Nothing in this human realm is meant to work. So once you can deeply appreciate that- the mind of compassion grows if you understand that everybody’s up against it. I remember reading some works of Simone Veil, a French woman who lived in France during the war and she said there’s only one question worth asking anybody and that question is, “What are you going through?”
Leonard Cohen
even
a small purple artichoke
boiled
in its own bittered
and darkening
waters
grows tender,
grows tender and sweet
patience, I think,
my species
keep testing the spiny leaves
the spiny heart
Jane Hirshfield, My Species
Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, We will have to learn to live with it – just as we have learned to live with storms.
Paulo Coelho.
When your truth forsakes its shyness,
When your fears surrender to your strengths,
You will begin to experience
That all existence
Is a teeming sea of infinite life.
Hafiz
Perhaps the main lesson to be learnt from this year
My teacher Ajahn Chah would often respond to people’s questions, plans, and ideas with a smile and say, ‘Mai neh.’ The phrase means, ‘It is uncertain, isn’t it?’ He understood the wisdom of uncertainty, the truth of change, and was comfortable in their midst….wisdom grows by opening to the truth of not knowing.
For a long time I didn’t understand this. As I matured, I began to see that it is much simpler than this. At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world. With wisdom we allow this not knowing to become a form of trust. St. John of the Cross described it this way, ‘If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.’
Jack Kornfield
To affect the quality of the day,
that is the highest of arts.
Thoreau
