We prepare to die by pushing ourselves to love less narrowly.
In that sense, readying ourselves for death
is really an ever-widening entry into life.
Ron Rolheiser.
Tag: Nature
Forgetting and remembering
One of the most difficult things to remember is to remember to remember. Awareness begins with remembering what we tend to forget. Drifting through life on a cushioned surge of impulses is just one of many strategies of forgetting. Not only do we forget to remember, we forget that we live in a body with senses and feelings and thoughts and emotions and ideas. Worrying about what a friend said can preoccupy us so completely that it isolates us from the rest of our experience. The world of colours and shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations becomes dull and remote…… To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is one way of snapping out of such fixations. It is also a reasonable definition of meditation.
Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs.
Walking by
I think it pisses God off
if you walk by the color purple in a field
and don’t notice it.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Sometimes we can get caught up in the rush of every day or the familiarity of our routines. We can fail to notice the beauty in ordinary experience. When we travel or are starting something new, we are struck by the experiences, noticing, for example, the energy and the qualities of people or the way they do things differently. Everything registers in a heightened way. In these moments things seems more real, more alive. The brain cannot always function like that, so it creates schemas to allow it quickly locate everyday experiences into familiar categories – cars, buses, flowers, trees and so on. So in order to really see we have to go against an established habit. We have to slow down in order to really notice; focus in order to really attend. Today let us try to look at one or two things we encounter as if for the first time: Open our eyes, pause, wonder, notice the details, celebrate life.
Living your life in tune with all of life
To me this would be the best way to live — to situate yourself within your life in such a way as to feel that your own life was unfolding with the pattern of all of life. I suppose this might seem megalomaniacal, but I see it as quite humble. My life isn’t mine, it is just life living itself through me. I think, if you lived your life like that, then a lot of what bothers you wouldn’t bother you any more, and a lot of things that don’t bother you now would seem very important, very personal.
Norman Fischer
Becoming one who sees
Despite the incredibly warm weather, the berries have appeared on the bushes in the garden. They reminded me of this quote, and its encouragement to see into the heart of things, happening in each moment of the day. Sometimes we are just to preoccupied and hurried to notice. We let life – and heaven – pass by, unnoticed.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
Sunday Quote: Loving the moment for what it is.
We could learn a lot from what Wordsworth observed in his mother. She did not demand more than what was contained in each moment:
Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book Five
Mindfulbalance 