Tag: Present moment

Incarnate

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Even the most transcendent visions of spirituality must shine through the here and now and be brought to life in how we walk, eat, and love one another. This is not easy. The power of our fear, the habits of judgment within us, repeatedly prevent our touching the sacred. Often we will unconsciously draw our spirituality back to the polarity of good and bad, sacred and profane. Where is liberation to be found? The Buddha taught that both human suffering and human enlightenment are found in our own fathom-long body with its senses and mind. If not here and now, where else will we find it?

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

Radiant

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Let the world be as it is
and learn to rock with the waves.

Remain ‘radiant,’ as Joyce put it,
‘in the filth of the world’.

Joseph Campbell

Bareness of being

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So often we run from feeling and yet it is only through feeling that we can know the depth of life. Only through feeling can we hold the smallest shell or bone and feel the tug of the Universe. Such raw being aches, for, as the Buddhists say, the bareness of being here is so full. …With no way to that bareness but through feeling and the listening that feeling opens….. Through this bareness of being, we refresh our openness and enliven our innate connection to the one living sense. Through our unblocked, sincere response to life, we can tune our inner person with the great mysteries.

Mark Nepo

The art of stopping

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There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” and the first man replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!” This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. We are at war within ourselves…We have to learn the art of stopping – stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us.

Thich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

Sunday Quote: Be ordinary

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The challenge – to be truly alive in ordinary moments, not needing continual distraction and stimulation..

As I see it, there isn’t so much to do. Just be ordinary – put on your robes, eat your food, and pass the time doing nothing.

Master Linji, 9th Century Chinese Zen Master, founder of the Rinzai school of Zen, Teaching 18

An observing heart

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The noise of the wind and the rain continued all through yesterday and overnight, arising, passing away and returning.

Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning.

Everything is a gift.

Grateful living is a celebration of the universal give-and-take of life, a limitless yes to belonging. A lifetime may not be long enough to attune ourselves fully to the harmony of the universe. But just to become aware that we can resonate with it – that alone can be like waking up from a dream.

David Steindal-Rast