Most of us wonder from time to time how to give meaning to some days:
A Lord asked Takuan how he might pass the time, as his days were long in the office,
sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others.
Takuan wrote these 8 Chinese characters and gave them to him:
“Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem
This day will not come again
Each minute is worth a priceless gem”
Takuan Sōhō 1573 – 1645, Japanese Zen Buddhist Master
photo Lorenz Kerscher
The first week back to work over. Nature has a gentler pace than the one imposed by our minds and seems to have different phases – growth, slowing down, covering over and rest. Thus, despite all the clamour to change we hear in these first weeks, we can choose to have some natural rest and a time of quiet, not always striving – allowing the different parts of our lives to just be .
You begin to see that there are seasons in your life, in the same way as there as seasons in nature. There are times to cultivate, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally there are those times that are cold and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.
Chogram Trungpa Rinpoche, How to Rule
Thich Nhat Hahn from the Zen Tradition using the Christmas story as a way of teaching how to meditate:
I am going to remind you of the way to practice. First, “in” and “out.” It means that when I breathe in, I know I am breathing in. It’s easy. And when I breathe out, I know I am breathing out. I don’t mix the two things up. Breathing in, I know it is my in-breath. Breathing out, I know this is my out-breath. By that time, you stop all the thinking, you just pay attention to your in-breath and your out-breath. You are 100 percent with your in-breath and your out-breath.
It is like holding a baby in such a way that you hold it with 100 percent of yourself. Suppose this is a baby and I hold the baby like this. I hold the baby with 100 percent of myself. Remember, there are times when your mother holds you like this. Have you seen the image of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus? She holds him like that: 100 percent. So here, our in-breath is our baby, and we hold our in-breath 100 percent. “Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.” You just embrace your in-breath, nothing else. Don’t think of anything else. That is the secret of success.
Thich Nhat Hahn
It’s pointless to try to find peace through nullifying or erasing the sense world.
Peace only comes through not giving that world more substantiality or more reality than it actually possesses.
Ajahn Amaro
We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara – the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Ways Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
And the heart, unscrolled,
is comforted by such small things:
a cup of green tea rescues us,
grows deep and large,
a lake
Jane Hirshfield, Recalling a Sung Dynasty Landscape
chris gladis
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