City is hot, sticky yet less congested. Little by little, the population is shifting, any residents who can going elsewhere, tourists who can staying.
Always the come-and-go.
And yet, here we are amid events of the day. There’s always a spark, never a dull moment as they say, if we stay right where we are.
If we pursue the bright lights, fine clothes, rich foods, magnificent jewels and cars, we build a fool’s treasure doomed to be lost from the start. If we reject and withhold, on the other hand, fasting, denying, excluding our needs, withdrawing from the « bodily » world, we pursue a fool’s absence doomed to be lost from the start.
Here is where we pick up the « middle way, » then, a radical plunge into the heart of our lives, something of « an ascetic practice of rejecting ascetism, » as I read this afternoon.
Radical plunge
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
Yes, "I" makes difficult what is in fact nothing at all!
HJ: The quote comes from a book about Chogyam Trungpa, maybe he said it, maybe the author.
This plunge – of neither pursuing nor rejecting – makes our practice seem extremely simple.
But maybe something "extremely simple" is paradoxically difficult.
who said that: "an ascetic practice of rejecting ascetism,"?