Moment after moment

Traditionally it is said that each twenty-four hours contains 50,000,000 separate instants, like so many frames in a movie.

We think we see continuity, but it is all an illusion.

Taizen Maezumi, On Zen Practice

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Already there

A reminder: meditation is not an activity. Its not something you do, its not another thing on the list.

Its a stopping of activity, it’s a returning to this home base, to our very own existence, that we totally ignore almost all our lives unless we remember not to.

We shouldn’t really call it meditation, perhaps non-meditation would be better.

It’s a return to what’s already here before we’ve done anything.

Henri Shukman

When Everything Feels Urgent

I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour.

If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Wrapped

What is unique about a moment that has the power to bless us and the potential to feed us is not so much in the power of the moment itself, but rather the quality of the presence we bring to that moment.

Our presence can change an ordinary, unnoticed moment into a moment of beauty that can feed the soul.

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.

Macrina Wiederkehr, osb, 1939 – 2020

Sunday Quote: Compassion

If you’re a stranger to your own wound,

then you’re gonna be tempted to despise the wounded.

Fr Gregory Boyle

New every moment

It is only because our life is so habitually and so firmly based on a mechanical understanding that we think that our everyday life is repetitious.

But it is not so. No one can repeat the same thing.

Whatever you do, it will be different from what you do in the next moment.

That is why we should not waste our time

Shunryu Suzuki.