A similar theme on staying in the present moment, this time from the early Christian tradition
One of the early Desert Fathers said
‘There is no such thing as delay with the Holy Spirit.’
This means that everything happens at the right moment.
Laurence Freeman, Common Ground: Letters to a World Community of Meditators
photo: inexplicable
Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.
Mary Oliver, Hum
Often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held. I am learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to fix those we love.
Mark Nepo
How Han-shan Te-Ching (1546 – 1623) came to understand to stay fully present in the moment, not in a perpetual movement of becoming:
When Hanshan got up from his seat and walked around, he did not see things in motion. When he opened the window blind, suddenly a wind blew the trees in the yard, and the leaves flew all over the sky. However, he did not see any signs of motion. He understood what the text spoke of as, “Streams and rivers run into the ocean and yet there is no flowing.”
It is no easy matter to stop short at just seeing.
Mahasi Sayadaw.
photo blue plover
To live wisely, we must recognize that there are two fundamental truths of a human life. The first is that we have a limited and undefined amount of time — it may be 100 years, it may be 30. The second is that in that limited and undefined amount of time we have an almost unlimited number of choices of how to use our time — the things we choose to focus on and put our energy into — and these choices will ultimately define our lives.
When we are born there is no owner’s manual provided, and the clock begins ticking the moment we arrive. We do not like the words “die” and “death.” Many human activities are designed to shield us from the truth about life; that it is limited, that at least here in this place, we do not have forever. Still, it is the fact that we die and that our time is limited that makes discovering the secrets to life important. If we lived forever, there would be little urgency to discover the true paths to happiness and purpose since given the luxury of eternity we would surely stumble on them sooner or later. This is a luxury we do not have.
John Izzo, The Five Secrets you must Discover before Your Die
photo AuntTT83
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