“Don’t move.”
—Suzuki Roshi, giving meditation instruction to his students, to which he added: “When i say don’t move, it doesn’t mean you can’t move.”
Here’s an easy instruction to remember: Belly out, buttocks back. The aim is stability. But stability means more than just being able to sit in unmoving stillness. Stability is in fact awareness. Befitting a practice that has no patience for duality, the physical is the mental is the spiritual. Sitting correctly pitches the spine into its natural curve, keeps the chest out, the head up, chin slightly tucked in, ears in line with the shoulders and shoulders in line with the hips. Try this simple test. Next time you’re at your desk, working at a computer or talking on the phone, sit up out of that slouch. Notice the alertness. To complete the zazen posture, keep the eyes open, staring without focusing at a vague spot on the floor about three feet ahead. See without seeing.
What we are talking about is learning to live in the present moment, in the now. When you aren't distracted by your own negative thinking, when you don't allow yourself to get lost in moments that are gone or yet to come, you are left with this moment. This moment--now--truly is the only moment you have. It is beautiful and special. Life is simply a series of such moments to be experienced one right after another. If you attend to the moment you are in and stay connected to your soul and remain happy, you will find that your heart is filled with positive feelings.
Sydney Banks
I didn't know the way to the temple
So I walked miles
Among the cloudy peaks
Walked through primeval forests
No path
Not even a footprint
Deep in the mountains
I heard a bell
Where did it come from?
Then a little stream
Gurgling
Among gigantic rocks
Even the color of sunlight
Looks cool
Coming through bluegreen pines
At dusk I knelt
Next to a small
Deserted lake
Meditating
To chase away
The poison dragon of emotion.
- Wang Wei
Amazing, isn't it, how some people see the basket half empty and others see it half full? Some see life hopeless, others hopeful. Even when things are less than perfect, if you can think of the good, the beautiful, the hopeful, you'll be more than sustained--you'll conquer.
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly know and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
M. Scott Peck
1 Corinthians 13: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
Constantly be aware,
Without stopping.
When the aware mind is present,
It senses the formlessness
Of things.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)
The means to study oneself is self-observation.
There is no other way and no one can do this work for us.
We must do it ourselves.
P.D. Ouspensky
Once the human mind goes astray,
Truth, the true pattern of the Tao,
Is lost.
Once the human mind is gathered in,
The true pattern of the Tao is there.
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)
All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.
Julian Simon
..maybe I am just ludicrously wrong on everything I tell people but I have an opinion - does that count?
On that side, beyond the clouds,
The mountain is blue-green as jade
The white clouds on the mountain
Are whiter than white
From the spring on the mountain,
Drop after drop
Who knows how to see the face
In the white clouds?
Clear skies and rain have their times,
They're like lightening
Who knows how to listen to the
Sound of this spring?
It flows on without stopping
Through thousands
And thousands of turns
The moment before thought
Is already wrong
To try to say anything further
Is embarrassing.
- T'aego (1301-1382)
A distraught man approached the Zen master. "Please, Master, I feel lost, desperate. I don't know who I am. Please, show me my true self!" But the teacher just looked away without responding. The man began to plead and beg, but still the master gave no reply. Finally giving up in frustration, the man turned to leave. At that moment the master called out to him by name. "Yes!" the man said as he spun back around. "There it is!" exclaimed the master.
When we are frustrated and distraught who are we?
Meditation is not against action. It is not that you have to escape from life. It simply teaches you a new way of life.
Mohan
I personally find that on the days that I meditate that things are clearer, make more sense and I am calm. I have not, even though sometimes I would love to, disappeared into a monastery in Tibet and stopped living in the world that I came from in order to meditate. Rather it is a small piece of my day that helps me center, focus and accept.
To be in tune with existence is the most healthy experience. There is nothing more than that, but it is so much you cannot exhaust it.
We do not receive wisdom--we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust
The thoughts that came with this seem in a round about way to make sense but what I see here is this. If I throw that quote up there and it makes no sense to you, or you want to challenge it then that in itself validates that quote. Only if you have experienced life will you understand that wisdom, in and of itself, is not something that we can go and buy or take from others but something that we must experience ourselves. To understand and offer advice we have to know what we are talking about and I know I preempt some of the things I say to others with the fact that I have not experienced this and I am just going off of essentially book learning and logic but here are my thoughts. So take the time to learn from your life experiences so that you can experience the wisdom that life and this world have to offer.
