No matter how small we feel in our daily situation, we are always part of something greater.
Even for the simple flight of a butterfly,
all of the sky is necessary.
Paul Claudel, 1868 – 1955, French poet and dramatist.
Même pour le simple envol d’un papillon, tout le ciel est nécessaire.
Satisfaction is very close and simple: the strange happiness of completely joining with whatever we are doing in that moment… When the writer Thoreau was on his deathbed, a visitor asked him – “from where you lie, so close to the brink of the dark river, can you say how the opposite shore looks to you?”
It is said that he replied gently, “One world at a time”
Susan Murphy, Upside Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the ordinary
Are you so busy in getting to the future that the present moment is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It is a split that tears you apart inside
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Meditation is a form of training the mind, so that it does not get hooked by all our inner storms, but rather relates to the world, or other people, in a fresh way, just as they are:
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used the phrase “first thought, best thought” to refer to that first moment of fresh perception, before the colorful and coloring clouds of judgment and personal interpretation take over. “First thought” is “best thought” because it has not yet got covered over by all our opinions and interpretations, our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes. It is direct perception of the world as it is.
Dr Jeremy Hayward, First Thought
The most profound change I’m aware of just now is a growing realization that life is not personal. This may seem a surprising or even strange view to those unfamiliar with Eastern spirituality, but it has powerful implications. It’s very freeing to see that events in my life are arising because of circumstances in which I am not involved, but that I’m not at the center of them in any particular way. They’re impersonal. They’re arising because of causes and conditions. They are not “me.” There is a profound freedom in this. It makes life much more peaceful and harmonious because I’m not in reaction to events all the time.
Phillip Moffitt, It’s not Personal!
I remember I would sometimes go visit Ajahn Sumedho in his room. On the wall he had a picture of an old man sitting inside his little cottage on a rainy day, sitting just inside the window, looking out, and in his hand he held a cup of coffee. And I remember Ajahn Sumedho saying, for him this was the essence of meditation. It was really nothing more than just relaxing, and watching the happening of existence. Nothing needed to be explained. Nothing needed to be worked out. There’s just the event of existence presenting itself. Everything we are is simply presented. Whatever words come out, come out, but they’re not important; they’re simply the movement or the non-movement of whatever this happening is and it’s happening all by itself.
Darryl Bailey
Mindfulbalance 