Consider for a moment what you pay attention to all day long. What seems important to you, what do you take for granted and hardly attend to at all? Write it down. Do not judge your answers.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAConsider for a moment what you pay attention to all day long. What seems important to you, what do you take for granted and hardly attend to at all? Write it down. Do not judge your answers.
BRENDA SHOSHANNANow today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAWhen we are in a truly loving relationship, we receive the gift of being known and accepted. We become more, not less, of who we are.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAour joy and satisfaction comes from doing each action with a whole heart and mind. Results and consequences then take care of themselves. When you are not absorbed by concern for outcomes, how much anxiety can you ever have?
BRENDA SHOSHANNADo not make this practice a source of pressure, compulsion, anxiety or pride. It is none of these. Zazen is simply a way to find your true home.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAWe calculate their value to us. When we approach relationships in this manner, we are coming as beggars, seeing the other as a source of supply.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAFrom the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).
BRENDA SHOSHANNAZen practice asks you not to worry about who you ‘should’ become. Find out who you are right now.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAIf one’s sense of self is obtained through the eyes of another it is always subject to being lost.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAWhat we pay attention to expands. What we pay attention to we become.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAChange is the very basis of our life, not to be fought, to be welcomed and tasted, to be seen for the gift it truly is.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAThis is how we know we are in a loving relationship. We are blooming, and the one we love is blooming as well.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAFear of the future and longing for the past are major factors which impede appropriate action.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAIt is a mistake to expect all of our needs to be met by one person or in one relationship. Honor and be grateful for that which you receive.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAThe sense that my world is stable and stationary, that change will never come and that all will go on continuously as it is, is the nature of all delusion.
BRENDA SHOSHANNAA time of uncertainty, of not knowing exactly where we’re headed, or what kind of choice to make is a Zen moment.
BRENDA SHOSHANNA