zaterdag 27 maart 2021
Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think
of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it?
Perhaps four or five times more.
Perhaps not even.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty.
And yet it all seems limitless.
- Paul Bowles -
NITCH
vrijdag 26 maart 2021
donderdag 25 maart 2021
Every
minute can be a holy, sacred minute.
Where do you seek the spiritual?
You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day.
Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there.
With mindfulness and
concentration, everything becomes spiritual.
- Thich Nhat Hanh -
woensdag 24 maart 2021
To ask for help is strength.
To admit you don’t know is strength.
To tell the truth about what’s happening is strength.
To be imperfect and to trust that imperfect people will love you despite those imperfections is strength.
To let the people you love see how you really feel
– without trying to hide or stage manage their perception of you –
is strength.
- Jennifer Peepas -
Do you have doubts about life?
Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble?
Look at the sky: that is for you.
Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you.
And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.
They are as much for you as they are for other people.
Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.
Stand up and face the east.- Miranda July -
Your body is your first home and your last home.
It is the only home you will have throughout your entire time on Earth.
Love it.
Make it sturdy so that it can whether the storms that pass through your life.
Learn to be at peace inside your body.
Be grateful to it for surviving the times you might have tried to burn it down.
A neutral feeling is neither pleasant nor painful.
But when such feelings are recognized in mindfulness, they usually become pleasant feelings.
This is one of the benefits of insight meditation.
When you have a toothache the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache you usually have a neutral feeling.
However, if you can be mindful of the nontoothache, the nontoothache will become a feeling of peace and joy.
Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.
- Thich Nhat Hanh -
dinsdag 23 maart 2021
One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.
A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
Her unfocus time is increasing.
At
such time she drops her work and allows an unspoken spaciousness to
engulf her.
It could be for a moment or an hour.
She is learning to relish without guilt those undemanding moments when everything falls away.
She's been a compulsive doer, and has gauged her
usefulness from her productivity and busy-ness.
She's learning to be use-less now, at least for short stretches of time. Initially it was almost an act of rebellion, but now her insides are settling down and her gaze is changing.
It is losing its sharpness, because in a soft all encompassing seeing she's holding more than a tug of pain of a tribe far away.
She can see the broken-ness in everything. Just by being
peaceful, reflective, soft in those moments when they come, she is
becoming the space for the re-arrangement and the re-calibration of her
world.
She is turning the wheel in calm, easy simple ways.
That's how it's going to work now.
Can you see with your mystic eye how everything is relaxing into her relaxation?
- Sukhvinder Sircar -
Art by Heide Presse
Who gave us this crazy idea
that we should know how to live?
Does a tree know how to grow?
Does a cloud know how to rain?
Does the wind know where it is blowing?
Does a road know it is going somewhere?
Please, don’t know how to live,
just recognise that you are life and life just is.
Let life be its own spontaneous unfolding.
- Mooji -
Looking
more deeply, you can see that the moment you were officially born is
not really the moment of your birth. It is only a moment of
continuation. Before that, you already existed. You were in the womb for
eight or nine months. At what moment did you become you? Some people
might say you should move your date of birth to the day you were
conceived. But that would not be entirely accurate either. Long before
the moment of your conception, the elements you are composed of were
already present in the sperm and egg that came together to help you
manifest. You also existed in all the conditions that supported and
nourished your mother as she was pregnant. And long before that, you
were in your grandparents. In fact, you could keep pushing your date of
birth back infinitely. There is no moment when you did not exist. This
is why in the Zen tradition we ask questions like “What did you look
like before your grandmother was born?”
The day you call your
birthday is really a day to remember your continuation. Every day you
are alive is a continuation day. Within your body, birth and death are
always taking place. We are coming into existence and going out of
existence at every moment of our life. When you scratch or scrub
yourself, dry skin is flaked off and new skin cells are born. In the
time it takes you to read this paragraph, thousands of cells will have
died...
- Thich Nhat Hanh, in “The Art of Living” -
maandag 22 maart 2021
The idea is, you know, you live from moment to moment...
this moment decides the next step.
You shouldn’t be five steps ahead, only the very next one.
And if you can keep to that, you’re always alright.
You see, but people are thinking too far ahead...
you know what I mean?
Think only what’s right there.
Do only what’s right under your nose to do.
you know?
It’s such a simple thing and people can’t do it, you know.
- Henry Miller -
The way the water brushes against the rock and suddenly pulls away reminds me of the clarity of life itself.
Once you think you understand life, once you think you get the meaning of things, it suddenly pulls away.
And you are left wondering what the clarity felt like.
Just like the rock is left to wonder what the water felt like.
- Annedi Bergsma -
Sometimes the most challenging people to set expectations
with are your parents.
The guilt of standing up to your parents will keep most people silent.
It's important to remember that guilt is not always an accurate indicator of being mean or doing something wrong.
There are times when you might feel guilty for standing in your power.
Standing up for yourself gets easier with practice.
You can learn to use your voice, even with your parents.
What boundaries have you set with your parents?
zondag 21 maart 2021
Reading is like a software update for your brain.
Whenever you learn a new concept or idea, the “software” improves.
You download new features and fix old bugs.
In this way, reading a good book can give you a new way to view your life experiences.
Your past is fixed, but your interpretation of it can change depending on the software you use to analyze it.
- James Clear -
The motto I have penned on my knuckles is that this is the best world we have—because it’s the only world we have.
It’s the simplest math ever.
However many terrible, rankling, peeve-inducing things may occur, there are always libraries.
And rain-falling-on-sea.
And the moon.
And love.
There is always something to look back on, with satisfaction, or forward to, with joy.
There is always a moment where you boggle at the world—at yourself—at the whole, unlikely, precarious business of being alive—and then start laughing.
- Caitlin Moran, Moranthology -
You think that you have to make yourself appear better than you are.
But honesty is the best policy.
Telling the truth does not mean that you have to bare your innermost secrets and expose everything that you are ashamed of.
You have nothing to be ashamed of!
That is the basis for telling the truth.
You may not be the greatest scholar or mechanic or artist or lover in the world, but what you are is genuinely, basically good.
If you actually feel that, then you can let go of hesitation and self-consciousness and tell the truth, without exaggeration or denigration.
- Chögyam Trungpa -
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