There is only one thing
To train hard
For this is true enlightenment.
Zen Master Dogen – Rules for Meditation
Or as it came to me one day when I was a novice:
Oh!
We don’t train
in order to become
enlightened.We train
because
it is
enlightenment!
Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise
or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you will have a
little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if
you let go completely you will have complete peace.
~Ajahn Chah
Well I’d not seen Galaxy Quest before. The film might have been made twelve years ago however it hasn’t dated one bit. Watching films in company is a whole different thing to watching alone. Perhaps laughing with others draws invisible threads that strengthen something good.
Sitting in rows looking at a wall meditating has the same strengthen of something good.
Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.Let myriad things captivate you
And you’ll go further and further astray.How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.
~Ryokan
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
The Bright Field by R S THOMAS