Zen is not some fancy, special art of living.
Our teaching is just to live,
always in reality, in its exact sense.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
Reality, as it is
Tag: Present moment
Ordinary
We need to remember that in sharp contrast to … self-seeking exceptionality, God works through the ordinary. Meister Eckhart gives us a word here: “If you are doing anything special, you’re not seeking God.”
Maggie Ross, Anglican hermit and theologian
The movement of life
A season or an hour of the day is a visitation whose return is not always assured. Every spring following a long winter feels as miraculous as if we are seeing it for the first time. Out of the dead garden rises abundance beyond a winter eye’s comprehension…..To make friends with the hours is to come to know all the hidden correspondences inside our own bodies that match the richness and movement of life we see around us.
David Whyte, Time is a Season
mundane miracles
Today is Candlemas, another ancient feast, this one dating from the 4th Century in the Christian tradition, reflecting a need to mark this moment – halfway between the winter and the spring solstices – by bringing light into the darkness.
Spirit, use me today, not in some miracle that
would make others marvel, and would make me proud.
Not in the word of wisdom, that would stay in the mind
and make me remembered.
Not in the heroic act, that would change the world for the better
and me for the worse.
But in the mundane miracles, of honesty and truth,
that keep the sky from falling.
In the unremembered quiet words, that keep a soul on the path.
And in the unnoticed acts, that keep the world moving
slowly closer to the light.
Grahame Davis, Prayer
Step back
Whenever we step away from emotional reactivity, a confining narrative or our filtering concepts, and relate directly to what is present in the here and now, we are taking the backward step.
Give up a practice based on intellectual understanding – searching for phrases and chasing after words.
Take the backward step and turn the light inward.
Your body-mind of itself will drop away, and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Fukanzazengi
As we are
When Zen Master Joshu was a young monk he asked his teacher Nansen, “What is the Way?” His teacher replied “Your Ordinary Mind is the Way”. By “ordinary” Nansen meant the mind Joshu already had; he didn’t need to turn it, or himself, into something else. He didn’t need to put, as the Zen saying goes, another head on top of the one he already had.
Unfortunately, these days, when we hear the word ordinary, we are inclined to think it means “average or typical” or even “mediocre”. We contrast ordinary with special, and decide, given the choice, we rather be special. But our practice wont make us special; it will keep bringing us back to who we already are.
Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness
Mindfulbalance 