Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. After that sound goes away, wait.…
How you stand here is important. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.
William Stafford, Being a Person
Overnight, the first snow of the winter
A monk wanted to know what was the Great Wisdom.
The Master answered: “The snow is falling fast and all is enveloped in mist.” The monk remained silent. The Master asks: “Do you understand?” “No, Master, I do not”.
Thereupon the Master composed a verse for him: Great Wisdom: It is neither taking in nor giving up. If one understands it not, The wind is cold, the snow is falling.
The monk is ‘trying to understand” when in fact he ought to try to look. The apparently mysterious sayings become much simpler when we see them in the whole context of “mindfulness” which in its most elementary form consists in “bare attention” which simply sees what is right there and does not add any comment, any interpretation, any judgment, any conclusion. It just sees.
If one reaches the point where understanding fails, this is not a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking.
Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite,
The Bodhisattva of Compassion,
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore,
suddenly discovered that
all of the five Skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realisation
he overcame all Ill-being.
This Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.
The Heart Sutra
[The five skandhas – aggregates or clusters – are form [body] feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Empty means that they don’t exist in an autonomous, enduring manner because everything depends on, or is interconnected with something else. We strongly hold on to the permanence of things and of our story; this teaching focuses on fluidity ]
The journey to acceptance is about discovering what we need to let go of, rather than what we need to start doing.
By noticing moments of resistance throughout the day, you can start to become more aware of what prevents acceptance from naturally arising. This in turn will allow you to view the thoughts and feelings that arise during your meditation with a much greater sense of ease.
Andy Puddicombe, Ten Tips for Living more Mindfully
You should train yourself thus: In what is seen, there is only the seen. In what is heard, there is only the heard. In what is sensed, there is only the sensed. In what is understood, only the understood.
This is how you should train yourself. When for you there is in what is seen, only the seen, in what is heard, only the heard, in what is sensed only the sensed and in what is understood only the understood, then there is no you in connection with what is seen, heard, sensed or cognized, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there nor anywhere in-between.
This and only this is the end of stress and unhappiness
The Buddha in the Bāhiya Sutta.
There is not a particle of life
which does not bear poetry within it.
Flaubert
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