What would happen if you put striving aside?
What if your practice was simply being present ?
Just open awareness. Just here. No longer anything to find. Just being present.
And then within that….letting your own heart teach you. Letting your own heart guide you.
What if you trusted that your own heart is really your great teacher?
Henry Shukman, Zen teacher, Mountain Cloud Zen Center
Even the briefest moment of silence is both
a way of coming into the present
and a way of moving on.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Choiceless awareness is a quality of mind that is free from making judgments, decisions or generating commentary as it meets with sense experiences. It is a mind that responds to each new moment without the burden of its past history or of making future projections. When the mind no longer clings anywhere, not even to the idea of not clinging anywhere, we realize, either suddenly or gradually, that we truly already are that for which we have been searching
Matthew Flickstein, Meditation teacher, Cultivating Choiceless Awareness
Peace can only exist in the present moment. It is ridiculous to say “Wait until I finish this, then I’ll be free to live in peace”. What is “this”? A diploma, a job, a house, the payment of debt? If you think that way peace will never come. There is always another “this” that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you’ll never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise there is only hope for peace “some day.”
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Sun my Heart
When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves-from other people, relationships, or material goods-or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion.
Completion comes, not from adding another piece to ourselves,
but from surrendering our ideas of perfection
Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective
A reminder to hold our thoughts, ideas and, even our identity, somewhat lightly.
The Buddha once said in verse:
“Of various elements is this body of Mine composed.
The time of its arising is merely an arising of elements;
The time of its vanishing is merely a vanishing of elements.
As these elements arise, I do not speak of the arising of an ‘I’,
And as these elements vanish, I do not speak of the vanishing of an ‘I’.
Previous instants and succeeding instants are not a series of instants that depend on each other;
Previous elements and succeeding elements are not a series of elements that stand against each other.
To give all of this a name, I call it ‘the meditative state that bears the seal of the Ocean’.“
We need to make a diligent effort to fully explore these words of the Buddha.
Dogen, 1200- 1253, Shobogenzo
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