Tag: Present moment

Finding the way back home

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Its important for me to meditate…to let go of my thoughts breath by breath and instead slowly lean back into that which was inside me before I was born, and which will endure when the rest of me dies. For me its like something I’ve longed for all my life, without knowing what it was. As though someone, for as long as I can remember, has been sitting on my shoulder whispering “Come home”

So how does one find the way back home? The best answer to that question I’ve come across so far comes from Meister Eckhart, a German priest in the early fourteenth century who was supposedly enlightened. After a Sunday sermon, an elderly member of his congregation came up to him and said “Meister Eckhart, you have clearly met God. Please help me to get to know God like you do. But your advice must be very simple as my memory is failing me”

“It’s very simple” Meister Eckhart replied. “All you need to do to meet God the way I have, is to fully understand who is looking out through your eyes”

Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.

Beyond

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It is not a matter of looking for happiness

or trying to avoid suffering

but of going to the place beyond happiness or suffering

Ajahn Chah

Watch the excuses

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When you blame, you open up a world of excuses,

because as long as you’re looking outside,

you miss the opportunity to look inside,

and you continue to suffer.


 Donna Quesada, Buddha in the Classroom: Zen Wisdom to Inspire Teachers

Tie your camel

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On getting the right balance between action and acceptance:

Anas ibn Malik reported: A man said, “O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?”

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Tie your camel and trust in Allah.”

Imam Abu `Isa Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Sunan al-Tirmidhī, 2517

Relax the fist

Karl Duffy1 Comment

I hope you can live your life with slightly less firmly clenched fists and slightly more open hands. Slightly less control. Slightly more trust. Slightly less I need to know everything beforehand. Slightly more take life as it comes. It does all of us a world of good. Life doesn’t have to be lived with constant anxiety about things not turning out the way we want. We don’t have to make ourselves smaller than we are. We have a choice. Do we want to grab life by he throat or do we want to embrace it?

Relax that fist as often as you can.

Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.

Sunday Quote: We can choose joy

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It’s not what happens but how we relate to it…

Is it the weather that is cold,

or is it the person who is cold?

Think neither cold nor heat —  at that moment, where is the self to be found?

Dogen, again, in his commentary on Dongshan’s (807–869) koan “Cold and Heat”