Settle

Just listen to whatever surrounds you. Sound is a good object of meditation because we generally do not try to control it as much as we do other things. People often have a more difficult time settling into their bodies than they do paying attention to the sounds that appear naturally. Just listen and try to let whatever sounds are around you pass through you.

The fundamental purpose of meditation is not to create a comfortable hiding place for oneself; it is to acquaint the mind, one a moment-to-moment basis, with impermanence….When the mind is settled, the underlying ephemeral nature of things can be more clearly perceived. Resistance diminishes, the flight to past and future recedes, and the sense that it might be possible to respond consciously rather than react blindly to events begins to emerge.

Mark Epstein,  Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself

Thoughts about

 

Finally calm again after some days of wind and rain..

Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Mark Twain, Autobiography

Mud

Continuing with a sequence of Mary Oliver poems for autumn. A lot of wind and rain here yesterday and overnight. Plenty of mud…

Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.
It’s what I sense in the mud and the roots of the
trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with
its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and 
makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some
spirit, some small god, who abides there.

If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously. 
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.

Forgive me.

Mary Oliver, Forgive me

Live in the moment

The interesting thing about this work is that we don’t really do anything for them. If we tried, I think we would fail miserably. Instead we invite them to do something radically new for themselves, namely to experiment with living intentionally from moment to moment. When I was talking to a reporter, she said, “Oh, you mean to live for the moment:” I said “No, it isn’t that. That has a hedonistic ring to it. I mean to live in the moment.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

Look wide

Misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.

Mark Nepo,  The Book of Awakening.

Today

I do not want to step so quickly over a beautiful line on God’s Palm 
As I move through the earth’s 
Marketplace 
Today.

Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.

I do not want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God’s body
That is right beneath your
Own foot

As I dance with
Precious life
Today.

 

 Today from Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master