Another month ends. Our rituals and practices, like sitting in meditation, are like a well-worn path which allow us to deepen our capacity to see
To learn something new,
take the path that you took yesterday.
John Burroughs, 1837-1921, American naturalist, quoted in Pico Iyer, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells
Ester asked why people are sad.
“That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”
Paulo Coehlo, The Zahir
When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking,
you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking.
When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice – the thinker – but the one who is aware of it.
Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.
Eckhart Tolle, Silence Speaks
In a dream I am walking joyfully up the mountain. Something breaks and falls away, and all is light. Nothing has changed, yet all is amazing, luminescent, free. Released at last, I rise into the sky … This dream comes often. Sometimes I run, then lift up like a kite, high above earth, and always I sail transcendent for a time before awaking. I choose to awake, for fear of falling, yet such dreams tell me that I am a part of things, if only I would let go, and keep on going.
“Do not be heavy,” Soen Roshi says. “Be light, light, light – full of light!”
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Soen Roshi was a Taiwanese-born, Zen Buddhist master in the Rinzai tradition.
If you listen to the traffic with a clear mind,
without any concepts,
it is not noisy,
it is only what it is.
Stephen Mitchell, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn
When you get up in the morning, let the world wait.
Defy it a little.
First learn something to inspire you. Take a few moments to meditate upon it.
And then you may plunge ahead into the darkness, full of light with which to illuminate it.
Tzvi Freeman, Canadian rabbi and author
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