Generally speaking, the human species does make things a big deal. Our problems are a big deal for us. So we need to make space for an attitude of honoring things completely and at the same time not making them a big deal. It’s a paradoxical idea, but holding these two attitudes simultaneously is the source of enormous joy: we hold a sense of respect toward all things, along with the ability to let go. In Buddhist terms, the space that opens here is referred to as ‘shunyata,’ or emptiness. But there’s nothing nihilistic about this emptiness. It’s basically just a feeling of lightness. When you begin to see life from the point of view that everything is spontaneously arising and that things aren’t ‘coming at you’ or ‘trying to attack you,’ in any given moment you will likely experience more space and more room to relax into. So shunyata refers to the fact that we actually have a seed of spaciousness, of freshness, openness, relaxation, in us…….Pema Chodron
it is remarkably quiet within….really it is……the space where our embarrassing brokenness and neuroses and irritibilities can all just be, not swept away, not denied, not shamed into depression……may we know that beauty is shameless, generous, illuminating and forgiving….
It is often commented that the accumulation of information should not be confused with wisdom. But we can take this even further: perhaps wisdom is the very opposite of information accumulating. Who is wise? The Mishnah (the oral Torah) answers, ‘The one who learns from each person.’ This response is remarkable on a number of levels. First, the wise one is not someone who has mastered a particular body of knowledge, or achieved a certain rank and status. In fact, the Mishnah doesn’t speak at all in the language of acquisition or accumulation. Instead it describes wisdom in terms of relationship. It describes wisdom as a stance we take in the world, toward whomever we encounter. In this teaching, wisdom describes a quality of presence. This feels disarming: it drops us immediately from the realm of the mind, where we often begin when we do this kind of inquiry, down into the realm of the heart. We are to approach each person with open hands…..Joshua Boettiger
there is nothing to do but this, right now…..
What is behind you?
Desire, the salt of want,
the emptiness of glass.
Above you? Trusting
of the thousand colors of light,
and birdwings of vapor.
How can below you
be so full of idols, of selves
reflected over again and again
in the watery air of movement?
I thought I glimpsed you
before me, a moment when
a mountain, dark shadow of sky,
became a meadow, and I stepped
into its quaking grass. As if
your silence whispered
into my right ear; telling me
I too might dissolve into
the blue above all this.
…..Ellen Jane Powers
Thanks I needed this today💞
Love to trail a little light for each other…….sweetness to you my friend……
Love this, blue………. And yes, when we allow an understanding that everything matters (everything is a big deal), then we can also allow the thought that nothing is……….. And there lies the secret to joy ~ to take it all, to keep it all, to LOVE it all! ~ Beautiful, blue. ~ Always, Bobbie
to not run away……a beautiful way to be with ourselves, contradictions and messiness alight! like children, may we know this unconditional response…..love to you dear one…..
Listening to Eckart Tolle’s Even the Sun Will Die tonight driving home and he articulates this same idea so well. He is so careful in the way he chooses his words. Saying yes to the moment, not the many moments that are often confused with the totality of the day, but the only thing that is real, this moment, this space and time, no other, there is no connection of moments … Saying yes, frees us, saying no ties us back into suffering. There may always be pain, but there does not always have to be suffering. May you find your moment in forever …
the beauty is simple in its continual release…..to have a new choice with each moment….such deep renewal here….this must be what ‘shunyata’ is…..always knowing by not-knowing……may you be in in beingness g.f.s…..