mind like a sky
Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions - the pleasure and pain, the praise and blame, the litany of ideas and expectations that arise. Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called jai pongsai, our natural lightness of heart. Developing this capacity to rest in awareness nourishes samadhi (concentration), which stabilizes and clarifies the mind, and prajna (wisdom), that sees things as they are.
We can employ this awareness or wise attention from the very start. When we first sit down to meditate, the best strategy is to simply notice whatever state of our body and mind is present. To establish the foundation of mindfulness, the Buddha instructs his followers “to observe whether the body and mind are distracted or steady, angry or peaceful, excited or worried, contracted or released, bound or free.” Observing what is so, we can take a few deep breaths and relax, making space for whatever situation we find.
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many thanks for the image to goodmemory
(Kaynak: buddhabe)
boredom?
It is difficult to imagine anything more inherently boring than sitting still for an hour with nothing to do but feel the air going in and out of your nose. You are going to run into boredom repeatedly in your meditation. Everybody does. Boredom is a mental state and should be treated as such. - Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.
image by Alex (algo).
many thanks for this post to ombuddha
yantra
This Yantra is concerned with astronomy and with astrology, palmistry, chemistry, medicine with the science of the knowledge of interplanetary rhythms and their integral relations with human organism. - Calico Museum of Textiles.
(Kaynak: sombhatt)
in harmony
Happiness is when what you think, say and do are in harmony. - Mahatma Gandhi
many thanks for this post to svaha3
time for art
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. - Thomas Merton
many thanks for the image to haute faves deux
(Kaynak: designscene.net)
feel like running?
It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. - Donald Miller
many thanks for the image to goodmemory
(Kaynak: nothinglastsforeveranyway)
wishes
Wishes of one’s old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to remember to catch the world in it’s changing and change with it. - Catherynne M. Valente in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
many thanks for the image to tinywhitedaisies
(Kaynak: prettie-sweet)
existence of the soul
The existence of a soul that survives the death of the physical body is a tenet of most religious teachings, and it is likely that a majority of human beings believes in a soul, in one form or another. Modern science, however, despite its impressive accomplishments in elucidating the workings of the world, has not shown that the soul exists; many scientists would probably say that the weight of scientific evidence is against its existence. This is one of the major factors that maintain the divide between science and religion. For some, either science or religion is simply not true. For others, such as some scientists who hold religious beliefs, both are true, but refer to completely separate realms of truth about the world. But this is an illogical dichotomy, and to hold it implies a serious limitation of human reason. Another option, accepting that there is one world and that all truths about it must be related, is to say that science simply has not achieved the development and subtlety necessary to encompass spiritual questions, such as the existence of God or of the soul.
by Christian Wertenbaker, THE MATERIALITY OF THE SOUL: A provocative new theory on the nature of the soul, Parabola, Winter 2012/2013.image: A small portion of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.
many thanks for this post to parabola magazine
a path to happiness
When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened in the past. - John M. Richardson, Jr. quotes
work by Andy Goldsworthy
many thanks for the image to calmingcalamity
(Kaynak: stuartreed)
what not to worry about
People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. - Meister Eckhart
many thanks for the image to stable
(Kaynak: f-l-e-u-r-d-e-l-y-s)
