There is only one day left,
always starting over:
it is given to us at dawn
and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Tag: Mindfulness
Beautiful things
We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us
Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes
photo pauline eccles
Let go
Despite all the recent storms in Ireland, buds are starting to appear on the trees. A lesson in resilience and trust. Most of us are very good at bringing suffering upon ourselves. We turn small issues into problems and then fixate on the worries and anxieties and let them fester and take root inside us. We are less good at simply letting go and letting things develop in their own time.
Sitting quietly,
doing nothing,
Spring comes,
and the grass grows,
by itself.
Matsuo Bashō, 1644 – 1694
photo tim horton
The seeds within
Mindfulness involves paying attention to and nurturing what is helpful, as well as evaluating, and not allowing a footing to, those seeds which will cause confusion and distress:
If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us. Mindfulness means to be present, to be aware of what is going on. This energy is very crucial for the practice. The energy of mindfulness is like a big brother or big sister, holding a young one in her arms, taking good care of the suffering child, which is our anger, despair, or jealousy. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and revives. Mindfulness helps us look deeply in order to gain insight. Insight is the liberating factor. It is what frees us and allows transformation to happen.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Taming the Tiger Within
photo Ude
How not to get swept away in reactions
Mindfulness practice is not just paying attention, but involves a certain evaluation. In reality this involves paying attention to whatever enters through the senses and seeing what arises and passes away in each moment. One of the reasons we do this is to ensure that what arises is held lightly, and does not trigger off unskilful patterns of thinking based on our history and our emotional schemas. For example, if we see a certain reaction on a persons face it can easily trigger memories of the same reaction in the past and that lead to us feeling less appreciated or judged. The simple contact today can lead to a proliferation of thoughts from the past. Thus we are mindful of each thing as a separate moment, without turning it into a story about how good or bad our lives are.
A person who has clarified their real state sees only
each thing,
each thing,
each thing,
and lets go of understanding an underlying nature for each thing.
Dogen, Uji
photo maitreya maitreyen
Depth
When we get anxious, our breathing tends to get shallow and our energy tends to move upwards, making us feel less solid, less grounded. Our thinking process too can speed up or get hooked by conditioned patterns of fear or unworthiness. We are, however, much more than we think we are. Pausing, getting in touch with this depth inside us many times during the day helps us not swept away by the winds that blow.
Our true life
lives at a great depth within us
Rabindranath Tagore
photo till krech
