Love Is All Around

Perhaps it was because this is the first day of a long weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving), perhaps it was due to the lovely autumn day with multi-coloured plumage bathing in luminous sunlight, or perhaps it was  Cannonball Adderley’s Autumn Leaves (Miles’ solo, just under a minute in, is when the magic begins). Whatever the preamblulatory reasons were, when  the quote below popped into my email (courtesy of Tricycle Daily Dharma), and I read it, I was inspired to adopt a wondrous mood.

“As adults, we need to become newly aware of the love that has infused our lives all along, to turn our attention to it afresh with the eyes of a child. To do so is to become conscious of the tremendous capacity for love that even now permeates our being — to open to it, to be healed by its life-giving energy, and to participate in its power to renew our world. We can awaken to the deepest goodness in ourselves and others. We can learn to recognize and commune with the blessings that have always been pouring forth.”

from  John Makransky’s article, Love Is All Around

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Enlightened Society

Photo of Ani Pema Chödrön by Robin Holland

“Enlightened Society is not an idealized environment.

“It is an environment that actually accepts the imperfections of humanity and encourages you to open your heart and mind and work with other people and situations as they are.

Enlightened society is one in which, as you make friends with yourself, your communication with other people gets clearer, more direct, more honest.”

Pema Chödrön, No Place to Hide

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a challenging week

Wallowing in neutral, spiraling downward…

My work-week has been filled with bizarre electronic problems that — according to every Technical Support person available — are impossible (unfortunately, they are possible, they occurred, they are making it impossible for the Company to manufacture its widgets, and it’s my responsibility to make things work: I can’t really complain; I accepted the job, and knew there would be times like this, but sometimes the waves sneak over the bow and smack me in the face). The school year started this week and traffic is harrowing and frustrating (and I’m in the middle of an experimental novel that has infected my consciousness and something within my mind tells me that my work-week and the novel are connected; but, surely, that is paranoia).

It’s useless to become negative and irritable, yet I still make the attempt…

I searched for positive inspiration and found just what I need, Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Remember ‘Divide and Conquer’ — if you can divide a negative reaction into its parts (mental image, mental talk, and emotional body sensation), you can conquer the sense of being overwhelmed. In other words, eliminate the negative parts by loving them to death.

Shinzen Young, from The Power of  Gone

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Slowly, surely, the week morphed into a manageable string of events, and the weekend is stretching its welcoming arms toward me…

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What’s So Great About Now?

The quote below (found at Tricycle Daily Dharma, Oct. 29) is from an article by Cynthia Thatcher (What’s So Great About Now?):

“The current myth among some meditation circles is that the more mindful we are, the more beauty we’ll perceive in mundane objects. To the mind with bare attention, even the suds in the dishpan—as their bubbles glint and wink in the light—are windows on a divine radiance. That’s the myth. But the truth is almost the opposite: in fact, the more mindfulness we have, the less compelling sense-objects seem, until at last we lose all desire for them. It’s true that strong concentration can seem to intensify colors, sounds, and so forth. But concentration alone doesn’t lead to insight or awakening. To say that mindfulness makes the winter sky more sublime, or the act of doing the dishes an exercise in wonder, chafes against the First Noble Truth.”

the entire article