Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all its creatures the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony. In O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather reminds us of our need to believe in the good soil of our lives, to do what we can to wake it up and then to wait.
"The land had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still."
We can learn the same lesson from sitting still with the land of the heart. It, too, has its little jokes. We think it is poor soil because we don't know how to work it. When we learn to do our inner work, it will wake up and work itself. All we need is a PATIENT WAITING and a TENDER ABIDING.
Wisdom replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of wholeness or completion. It simply leads to more craving and more aversion. When we realize in our own experience that happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not from seeking pleasurable experience but from opening up in the moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then frees the energy of compassion within us. Our minds are no longer bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure. Compassion becomes the natural response of an open heart.
~ SEEKING THE HEART OF WISDOM by Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield
Ecstasy results from the wisdom of emptiness, of seeing the impermanent, insubstantial nature of all phenomena, where there is no clinging, no attachment, and no fear. In this experience, we become one with the unfolding process of life. This oneness is quite subtle, because it is the oneness of becoming zero.
The more sensitive we are to the interdependence of things, the more we see how the quality of our own lives affects not only the people we actually meet but also all beings... In this mysterious universe of subtle and vast interconnections, each one of our actions is as delicate and far-reaching as the butterfly flapping its wings. And the freer we are from greed, hatred and ignorance, the more our lives will be for the benefit of all. Reflecting on that fact can infuse our meditation practice and our lives with spaciousness and love as we travel this ancient and contemporary path.
There is one quality of mind which is the basis and foundation of spiritual discovery, and that quality of mind is called bare attention. Bare attention means observing things as they are, without choosing, without comparing, without evaluating, without laying our projections and expectations on what is happening; cultivating instead a choiceless and non-interfering awareness.
~ from THE EXPERIENCE OF INSIGHT by Joseph Goldstein
