In fully allowing conditions to be what they are, we stabilize our hearts and find peace. It’s like putting a boat into water. We make an ark of truth: ‘Conditions are like this,’ and in that truth, we don’t adopt the conditions as our own. This is important: you can’t drain the sea, but you don’t have to drown.
Why we feel overwhelmed, as if we’re drowning, is because the heart is‘leaky.’ When it isn’t secure, perceptions and feelings flood in and cause it to sink
Ajahn Sucitto, Parami
A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown, the new, and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver of the unknown. From ancient times, these gifts were prepared for you; now they come towards you across eternal distances. Their destination is the altar of your heart.
John O Donohue, Eternal Echoes
We can only be where we are: Right here, right now.
Zen practice is to accept that place with calm.
We cannot always be master of the situation, but we can always be master of ourselves.
Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7: All Zen All the TIme
Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people’s freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.
Ajahn Brahm, Opening the Door of Your Heart
Every moment is an opportunity to come home…
Make an island of yourself,
make yourself your refuge;
there is no other refuge.
Digha Nikaya, 16
The creator of the universe loves circles:
time and space are circles, the day is a circle, the year is a circle, the earth is a circle.
But when creating and fashioning the human heart, the creator only created a half-circle, so that there is something ontologically unfinished in human nature.
John O’Donohue
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,
we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished.
Karl Rahner, sj., Catholic theologian
