Our life journey contain many twists and turns and we all make mistakes along the way. And yet, Spring returns
I write,
erase,
rewrite.
Erase again, and then…
A poppy blooms.
Hokusai, 1760 – 1849, Japanese painter, printmaker
Surprised by joy
Tag: Present moment
Even the smallest thing
Every speck of dust has a marvellous soul, but to understand it, one must recover one’s religious and magical sense of things.
Joan Miró, Catalan painter
Reality passing by
We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted.
Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness In Plain English
Living your life
It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life.
If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.
Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Sunday Quote: Birth to oneself
A new moon teaches gradualness
and deliberation and how one gives birth
to oneself slowly. Patience with small details
makes perfect a large work, like the universe.
What nine months of attention does for an embryo
forty early mornings will do for your gradually growing wholeness
Rumi
Stopping
When we sit in meditation, we cease some of the restless moving of the mind, even if briefly. These periods of rest and ease switch off the grasping mind which always wants more. We stop, and realize that happiness is already available.
In the Buddha’s time there lived a killer called Angulimala… When Angulimala had one last victim to kill, he saw the Buddha coming down the road. Angulimala ran toward the Buddha with his sword, with the intent to kill his last victim and complete his task. The Buddha was walking slowly and it seemed Angulimala would have no difficulty in finishing him off, but the young man found that he could not catch up to the master, even though the Buddha appeared to not be moving at all. Angulimala finally called out to the Buddha in frustration, “Stop!”. The Buddha replied “Angulimala I have already stopped for the sake of all beings. It is you who has not stopped”
Angulimala was so moved that he abandoned his ways and became a monk…Soon he became an arhat, a liberated person, and entered nirvana.
Guo Gu, Silent Illumination
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