Stop holding so tight

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Chiyono was a 13th-century Japanese Buddhist nun for many years, striving hard for enlightenment. One night she was doing her duty, carrying a bucket, which slipped and broke. In that instant, something shifted. She came to see that clarity arises not from tightly holding on, but from attending to what is right in front of us. Instead of clinging to the idea of who we should be, or what is the “perfect” life, we’re invited to witness reality as it unfolds, in all its mess. This is the poem she wrote:

This way and that way I tried to keep the pail together,

Hoping the weak bamboo would never break.

Suddenly the bottom fell out.

No more water;

no more moon in the water—

Emptiness in my hand.

Nothing wrong with you

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We’often look at ourselves as projects but a tree doesn’t question whether it is growing correctly or not. It simply simply unfolds according to its nature.

What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much an extraordinary phenomenon of nature as are trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy.

You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.

 Alan Watts

Holding on too tight

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Sometimes we can try too hard, and letting go is a better response

When the archer shoots without caring about the prize,
His skill is at its greatest.
When he shoots for a brass buckle, he’s nervous.
When he shoots for a gold medal, he’s blind.
His skill hasn’t changed – its the prize that divides the mind.

Liezi, a Taoist text attributed to Lie Yukou, 5th Century BC Chinese philosopher, Chapter 2

Always one or the other

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The Buddha talked of the eight great vicissitudes of life:

Pleasure and Pain, Gain and Loss, Praise and Blame, and Fame and Disrepute.

These changes happen to everyone.

One of great laws of the dharma that I find myself often rediscovering is “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma

Sunday quote: not to turn

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The alternative to a breaking heart is a closed one, and that is a deeper kind of death.

In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go
   through dark and deeper dark,
   and not to turn.

Stanley Kunitz, American poet, The Testing-Tree

Hidden blessings

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Each morning brings a hidden blessing;

a blessing which is unique to that day, and which cannot be kept or re-used.

If we do not use this miracle today, it will be lost.

Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light