#meditatie

marinating the mind

Gepubliceerdop jul 7, 2023

Seeing without eyes,
knowing without mind.
Being, without becoming.

For a time, you lived unaware of your true nature.
Now you know, and are.
Cursing nothing, judging nothing,
happy inside your own Self.

Marinate your mind in this knowing,
so that, when you are pushed in the world of changes,
you will know the unchanging.
When you are in the midst of all noise,
you will be the silence.
But do not speak of this. Be this.
In all your ways, remain natural.
Remain with yourself.
…
Keep bringing your attention here.
The mind will come to test you,
an activity that must happen.
You cannot fail.
The mind is your servant, not your master.

Mooji

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4 pebbles

Gepubliceerdop okt 27, 2022

P1: Every one of us has our “flower-ness” that makes us beautiful, that makes us fresh, that makes us pleasant, that makes us lovable. And we have a lot to offer to other people. If you have freshness, beauty, you can offer your freshness and beauty to the world like a flower.
Many of adults have lost their flowerness, their freshness. They have cried too much.They have suffered so much. That is why they should do something in order to restore their flowerness.

“Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.”
“Breathing out, I feel fresh.”

P2: When you love someone, you would like to offer him or her your solidity. But if you don’t have enough solidity, how can you offer it? Therefore we should cultivate more solidity in ourselves.

There is a mountain in me.
I can stay myself even with provocations, with threats. That is very crucial for my happiness.
When I have solidity, I can offer that to you. And you can rely on me. You can count on me because I have solidity.

“Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain.”
“Breathing out, I feel solid.”

P3: When you are calm, when you are still, you see things as they are. You don’t distort things. You can see things as they truly are. You are not a victim of wrong perceptions. Wrong perceptions bring about fear, anger, despair. Wrong perception is there because you are not calm. If you are calm, your perception would be correct.
Therefore I want to cultivate stillness, calm. Because I know stillness and calm is the foundation of my true happiness too.

“Breathing in, I see myself as still water.”
“Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.” 

P4: When you arrange flowers, the art of ikebana, you know that each flower needs space around her to radiate her beauty. A human being is like that, also. She needs some space inside to be truly happy and some space around her. And that is why if you love her, you should know how to offer her enough space, inside and around.

If you don’t have enough space for yourself, how can you offer space to the person you love? Therefore it’s very crucial that we know how to cultivate more space for us, because space is one of the basic conditions for happiness.

“Breathing in, I see myself as space.”
“Breathing out, I feel free.” 

To have freedom and to offer freedom, you are a true lover. You don’t imprison yourself, you don’t imprison the person you love in your ideas, in your ways. You allow freedom in your heart, and you allow freedom in his/her heart.

Thich Nhat Hanh

zitten als een fontein

Gepubliceerdop okt 28, 2021

We zitten niet als een rijstzak die in elkaar zakt onder zijn eigen gewicht. We zitten als een fontein. [Het is een fontein van het eenvoudigste type: één waterstraal spuit recht naar boven en waaiert uiteen in alle richtingen.] Met een rug die onophoudelijk omhoogduwt [de straal] en een lichaam dat de hele tijd verkend en ontspannen wordt [het vallende water]. Het is nooit een slecht idee om een zensessie hiermee te beginnen. We kunnen er zelfs een flink aantal jaren mee toekomen op ons zitkussen.

Tom Hannes

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wikiart-cabot-perry

modder

Gepubliceerdop jan 10, 2021

In meditatie moet je zijn in zichzelf opgaan, een non-duale staat. Blijf stil. Probeer je niet uit de modder van je concepten te worstelen, je zakt er alleen maar dieper in. Blijf stil.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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gentle without hesitation

Gepubliceerdop aug 29, 2020

Every dust is whole without reaching me, the ten thousand changes are stilled without shaking me. If you can sit here with stability then you can freely step across and engage the world with energy.

There is an excellent saying that the six sense doors are not veiled, the highways in all directions have no footprints. Always arriving everywhere without being confused, gentle without hesitation, the perfected person knows where to go.

Hongzhi

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nothing remarkable

Gepubliceerdop jun 21, 2019

… things are conceived just as they are perceived. They are not even named. If I look at a cup, I give it a Chinese name while you English call it ‘cup’. … Actually, for all of us, the subject of these concepts simply sits here in total clarity on the table. We know what it is; we know its name. In Silent Illumination naming is of no concern.

To see things in this way in meditation is very valuable. Sitting together here we can discriminate men from women, Chinese from British, maybe even Welsh from English, older from younger. Such discriminations normally come along with some sort of judgement or valuation. Labels, names and so on are the roots of prejudice.

Categorisation usually generates inequalities in values with preferences and aversions, however subtle, drifting across the mind. Whenever such inequalities have taken hold, buddha-nature becomes invisible. When truly realised, buddha-nature is indivisible.
Of course, this is no simple matter and, furthermore, to consider a thief to be one’s father might engender a lot of trouble in the everyday world. Nonetheless, in the perspective of Silent Illumination, the basis of mind is seen to lack duality; dualistic functioning is a secondary, not a fundamental condition. We need to contemplate the practical significance of this.

‘Without any signs whatsoever, it illumines without any grasping, yet it still goes on knowing.’ The practitioner in Silent Illumination is not concerned with meaning and therefore grasps at nothing. He may see a bird fly through tbe sky. He does not deny that the bird has flown from one tree to another, yet this is not a focus of his concern. ‘As the Tibetans say, this is like ‘writing on water’. You move your finger across the water yet nothing remains. The thing has happened; now it has passed by. In silence, the practitioner knows buddha-nature, but there is no trace of this in his mind, no grasping, no discarding. There is brightness, silence, illumination. Rising from the cushion, he drinks a cup of tea, nothing remarkable; he just gets on with whatever needs to be done.

Master Sheng-Yen

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zacht vanbinnen

Gepubliceerdop jan 29, 2019

Op verschillende basisscholen wordt met mindfulness gewerkt. In het hoofdstuk ‘Aandacht begint bij de adem’  uit  ‘Stilzitten als een kikker’ van Eline Snel zegt Tim uit groep 2:

‘Ik vind het fijn om te ademen en voel me lekker zacht en uitgerust vanbinnen.’

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