The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticpate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha

Related posts:

1. What is Zen?
2. What did you learn today that could empower you in future?
3. Your teacup is full (Empty your cup)

Once, a long time ago, there was a wise Zen master. People from far and near would seek his counsel and ask for his wisdom. Many would come and ask him to teach them, enlighten them in the way of Zen. He seldom turned any away.

One day an important man, a man used to command and obedience came to visit the master. “I have come today to ask you to teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The tone of the important man’s voice was one used to getting his own way.

The Zen master smiled and said that they should discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the tea was served the master poured his visitor a cup. He poured and he poured and the tea rose to the rim and began to spill over the table and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. Finally the visitor shouted, “Enough. You are spilling the tea all over. Can’t you see the cup is full?”

The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest. “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?

A longer version of the tea story is available in The Secret Revealed – What You Don’t Know That You Don’t Know.

I like the tea story a lot, it is a great reminder that in order to learn we have to be humble, to empty our mind and make room for the new.

Here are some quotes about learning, I love the one about beginner’s mind.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn – Alvin Toffler

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. – Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting something go every day. – Zen Proverb

Related posts:

1. What is Zen?
2. If you knew – what would you do?

The way is not in the sky,
The way is in the heart.
Buddha

This is perfectly inline with my own thinking. I have been working with the book Your Best Year Yet – The 10 questions that will change your life forever and as part of the process you create guidelines. One of mine says “Trust my heart and inner truth”.

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1. Have you got specific with your goals yet?
2. The Manifestation Wheel
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Lightworkers are people who feel inspired to help others through “Shining Their Light”, teaching, spiritual meditation, healing, prayer, writing and speaking with Universal Love.

This makes more sense and I searched for more information. At Steve Pavlina I found a very interesting post about something he calls the Lightworker Syndrome.

This is what happens when someone wakes up to a higher level of consciousness, but they can’t figure out how to live on purpose and feed themselves at the same time.

Steve Pavlina ends his post with a quote by Marianne Williamson. The quote starts like this:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

I have found my passion but there is also my spiritual interest. Now I need to figure out how to make a living from my passion and spiritual interest.

Related posts:

1. Every Step Is Forward – No Going Back
2. What did you learn today that could empower you in future?
3. Past lives, Consciousness and Oneness

Now you can hold A New Earth in the palm of your hand. Download webcast videos, audio files or transcripts and take them with you wherever you go.

I am downloading the audio files, they can run in the background on my laptop while I do other things. Most likely I will get back to the page and watch some chapters as webcasts. There are also Exercises for Your Awakening developed by Eckhart Tolle with Elizabeth Lesser.

Tonight I have listened to the program about the first chapter, I find it interesting.

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Tom wrote Past Lives Ain’t What They Used To Be, about past lives or reincarnation. I joined the discussion and wrote:

The concept of One does not exclude the concept of unique souls with their own memories of past lives. It is similar to fingers on a hand, each have their own story yet they are part of the whole.

Tom answered and wrote:

You are quite correct: the concept of One does not exclude a concept called unique souls. However, in my experience, that is just a concept that doesn’t match experience. When you know yourself as the One, then you realize that there are no unique souls.

Which made me write that:

Using the word concept made my comment too soft..

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

I am not an expert. My own experiences of oneness, to know yourself as (part of) the One, are different from yours. It allows for souls and past lives.

To which Davidya added his thoughts:

The key thing to realize about Oneness – it is inclusive. It includes everything – all perspectives, all time, all space, all expressions, all beings. Indeed, the entire universe is but a pearl on the necklace of Brahm.

I would suggest that both Tom and Bengt are correct. If we can experience it, it is an aspect of the One. We can look upon ourselves and see one consciousness flowing through all beings. We can look again and see all beings, each with a past, present and future and unique experience, all within the one. We could say they are just different resolutions or levels of detail.

