stopping

have you got a minute?

 

I’d like to invite you to sit down
right now,
for just one minute,
and not entertain one thought.

 

Can you do that?

 

Can you feel the coolness
that wafts through your entire
Presence
when you stop thinking?

 

Not “stop … and”
not “stop … then”
not “stop … so that”
but just stop.

 

Stop.

 

Everything you’ve ever longed for
is waiting for you
in that pause.

 

The cogs and gears of the “me project”
grind to a halt.
The engineers maintaining the scaffolding of the self
take a smoko.
The universe itself sighs,
so gladdened to see an earth angel
hold the claws of thought apart
for even one minute.

 

And every cell in your always-fully-awake body
lights up with a smile: “Now, at last,
we can bow before our own experience
and dance our destiny!”

 

You can do it.

 

It’ll only take a minute.

 

One thought-free minute equals one minute of full wideawakeness
or, one minute of intimacy with what the Buddha knew.
(Did you know that?)

 

You just need to want to meet the Truth of your life
more than you want to entertain a thought about it.

 

[entertain: v.t. Maintain (correspondence, discourse) Concise Oxford Dictionary]

Calligraphy by Jakusho Kwang, Roshi

on “spiritual inquiry” – be warned

 

Echoes from Emptiness - Image credit: Jaypee Online - Flickr

 

if you endlessly ponder

your seeming lack of enlightenment

(the proof of;  the reasons for;  the need to overcome)

your life appears to be unenlightened

and is experienced accordingly

 

if, for one instant, you stop your pondering

the Real is found to be already and always there

(luminous;  changeless;  already perfect)

and your life, in that instant, IS enlightenment

and is experienced accordingly

 

you don’t need to seek or strive or supplicate

you don’t even need to understand or accept or believe

you just need to slow down

get really quiet

and stop

 

how cool is that?

 

Image credit: Jaypee Online – Flickr

the best way forward is sometimes to stop

265

It was on the eve of a new year that she-who-scribbles sat in the throne room at the rainforest monastery and asked any deities who might be lurking and listening to reveal the way ahead.

What happened?  Nothing.  Empty spacious silence roared through the room.  An hour or so later the gong sounded for lunch.

.

.

En route back to her room, her right knee – the location of an old injury – exploded into a fury of crippling pain that would take six months to heal and would eventually need surgery.

Quite literally, she was knee-capped by the universe: 2002 was the year of the big bang!

Hobbled and humbled, it wasn’t long before what had happened in the knee played itself out in the brain.

Gratitude to all those deities, the non-local ones, who couldn’t help but be lurking and listening, and who couldn’t help but help.

Lesson:  The best way forward is sometimes to stop.  If one can’t or won’t, no problem.  Grace will step in and sort it.

~

image source: Chenrezig Monastery, Eudlo, Queensland