The Mind

Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone To Talk, from the essay Total Eclipse. Harper and Row Publishers 1982

The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. pg 99

And Around the Block

May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing  W.W. Norton & Co. 1975

[...] for it hurts to be alive, and that's a fact, but who can regret being alive and being for others, life-enhancing? We shall be dead a long time. pg. 55

From Outside the Box

May Sarton. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing W.W. Norton and Company 

You can't afford self-pity. Too much is at stake. Your whole life maybe. Use your bean start thinking. 

It seems to me I have been doing nothing else!

Going around in circles isn't thinking. You have to try and find some way to get outside it, don't you know? Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing outside you. pg 31-32

Confidence

From "Outrageousness," a talk given in July 1978 to Directors of Shambhala Training. by Chogyam Trungpa.

Confidence brings the natural dignity of gentleness. You can afford to be gentle. You are not pretending to be gentle in order to achieve something by it, but you have a general sense of gentleness, which means you are being kind to yourself. Sometimes when the warrior feels doubtful about himself, he might have a problem being gentle to himself. Gentleness to yourself is necessary for a warrior; otherwise you find yourself puffed up, with no way to expand your vision to a great level at all. At that point, warriorship becomes pure bluff.

The Contemplative

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William h. Shannon, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003

Genuine contemplation involves no tension. There is no reason why it should affect anyone's nerves: on the contrary, it relaxes them. It leaves you rested and refreshed on your whole being. There is no strain in real contemplation, because when the gift is real, you do not depend on it, you are not enslaved by the "need" to experience anything. the contemplative does not seek reassurance in himself, in his virtue, in his state, in his "prayer". His trust is in God, not in himself. The peace and "rest" of contemplation is the fruit of a living faith in the action of divine grace. The contemplative is able to let go of himself and everything else, knowing that everything that matters in his life is in God's hands, and that he does not have to "take thought for the morrow." He fully realizes the meaning of the Gospel message of salvation by the grace of God and not by dependence on human ingenuity. pg. 113

A Buddhist Catholic Blog

This is wonderful resource that I found by typing into Google "thomas merton buddhist photographs". I was trying to find the site in Sir Lanka where he had an epiphany while looking at the giant rock carvings of the Buddha and Ananda. That site by the way is the Gil Vihara at Polonnaruwa.

A Buddhist Catholic Blog

This blog is by Debbie who understands the Catholic Faith very well but is finding a much sought after need for a deeper experience of God and is discovering this through her explorations with Vipassana. As she puts it "The institutional church, and things such as the Vat II docs all point to the exoteric church. I believe that we have lost sight of the esoteric church. As a result, we see so many young people, in search for a God they can experience, turning to eastern experiences and why Eastern Spirituality has become SO appealing to many of the young who are searching for meaning in their live." Read entire post.

Awareness and Sexual Engagement

Ezra Bayda. Practicing with Sexuality. Turning Wheel Magazine. Spring 2009 Buddhist Peace Fellowship

As sexual fantasies arise, can we meet them with the question, "What is the practice here?" Are we even willing to practice in this area? From a practice standpoint, we have to see our fantasies for what they are. Most often they're a cover, almost like sucking our thumb. We'll do anything to avoid experiencing the hole of painful longing and loneliness that lies beneath these juicy thoughts. We need to see how unwilling we are to give them up. The more clearly we see our attachment, the more workable our practice is. pg. 18

To read the entire article, click here.

Truth vs Hope

Chogyam Trungpa. The Truth of Suffering: and the Path of Liberation. Judith Lief, editor. Shambhala Publications 2009

If there is a strong desire to achieve a result, that will push you back. You could relate to hope as respect for the dharma, or the truth, rather than a promise. It is like a schoolchild seeing a professor: one day she too might become a professor, but she still has to do her homework. pg. 71

Life Purpose

Thomas Merton. Love and Living. Naomi Burton Stone & Patrick Hart, editors (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jonvanovich, 1985).

The mature person realizes that life affirms itself most, not in acquiring things, but in giving time, efforts, strength, intelligence, and love to others. Here a different kind of dialectic of life and death begins to appear. The living drive, the vital satisfaction, by "ending" its trend to self-satisfaction and redirecting itself to and for others, transcends itself. It "dies" insofar as the ego is concerned, for the self is deprived of the immediate satisfactions which it could claim with being contested. Now it renounces these things, in order to give everything to others. ...This "dying" to self in order to give to others is nothing more or less than a higher and more special affirmation of life. Such dying is the fruit of life, the evidence of mature and productive living. It is, in fact, the end or the goal of life. pg 102

Death is, then, the point at which life can attain its pure fulfillment. Death brings life to its goal. But the goal is not death-the goal is perfect life. pg 105

Reflections on Grasping

Thomas Merton. Asian Journal

Reassessment of this whole Indian experience in more critical terms. Too much movement. Too much "looking for" something: an answer, a vision, "something other." And this breeds illusion. Illusion that there is something else. Differentiation - the old splitting-up process that leads to mindlessness, instead of the mindfulness of seeing all-in-emptiness and not having to break it up against itself. Four legs good; two legs bad.