Nirvana is this moment seen directly. There is no where else than here. The only gate is now. The only doorway is your own body and mind. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing else to be. There’s no destination. It’s not something to aim for in the afterlife. It’s simply the quality of this moment.
Jane Hirshfield, American poet, in the PBS documentary, The Buddha
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself,
and all the while,
a great wind carries me across the sky
Ojibwe Tribe saying.
It has taken years to continue to live into the truth that if I believe we are from God and for God, then we are from Goodness and for Goodness. To greet sorrow today does not mean that sorrow will be there tomorrow. Happiness comes too, and grief, and tiredness, disappointment, surprise and energy. Chaos and fulfilment will be named as well as delight and despair. This is the truth of being here, wherever here is today. It may not be permanent but it is here. I will probably leave here, and I will probably return. To deny here is to harrow the heart. Hello to here.
Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World
One of the most important lessons in balance which we have to learn, and one of the central teachings in the Bhagavad Gita: the way of Inaction-in-Action.
You can’t catch the wild horse by running,
but nobody who is not running will catch the wild horse.
Sufi Proverb
A new month….
We can spend lots of our time and energy trying to predict or control what the future will bring. This doesn’t usually serve us. In truth, we don’t need to know what the future will bring. We just need to be right in this moment, and if we touch it deeply, mind and body united, we will find we have all that we need to meet the present.
Kaira Jewel Lingo, Come Home To Yourself
I am trying to teach my mind
to bear the long, slow growth
of the fields, and to sing
of its passing while it waits.
William Berry, From the Crest
with thanks to David Kanigan, Thrive blog
Mindfulbalance 