Not Knowing

What am I seeing?

What am I feeling?

As I hold you close

As we hold not knowing

Lovers Embrace by Alice Mason   https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/AliceMasonArtist?ref=l2-shopheader-name

Simple, but not Easy, Vow

                                   May I engage and nurture this present moment

Morning comes to Eagle Lake

To Be "Held in Meditative Equipoise"

     "Elroy Berdahl remained quiet. ... His eyes were flat and impassive. He didn't speak. He was simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun. And yet by his presence, his mute watchfulness, he made it real. He was the true audience. He was the witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them."

     O'Brien T. "The things they carried." Mariner Books, Boston, 1990. 

     ... Zen "teachers who are capable of sitting skillfully (and humbly) in the role of teacher, teachers who can navigate their own impulses as well as the projections of their students. One of my favorite stories is of a female student who went to Shunryu Suzuki-roshi and admitted an attraction to him — he replied with something like, “It’s OK. I have enough willpower for both of us.” When that’s real — when nothing you throw at the teacher undermines the teacher’s center of gravity — then teacher and student can really explore that dynamic to its depths."       Koun Franz

        http://sweepingzen.com/koun-franz-interview/

kg_enterprises_1   www.dpreview.com

Saying Yes to Life as it Is

     "All you have to do is say 'yes.' Don’t make some big project out of it. Don’t make some big deal out of it. Just say 'yes.' You don’t even know what it means to say 'yes,' but you say it anyway. You’ll never know what it means to say 'yes,' but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being."

     "All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are."                               Adyashanti

At the Cafe - Balzacs by Jane Hunter   www.fogforestgallery.ca

 

Perseverance, Perseverance, Perseverance ...

     “Again and again we are challenged to return to this moment, however painful or pleasant or boring, and to let it into our heart – to greet it with balance. Often we are knocked off balance. Yet equanimity is but another moment away.”

        Goldstein J, Kornfield J. “Seeking the Heart of Wisdom. The Path of Insight Meditation.” Shambhala, Boston, 2001. 

Savour this Land

     No words can describe the experience of walking in Canadian woods during our Thanksgiving weekend - usually around the peak of the changing colors of our trees.

     This land is sacred, embracing and to be embraced. We are blessed. We are grateful.

Rural Nova Scotia, Canada, October 13, 2013

Opening to Embrace Vastness

     “… the paradox that where opposites met, wisdom might, indeed, be born if a person learned to hold them in balance. This embracing of the contradictory truths, without one canceling out the other, was said by the wise to be the essence of wisdom itself.”

       Matousek M. "Ethical wisdom. What makes us good." Random House, Toronto, 2011.

Kentville, Nova Scotia

A Full Range of Awakenings are Available

     “In place of the word enlightenment, which is laden with so many ideas and misunderstandings, I have used the terms inner freedom and liberation to clearly express the full range of awakenings available to us through Buddhist practice. I want the stories and awakenings of students and practitioners to help us trust our own profound capacity for kindness and wisdom. I want us to discover the power of the heart to hold all things – sorrow, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness, and peace – and to find a deep trust that wherever we are and whatever we face, we can be free in their midst.”

        Kornfield J. “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.” Bantam Books, NY, 2008. 

 

BenoitD   www.dpreview.com

Head & Heart can be Miles Apart

     It's amazing how much one can read & know (facts) about a religion / philosophy of life, without this knowledge having any appreciable affect on one's way of living, and thus, quality of life. People can be very smart, and at the same time, be far from living wisely. For transformational learning to take place, learning has to be welcomed in & embraced by mind, heart, emotions, body - all that we are.
     But, for many of us, (with apologies to Vegas) 'What happens in the head, stays in the head'. Many of us remain "scientific materialists" at heart. We may accept the Buddhist ideas we read and hear about, but don't actually believe in them. "Instead, we live as if the world were dead and this (material) reality the only one that exists."

       Ray RA. Indestructible Truth. The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. Shambhala, Boston, 2000.

