Wholeness
Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it.
– Toni Packer
Wholeness
Life
Right Answer
From: Awakening The Buddha Within
by: Lama Surya Das
In life we may keep looking for the right answer, but there is no right answer. Everything is relative rather than absolute. That’s the answer. In meditating we strive to keep going deeper and deeper, peeling off layers of the onion until we find the center of the onion, called sunyata, the Sanskrit term for emptiness.
As we keep peeling and peeling, we begin the process of unmasking our personas. First we unmask the body, then the mind. Then we go deeper and unmask the psyche, continuously letting go and unmasking all the layers. We all have so many masks it’s as though every day in our life has been Halloween. When we remove the masks, we are shedding our fantasies about ourselves, others, and the world. We can see
and be seen. We know and are known. We are.
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Whoever Grasps
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly
Whoever grasps the thousand contradictions of his life,
pulls them together into a single image, that man, joyful
and thankful, drives the rioters out of the palace,
becomes celebratory in a different way, and you are the guest
whom he receives on the quiet evenings.
You are the second person in his solitude,
the tranquil hub of his talking with himself;
and every circle he draws around you
lifts him out of time on those compass legs.
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Essence of Life
From: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
by Pema Chodron
“We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough
or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from
the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death.
Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed
and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of
death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something
to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by
controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for
failure, because sooner or later, we’re going to have an experience
we can’t control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love
is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is
going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head, somebody’s going
to spill tomato juice all over our white suit, or we’re going to arrive
at our favorite restaurant and discover that no one ordered produce
and seven hundred people are coming for lunch.
“The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet,
and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes
it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you
feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie
up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it
involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something
aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the
rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be
continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in
no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and
fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the
awakened point of view, that’s life.”
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Each and All
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As ‘mid the virgin train she stayed,
Nor knew her beauty’s best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, “I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:” —
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet’s breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
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Everything Depends on Your Steps
From: The Long Road Turns to Joy
By Thich Nhat Hanh
The seed of mindfulness is in us, but we usually forget to water it.
We think that happiness is possible only in the future-when we get
a house, a car, a Ph.D. We struggle in our mind and body, and we
don’t touch the peace and joy that are available right now-the blue
sky, the green leaves, the eyes of our beloved. What is most
important? Many people have passed exams and bought houses and
cars, and yet they are still unhappy. What is most important in life is
to find peace and to share it with others. To have peace, you can
begin by walking peacefully. Everything depends on your steps.
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Look into Your Hand
From Peace is Every Step
By Thich Nhat Hanh
I have a friend who is an artist. Before he left Vietnam
forty years ago, his mother held his hand and told him,
“Whenever you miss me, look into your hand, and you will
see me immediately.” How penetrating these simple, sincere
words! Over the years, my friend looked into his hand many times.
The presence of his mother is not just genetic. Her spirit, her
hopes, and her life are also in him. When he looks into his hand,
he can see thousands of generations before him and thousands
of generations after him. He can see that he exists not only in
the evolutionary tree branching along the axis of time, but also
in the network of interdependent relations. He told me that he
never feels lonely.
When my niece came to visit me last summer, I offered her “Look
into Your Hand” as a subject for her meditation. I told her that
every pebble, every leaf, and every butterfly are present in her
hand.
Read selected poems from Thich Nhat Hanh
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