In the One, you are an individual expression, you are an expression of the whole, and you are the whole expressing through all individuals. You are the doer, the vessel, and the creator. You are the seer and the seen. The free will and the determinism.

You are the silence and light, you are the evil and darkness. You are life itself, moving in all things.

There is no paradox. It is inclusiveness alone.

Davidya commented in Tom’s blog but also wrote Inclusive at his own blog In 2 Deep. I like his comment about the blog name: To, Too, and Two are 3 words that sound the same but have different meanings (homophones). The name of this blog is a play on this with 2 implying “into the deep” and “in too deep”.

No related posts.

There are Hardcore Zen and Zen Lite. Over at Taoism.net I found What is Zen? which has a definition I like and share. There it says that:

The closest we can come to describing Zen in words may be as follows:
• Zen is more of an attitude than a belief.
• Zen is the peace that comes from being one with an entity other than yourself.
• Zen means being aware of your oneness with the world and everything in it.
• Zen means living in the present and experience this reality fully.
• Zen means being free of the distractions and illusory conflicts of the material world.
• Zen means being in the flow of the universe.
• Zen means experiencing fully the present, and delighting in the basic miracle of life itself.

I exclude Buddhism from my definition of Zen, I am currently not interested in that part.

Related posts:

1. What is Zen?

I like the book, it is easy to read yet it makes you think and feel. My purpose with buying the book was to learn more about Zen, to be able to put the pieces together in my own view of Zen and mindfulness.

In the first part Alan writes that “Zen is a method of rediscovering the experience of being alive”. He brings up the concept of “ten thousand formations, one suchness”, there is simply one energy.

From the second part I select some quotes about the present:

If you understand fully that it is from the present that everything happens, then the only place for you to be, the only place for you to live, is here, right now.

If your plans are flexible and adaptable, and if you are here when things happen, you will always stay balanced.

Alan also writes “Anything that you can do without a great deal of thought becomes a perfect form of meditation”. That is the same as is said in The 5-minute Meditator.

The third part about the book is about space, how empty space is considered more important in the East than in the West. Alan mentions that Zen represents a simplified way of life and that the personality of Zen people is the uncluttered mind. He also says that “The beginning of Zen is overcoming the fear of death”. That is what made the samurai interested in Zen, as a way to become fearless.

The fourth and last part is about Zen Mind. Alan says that “The understanding of Zen is intuitive”. A final quote from the book:

The whole point of Zen is to suspend the rules we have superimposed on things and to see the world as it is – as all of a piece.

Related posts:

1. The 5-minute Meditator
2. Your teacup is full (Empty your cup)
3. The monk who sold his Ferrari

One of my favourite blogs is Zen Habits, it has to be in a post about Zen-related blogs.

Goodlife Zen has a post about Is there Life After Death?

Zendonut writes about Very Interesting Meditation Study From Harvard, similar to what I wrote about in Scientists probe meditation secrets.

cheerfulmonk.com has a post about Celebrating Baby Steps.

Transforming Stress Into Personal Power has a post about One Size Doesn’t Fit All. That post is filed under Lifelong Learning, something I like and also think is needed.

Success Soul has an interesting post about Bruce Lee’s 6 Ways to Develop a Kick-Ass Attitude.

Note: Photo by theopie.

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1. Link Medley

Having spirituality simply means believing in something greater than yourself. It can be incredibly powerful to have a sense of spirituality in your life, and very often it can haul you through the difficult times in your pursuit for success, happiness, and fulfillment.

David B. Bohl lists three ways to find your spirituality: going to church, commune with nature and meditate. Nature and meditation works for me, religion does not. I can visit a church as place of peace and calm or because of architecture but religion is not for me.

I work as a coach and agree to the importance of balance in life as a foundation for achieving other things.

Spiritual and personal development should begin with the goal of creating a better work life balance, enabling you to achieve success in both your personal and professional lives.

Note: Photo by Zest-pk.

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1. Discover Your Destiny
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3. Simplicity