I follow four principles:
Face it,
Accept it,
Deal with it,
Then let it go.
Sheng Yen, 1930 – 2009, Chinese Buddhist monk
Tag: Present moment
Learning to let go, as life passes
What I mean to say is that you hear the Bat Kol (The Divine Voice). You hear this other deep reality singing to you all the time, and much of the time you can’t decipher it. Even when I was healthy, I was sensitive to the process. At this stage of the game, I hear it saying, ‘Leonard, just get on with the things you have to do.’ It’s very compassionate at this stage. More than at any time of my life, I no longer have that voice that says, ‘You’re fucking up.’ That’s a tremendous blessing, really.
Leonard Cohen’s wisdom as he gets older and is more aware of his mortality
photo taken from leonardcohen.com
Doing the ordinary things right
We like to think – going into work this day – that we might get the opportunity to do something profound and meaningful that will change lives and impact upon policy. Or that we will change people in ways that will bring them closer to our point of view and values. And maybe we will. However, in the meanwhile, we will get lots of ordinary opportunities – to be kind or to listen – small things which we can overlook, but if we do with love, can have a real impact upon persons.
[Thomas Merton] once met a Zen novice who had just finished his first year in the monastery. Merton asked the novice what he had learned during the course of the novitiate, half expecting to hear about encounters with enlightenment, discoveries of the spirit, perhaps even altered states of consciousness. But the novice replied that during his first year in the contemplative life he had simply learned to open and close doors.
“Learned to open and close doors” Merton loved the answer and often retold the story, for it exemplified for him “play” at its very best – doing the ordinary while being absorbed in it intensely and utterly.
Haase, A., Living the Lord’s Prayer: The Way of the Disciple
photo enfo
Keep knocking
It must be said that things do not always work out as we would like. This teaches us patience and trust.
However, sometimes we get news of reward after long effort that is richly deserved. We don’t expect it, find it hard to believe, and yet – as Heaney says – it is like a gust of wind that can catch “the heart off guard and blow it open”. This teaches us the unforced nature of joy:
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about giving up from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
Rumi
The Comparing Mind
Our tendency to compare nearly always robs us of joy
and stops us living fully the life that we actually have.
What you do not have you find everywhere
W.S. Merwin, American Poet, born 1927, Provision
photo evelyn simak
Doing the ordinary
Our guide for today and this week: doing the ordinary things with attention and with love.
When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.
Layman Pang, 740 – 808, Chinese Chan layman
photo florian plag
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