Tag: Present moment

The power of the past and the future

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If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Alan Watts

Early Spring morning walk

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Walking the lanes near my house early this morning, with the spring chorus of the birds. At times one is just struck by the beauty and freshness of nature.  Practice is easy then. Nothing needs to be added to this moment or to this step. We need not worry about getting anywhere, or measuring up or competing the journey. Just this step, and this moment, that bird singing, those three ducks flying overhead.

What activity is most important in your life?  To pass an exam, get a car or a house, or get a promotion in your career?  There are so many people who have passed exams, who have bought cars and houses, who have gotten promotions, but still find themselves without peace of mind, without joy, and without happiness.  The most important thing in life is to find this treasure…  In order to have peace and joy, you must succeed in having peace within each of your steps.  Your steps are the most important thing.  They decide everything.

But often in our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears.  Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so our steps lose their natural easiness.  Our earth is truly beautiful.  There is so much graceful, natural scenery along paths and roads around the earth!   They are all available to us, yet we cannot enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not at ease.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Teens Day 9: Negative, judgmental thoughts

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The habit of judging our experience locks us into mechanical reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all.These judgments tend to dominate our minds making it difficult to find any peace within ourselves.

It is as if the mind were a yo-yo going up and down on the string of our own judging thoughts all day long

Jon Kabat Zinn

Thoughts from the garden on a beautiful morning

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This early morning saw beautiful sunshine and finally the cherry tree at the end of the garden burst into flower. A picture of growth and life. And yet this last week I have gotten some news that reminded me that we are all subject to illness and change. There are times that we cannot predict or even understand all that happens to us or to those who are dear to us. And my work brings me into almost continual contact with the struggles and inner yearnings of people and also the deep-rooted patterns and habits that keep them locked in fear and anxiety. When things go well,  as they have been for some time now, or when I am blessed to sit early in the garden on a day such as this,  I easily fall into the belief that this will remain the case for ever. However, the news of this week and events over the last few weeks –  with the disaster  in Japan and the outbreak of war in Libya and the struggles of people in Syria and the Ivory Coast –  remind me that our life here is unsatisfactory in a fundamental way. We can never be certain of the permanence of any external thing to which we look for our feelings of wellbeing. So this throws me back inside myself and to the ongoing cultivation of a quality of awareness that can work with everything that happens, good and bad. Moments like this help me to focus on the question of how I are living this life which is constantly subject to change.  It reminds me to work with life as it is and not just with the parts that are as I like.   What are the priorities I choose and which I want to endure? Can I practice mindfulness in all my choices?  Where am I focusing my energy? In the small corner of the world where I am,  can I stay in contact with people around that which is important and let go of all that  contributes to the suffering of the world?

You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are …transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Why do we practice?

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Good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it’s anything but safe. But we don’t like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal spotlight: seeing things as they really are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives.

Charlotte Joko Beck

How to be master of your own happiness

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Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments “to the news that is always arriving out of silence”.

Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss,  a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate and inspire your every breath and movement.

Sogyal Rinpoche