Opportunities Everywhere!

     “Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.... 

     Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life.”                  Rachel Naomi Remen 


     “Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them. They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits. We can make our new normal any way we want.”  
       Kristin Armstrong, professional road bicycle racer, three-time Olympic gold medalist, winner of the women's individual time trial in 2008, 2012 & 2016.
 

     “It’s no small thing to be born human. A lot of ‘stuff’ comes along with the opportunity of human life. Zazen (open-awareness meditation) is an incredible doorway for getting to the bottom of it all, and learning to live your life out of what you directly experience yourself: not what somebody tells you, not what you read, not because you should, but because your own direct experience of yourself and your life tells you what to do.”              John Daido Loori


     “Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken. Take heed, do not squander your life.”            Dogen Zenji 



      “I think I’ve learned so many things from this experience. I don’t think in 54 years I truly understood the suffering, and once this happened to us (her husband being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis {ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease}), I was amazed at how I just didn’t pay attention to all the suffering going around. Before ALS I had my perfect little life, I was really enjoying it – we were both enjoying it, very busy, and I just didn’t see that. And I would never want to go back to that blindness. And I hope that at some point in the future I’ll be able to give back in some small way the amazing love and devotion that we’ve been showered with throughout this experience. So I wouldn’t trade that in. … I think maybe we see (the suffering), but don’t feel it. I could see and think ‘Oh, that’s so terrible,’ but I never felt it. It’s terrifying to feel it. But once you’ve experienced it, it opens you up to so much other suffering, and to knowing that you do have the opportunity to help. … It’s really a different way to live.” Ev Emerson, Bruce Kramer’s wife

Bruce Kramer's EXCEPTIONAL interview by KristaTippett
http://onbeing.org/program/feature/in-the-room-with-bruce-kramer/7424 

      “I didn’t need to not be angry. I just needed to stay with my anger long enough to see what it actually was and how it arose (or co-arose with my chicken heart). This kind of big-picture thinking, where things make sense as a whole when taken in relation to each other and not as unconditionally separate parts, is the spiritual project in a nutshell. Spiritual work is not the same thing as self-help. It is not meant to ‘everlastingly improve’ or fix you. It’s a means to help you see clearly what’s been there all along, beneath the surface, both in the larger sense and within yourself. 
     You don’t have to change things. Just see them properly, bear witness, and they fall into place. Attention, not intervention, leads to true healing. If you spend all of your time and energy trying to become a better person or ‘change the world,’ you miss a profound opportunity to see how all the imperfect, muddled, fucked-up things in our world come together, find their place among each other, and then form something far greater.”

       Shozan Jack Haubner. “Zen Confidential. Confessions of a Wayward Monk.” Shambhala, Boston, 2013.

     “I’m struck by how suppressed the life energy of many students in my current undergraduate class seems to be. … I keep sensing something is somewhat missing: perhaps the ‘primordial confidence’ … 

     Students are not given much opportunity to attend to their inner lives, to explore their unfathomable riches, to plummet the depth, and to be nourished deeply by such engagements. Yet, it is only through such engagements that energetically charged awareness deepens and expands, connecting self with cosmos, and fully reconciling us with life and universe."
       Bai H, Cohen A, Culham T, et al. “A Call for Wisdom in Higher Education. Contemplative Voices from the Dao-Field.” in: Gunnlaugson O, Sarath EW, Scott C. eds. “Contemplative Learning and Inquiry Across Disciplines.” State Univ of New York Press 2014.