Live more Love more |
Hi, I'm Zach in Berkeley, CA, and I began heartconnection to share my spiritual path as a love activist and poet. Simply put, my religion is love. Feel free to send in your own thoughts, feelings, reflections, questions, desires. Email here |
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NotesThe Buddha pointed out that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied. Entrenched in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns, what we ignore is our kinship with others. — Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You
To be empty of a fixed identity allows one to enter fully into the shifting, poignant, beautiful and tragic contingencies of the world. It makes possible an acute awareness of life as a creative process, in which each person is inextricably involved. — Stephen Batchelor
You are not ‘in the now’; you are the now. — Eckhart Tolle
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Notes‘We have a paralyzing fear of our own insight. When we touch base with our center and get quiet, we begin to sense what we need to do, and maybe this is not the comfortable life we’ve carefully mapped our for ourselves. We may be working as a retail clerk, but our mystery beckons us to return to art school. We may hope for a life of luxury, but our mystery tells us to travel to West Africa and work in the Peace Corps. We may find these insights a damned nuisance because they seem so inconvenient. And these insights, offering new and spacious possibilities, seem so scary relative to the known, even if the known is a life of discontent.’ —Donna Farhi, Bringing Yoga to Life
As many of my close friends know, in less than a month I will be quitting the corporate world to follow my heart. While seemingly a big change, looking back I realize that the past few years have been a continuous process of opening up and delving deeper into the things that really matter in life. Through such an awakening, my values and beliefs have since shifted so much that I can no longer continue on the path I am on. Essentially, I have set an intention to live a life of love, and now must align my actions with this intention.
Because I cannot live the open-hearted life I want to live when my heart is closed down for 8-hours a day in the corporate world. I cannot be inspired in un-inspiring environments with folks that look like icerberg lettuce. I cannot learn and grow when there is nothing to learn and grow from. I cannot be free to express myself, free to live, free to love unless I am in control of my own life.
So, that means making some changes, but I like to think of it as accepting change. Being open to change. Welcoming change. Recognizing that change is a fundamental fact of life and any tightening against it just creates more suffering. In the words of Pema Chodron:
When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people.
In conclusion, I love you. Yes, you! Thank you for being you. May our paths cross again soon.
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We’re encouraged to meditate every day, even for a short time, in order to cultivate a certain steadfastness with ourselves. We sit under all kind of of circumstances—whether we are feeling healthy or sick, whether we’re in a good mood or depressed, whether we feel our meditation is going well or is completely falling apart. As we continue to sit we see that meditation isn’t about getting it right or attaining some ideal state. It’s about being able to stay present with ourselves. It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.
— Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You -
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‘Its hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the human predicament.’ — Pema Chodron
Picture from politics-war:
An Afghan National Army soldier on duty, as a boy riding a donkey passes him during a joint patrol with U.S. soldiers from 3/1 AD Task Force Bulldog, in a village at Kherwar district in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan.
(via politics-war)
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I think I’m going to start thinking of the self as an ‘Earthquake evacuation plan on an etch-sketch.’ We may cling to it for comfort, but under closer scrutiny we realize how silly that is, that don’t need it, that we can be free without it, and that we should not depend on it.
Helen Keller reminded us that security is mostly a superstition. If we understand the impermanence of life, then anything we rely on or cling to for support and comfort can also disintegrate. We know nothing lasts forever but habitually ward off any sense of a problem and are surprised when ‘shit happens,’ like when we lose our health or lose a loved one.
Fortunately its those difficult times that can be our teacher. Pema Chodron wrote in When Things Fall Apart that:
The only time we ever know what’s really going on is when the rug’s been pulled out from under us and we can’t find anywhere to land.
We can use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep. Right now—in the very instant of groundlessness—is the seed of taking care of those who need our care and of discovering our goodness…When my marriage fell apart, I tried hard—very, very hard—to go back to some kind of comfort, to some kind of security, to some kind of familiar resting place. Fortunately for me, I could never pull it off. Instinctively I knew that annihilation of my old dependent, clinging self was the only way to go.
So by letting go, rather than depending on, this fragile illusion of self we can free ourselves from suffering.
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Every manifestation of life is impermanent. Therefore our quest to make things permanent, to straighten everything out, to get it fixed is an impossible and insoluble problem, and we therefore feel a fundamental pain and frustration. Try making a square circle, for example, and you can’t. It’s a problem that can’t be solved. This is the fundamental human existence.
- Alan WattsWe have to look deeply at cyclic change to be able to accept it as a necessary part of life and not be surprised or suffer greatly when it occurs. Impermanence means loss, but it also means transformation.
- Pema Chodron(Source: whatsado, via enchanted-gaia)
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Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly. Suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last — that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. - Pema Chodron
When we see reality accurately, we discover that mind states are actually a function of our being; they are not a function of how much we have or what we have. This is one of the ironies of desire. There are so many things that we can have, and that we do have, without the suffering of attachment, without compromise or loss. These are inner qualities such as love, faith, wisdom and peace. Such states are not produced by a process of having more and more, through feverish seeking.
When we become lost in desire, we are put firmly into the framework of linear time. We become focused on getting what we do not yet have, or on keeping what we do have. We become oriented toward the future. To be caught in this concept of linear time brings us to what in Buddhist teachings is called bhava, or becoming, always falling into the next moment. It is as if before each breath ends, we are leaning forward to grasp at the next breath. - Sharon Salzberg
In offering our presence to others, it helps to actually be present. Not thinking about tomorrow and not thinking about all the things you have to do later. Teachers often talk about the “if only” mind or the “if then” mind that takes us out of the present moment. “If only I didn’t have to deal with this health problem, then I could be really present” or “If I got that promotion, then I could take a vacation and really be happy.” However, we often find that whenever we get to that moment where we thought we’d actually be happy, our mind has already moved onto the next thing. We will never be able to relax with where we are or who we are if we always think there’s somewhere better to be or someone better to be. Being present (Being Here Now!) is the key to being more, living more and loving more.
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The Value of a Tree
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Afghan Female Artists: Nabila Horaksh And Shamsia Hassani
Sound Central Festival, Kabul.
2013
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Speaking of different body shapes. These are all basically peak human bodies.
How come 99% of them don’t conform to what the...
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This doctrine just requires single-minded practice. One does not need to seek experiential proof, but...
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“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has...”
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security guards
In security
okay this is really precious
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“There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day:
slowly the first word
drifts west,
...”
