When Zen Master Joshu was a young monk he asked his teacher Nansen, “What is the Way?” His teacher replied “Your Ordinary Mind is the Way”. By “ordinary” Nansen meant the mind Joshu already had; he didn’t need to turn it, or himself, into something else. He didn’t need to put, as the Zen saying goes, another head on top of the one he already had. Unfortunately, these days, when we hear the word ordinary, we are inclined to think it means “average or typical” or even “mediocre”. We contrast ordinary with special, and decide, given the choice, we rather be special. But our practice wont make us special; it will keep bringing us back to who we already are.
Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness
The reason why silence is so disturbing to us [is this]: As soon as we begin to become silent, we experience the relativity of our ordinary everyday mind. With this mind we measure our space and time coordinates, we calculate probabilities and count up our mistakes and successes. It is so useful and familiar a state of mind that we easily think it is all there is to us: our whole mind, our real selves, our full meaning.
What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them. Psalm 4
The moment is our constant guide. It is the doorway to all that matters. And slowing our presence to meet the heart of each moment opens us to the mystery and power of life. As Russell Means of the Lakota tribe says “Just because someone has invented a clock doesn’t mean you have to hurry through life”. When we rush by the moment, any moment, we miss the deep awareness that is always waiting to show itself. So often, when feeling bereft, we chase what we think is special, when that deep aliveness is waiting in the moment we are in.
Mindfulbalance 