Experiencing,
rather than trying to have special experiences,
is where real freedom lies
Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water
Tag: Present moment
The blessings and the vastness
I know from personal experience how strong the habitual mind is. The discursive mind, the busy, worried, caught-up, spaced-out mind, is powerful. That’s all the more reason to d the most important thing – to realize what a strong opportunity every day is, and how easy it is to waste it. If you don’t allow your mind to open and to connect with where you are. with the immediacy of your experience, you could easily become completely submerged….you get so completely caught up in the content of your life, the minutiae that make up a day, so self-absorbed in the big project you have to do, that the blessings, the magic, the stillness and the vastness escape you.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
Exquisitely singular
Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute.
Don’t reject them, let them come through when they’re ready, don’t think you can plan it all out.
This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again.
It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.
Naomi Shihab Nye, I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven
Fresh eyes
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Kierkegaard
Stories
We human beings have the ability to think of things not in front of us. We create stories in our minds in which the hero or heroine is always us. We evaluate what happened in the past, we analyze our present conditions, and we anticipate what should happen in the future…… But this ability leads to many problems. We have certain expectations of our stories. If things go as we expect, we feel like heavenly beings, but if not, we feel we’re in hell. Often we desire more and more without ever experiencing satisfaction, like hungry ghosts. It’s important to see that it’s not life that causes suffering but our expectation that life should be the way we want. We can’t live without expectation, but if we can handle the feelings caused by the difference between our expectations and reality, that’s liberation.
Kosho Uchiyama, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
This is the last time
Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time?
My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
Jonathan Safran Foer, 1977 – American Novelist
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