Tag: Mindfulness

Long ago and far from here, a pilgrim was traveling in the hills. His thoughts were like clouds and dreams. He became lost in his walking.

He rounded a bend, and on the opposite wall of the canyon there was a peach tree in blossom. The blossoms were white with crimson in the center. No veil separated him from them, and suddenly the peach blossoms were him. The tree, the river, the birds, the sunlight, the morning cold – everything was peach blossoms. He laughed out loud. His name was Lingyun, and he wrote:

“For thirty years I searched for a Master Swordsman.
How many times did the leaves fall, and the branches burst into bud?
But from the moment I saw these peach blossoms,
I’ve had no doubts”.

It can be a shock – the heart coming forth. Anything, anything that we meet, is a peach blossom. An email about cancer, a phone call, the winter moonrise. When we truly meet any part of the universe, we recognize it. It feels like I’m seeing my own face. The things I thought I needed to be happy, I don’t need. I don’t need the perfectly respectable life that everyone wants. Mainly I don’t need to know what happens next. My own life is an unknown path through peach blossoms.

John Tarrant, The World Catches Us Every Time

The trick, as far as Buddhism is concerned,

is to accept the fact that no experience can ever be as complete as we would wish,

that no object can ever satisfy completely

Mark Epstein

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

The purpose of meditation is to come back to who we actually are.

We are not only the often harried and worried self we feel we are.

Nor the one excited by the prospect of pleasures to enjoy, and fearful of losing out on them

Henry Shukman

Lent and Ramadan both start this week : invitations to reflect.

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry. 

To know this spot of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. 

This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

Mark Nepo, Unlearning Back to God

Today is Pancake Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. In Latin countries, it marks the end of the Carnival period, Mardi Gras or “Fat Tuesday”. The practice of carnival probably began in ancient times when the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent was called Dominica Carnevala, or “farewell to meat Sunday” – referring to the upcoming Lenten period of fasting and simplification

.Simplify the problem of life: 

distinguish the necessary and the real.

Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. 

Thoreau