This fall is the busiest that I have had in a very long time. There a lot of exciting things going on. A Nidan test, a new season for card nights, starting up the meditation group, the kids starting a new school, and a last minute decision to coach tennis are added in to one of the more stressful school years I have encountered. And while I don't feel as thought I am exhausted or at the end of my rope, I do find things difficult.
Although the things that seem to make all of this difficult are external circumstances, what is really "making it difficult" is coming from within. At times I feel simultaneously pulled out of my center and extremely self-focused. After all aren't "I" the one who is experiencing this difficulty? Am I creating it?
I can feel myself tightening up and pulling in and even lashing out. In these moments I need to turn, very deliberately to my practice. I can sense the need to reach outward to those that I encounter, and in doing so, find my center.
Time to sit.
from the Pang family...
The Layman was sitting in his thatched cottage one day [studying the sūtras]. "Difficult, difficult," he said; "like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree." "Easy, easy," Mrs. Pang said; "like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed." "Neither difficult nor easy," Ling Zhao said; "on the hundred grass tips, the great Masters' meaning."[1]
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