Martin Kristiansen   www.dpreview.com

Patiently Observe the Bare Experience - Gather Data

     “I would like to beg you … as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves as if they were closed rooms or books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which could not be given to you because you would not be able to live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.”            Rilke
 
       Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal

Patience - Makes Severe Challenges Workable

       “Patience is the capacity to welcome difficulty when it comes, with a spirit of strength, endurance, forbearance, and dignity rather than fear, anxiety, and avoidance. None of us likes to be oppressed or defeated, yet if we can endure oppression and defeat with strength, without whining, we are ennobled by it. Patience makes this possible. In our culture, we think of patience as passive and unglamorous; other qualities like love or compassion or insight are much more popular. But when tough times cause our love to fray into annoyance, our compassion to be overwhelmed by our fear, and our insight to evaporate, then patience begins to make sense. To me it is the most substantial, most serviceable, and most reliable of all spiritual qualities. Without it, all other qualities are shaky.”

       Norman Fischer, Shambhala Sun, March 2013

Photo: Charles Baxter   www.dpreview.com

 

Increasing Degrees of Friendly Acceptance

     “… psychological health involves a skillful balance between goal-oriented effort & acceptance …

      … we compound our suffering by trying to avoid (what we fear). …

      Mindfulness is a technology for gradually turning … attention toward the fear as it is happening, exploring it in detail with increasing degrees of friendly acceptance.”

      Germer CK, Siegel RD, Fulton PR eds. “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.” The Guilford Press, NY, 2005.

View from Luckett Vineyards, Gaspereau Valley, Nova Scotia

Time to Prioritize Quality of Life - Moment-to-Moment

     "Time poverty", the feeling of being squeezed for time can give rise to frantic busy-ness. We seem to be competing for who can squeeze most into 24 hours. Quantity seems to be everything -  who prioritizes quality? - who provides the essential time & attitude for quality? 
     A cynical bumper sticker on a Corvette stated: "The one who dies with the most toys wins." Does the one who dies having cranked out the most widgets "win"?

     The sense of time running out gives rise to chronic fight/flight reaction. And in fact our time IS running out - we have a finite number of years, days, breaths. But attempting to outrun death by racing madly through life is a nightmare, not quality living. Quality & quantity are inversely proportional. Wouldn't you rather slowly savor a fine moderate-sized meal, than set a record for the most hot dogs inhaled in 15 minutes?

     Patients often ask physicians: "Does THIS mean I'm going to die?"

     Honest answer: "YES - OF COURSE YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! - But if you fully embrace your mortality, you can actually start living."

Attitude

       We ALL inevitably undergo MANY significant changes throughout a lifetime: being born, starting school, moving out of our parents’ home, falling in love, starting a new job, birth of our child, starting and ending relationships, retirement, serious illnesses, death of loved ones, aging, our own death.
     While we have little or no control over these major transitions themselves, we have complete control over how we relate to them – and thus over the impact these have on us - whether we suffer or benefit. No matter how traumatized some people are by these perfectly normal, inevitable life events, others grow and benefit (“post-traumatic growth”) from the exact same events. They grow via psychological flexibility rather than embalming themselves in dysfunctional rigidity.

     “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes!’ to your adventure.”                  Joseph Campbell

Photo: Aaron Teasdale   http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/

Undefinable

     “In silently wondering deeply without knowing, the conceptual world is left behind. Are we going into the question in this way?
      All too often our yearning for something to alleviate the inner suffering gets in the way of deep inquiry. Rather than asking, ‘What is enlightenment?’ can we question our inner feeling of insufficiency? We have tried to fill it with fantasies of all descriptions, with entertainment, acquisitions, achievements, relationships, spiritual searching, and solemn vows – anything to fill the aching void. But have we ever really explored it directly, unconditionally?
      Becoming conscious of it … can we be with the ache of emptiness, not calling it by any name? Let all labels fly into thin air and stay with what is here, discomfort without calling it discomfort. Staying here with what’s indefinable. Not resisting, not fighting, not looking for anything else. Just letting what is here be here in its entirely, physically, mentally, totally. Letting it be without knowing. Not becoming the doer for or against it. Just this quiet presence in the midst of the silence of chaos. In this there is an unfolding transparency. It happens when one sits patiently, silently, unconditionally. By ‘sitting’ I simply mean being totally with what is here. Not moving away or toward something else, just remaining with the whole thing – an intense presence that includes all the bodily sensations, breathing, wind-storming, raining, sunning, birding, coughing, fans humming – everything right here, all at once, without a seam. Observing thoughts coming up, emotions, feelings, sensations arising and more thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations unfolding and abating – being with it all. There isn’t any place to escape to. Everything is here without separation.”

       Packer T. “The Wonder of Presence and the Way of Meditative Inquiry.” Shambhala, Boston, 2002. 

TimR32225   www.dpreview.com