Regrets
Most people think they will regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions. But studies show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did.
Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness
Underneath the worry
In Zen meditation, we learn how to breathe with phrases, inquire of them, take them beyond conventional styles of understanding. We allow thought to arise, but not grasping thought, not being caught up in thought, not driving thought with our fear, desire, our smallness, as we usually do. So that instead of interpreting or explaining the phrases, trying to gain mastery over them, we allow ourselves to feel the phrases deeply, below the level of our conceptual mind.
In one story, Wu is sweeping the ground and Yan says, “Too busy!”
Wu replies, “You should know there’s one who’s not busy.”
This story is telling us that when we think we are busy, that’s just on the surface. The stress we complain about is conceptual and superficial. We can run around and do plenty of things, but when we know who we are and what is actually going on, we don’t need to be stressed out about anything.
Norman Fischer, Phrases and Spaces
How to keep going
When the big things feel out of control,
focus on what you love right under your nose.
The Horse in Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
per Laura V…
Mindfulbalance 