If we’re open to embracing the surprises as they arise, then there will be inconceivable joy. If we fuss and fume and say, ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ then there will be inconceivable misery. Just to welcome your life as it arrives moment after moment, to meet it as fully as you can, being as open to it as you can, being as ready for whatever arises as you can, and meeting it wholeheartedly, this is renunciation – this is leaving behind all of your preferences, all of your ideas and notions and schemes. Just meeting life as it is.
Blanche’s dharma name, Zenkei, means inconceivable joy.
Uit: Seeds for a boundless life, zen teachings from the heart, Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Shambala, Massachusetts, Boston, 2015.
Afbeelding: Die Treppe, Helen Dahm, 1907.
Zenkei Blanche Hartman is an American Zen legend. A teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, she was the first female abbot of an American Zen center. She is greatly revered, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has lived and taught for many years. This, her long-awaited first book, is a collection of short teachings taken from her talks on the subject of boundlessness—the boundlessness that sees beyond our small, limited self to include all others. To live a boundless life she encourages living the vows prescribed by the Buddha and living life with the curiosity of a child. The short, stand-alone pieces can be dipped into whenever one is in need of inspiration. – Shambala.com