clearing emotional rubbish

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how we strive for happiness

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nine prayers for today

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Thich Nhat Hanh wrote the introduction to a booklet by Thomas Merton “Contemplative Prayer“. Thay mentions the following Buddhist “9 Prayers” which I find very timely for my practice at present. Please enjoy these prayers:

just glass ~ Zen

 

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“Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness.

It is therefore in a sense ‘void’.

But it can shine through this or that system,  religious or irreligious,  just as light can shine through glass that is blue, or green, or red, or yellow.

If  Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is ‘just glass.’ “

Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968)

Source: Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Pages: 4

… a kind of prayer ~ Thomas Merton

“I putter about the hermitage, make the bed, wash the breakfast dishes, sweep the porch; and something begins to order itself inside me as I order my external world. The ordering and puttering become a kind of prayer, a way of attending to the human which is a way of attending to the divine, charged as we are and the world is with the presence of God.” “One cannot pray and meditate unendingly. There is a rhythm to life lived anywhere that calms the heart …”

when the shoe fits… Chuang Tzu

presented for your contemplation…

FROM THE CHINESE OF CHUANG TZU

Ch’ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.

No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.

contemplation

Ssurrender is not something to practice. For me surrender is what happens when I realize that I, as a person, am actually not in charge anyway. Nisargadatta speaks of ‘total functioning’ which for me is related and perhaps synonymous with David Bohm’s ‘implicate order’. Both concepts point me to there being one Great One, of which we are all expressions.

“Apart, from us where is time and where is space? If we are bodies, we are involved in time and space, but are we? We are one and identical now, then, and forever, here, and everywhere. Therefore we, timeless, and spaceless Being, alone are.” Ramana Maharshi

Love is the Reason for My Existence: Thomas Merton

Beautiful Thomas Merton words and very insightful expansion on those words by Stephanie Jill Rudd of the beautiful and inspiring blog: living in the monastery without walls

Related articles

• [Gratitude] Thomas Merton (davidhulonhood.typepad.com)
• Thomas Merton’s Last Words (nateprentice.wordpress.com)