Let Them Flow

Ego works like
A cheaply made presure cooker
When your heart is filled with
Sorrow, anger or fear.

Saying that
No one would be on your side,
It tells you to contain
These negative emotions
While it cooks them into
Powerful ticking time bombs.

And it detonates them anyway.

So when you feel sad, angry or afraid,
Simply open the lid and
Let your emotions flow.

It'd make you feel ashamed awhile
But it's better than living with bombs
Ticking forever.

If you try to suppress negative emotions,
You only give them permissions
To stay with you and blow up someday.

So simply let them flow.
When they flow away,
You are free from them.

Let them flow...

Tags: Thich Nhat Hanh, Meditation, Zen, Anger, Fear, Sorrow, Ego, 一行禪師

中文版: 你可以不生氣（台北‧城邦文化 一行禪師著）

Shaking Off Burdens of Goodies

Breaking up with a girlfriend
Whose look made many men look back.

Walking out from a Forbes 500 company and
Starting to pick up garbage for sale.

Throwing away a pair of designer suits
And cladding like Shaggy of Scooby-Doo.

Asking for a salary cut and
Moving into a working-class neighbourhood.

Many were surprised by my repeated downgrades.
But all these have actually upgraded my life.

These goodies might've made me look happy
But they were only burdens to me.
They dragged me with the demands to be
Someone who wasn't me at all.

Shaking off all these burdens of goodies
My heart really lightened up.

I wish I could lighten up my body
Just like Shaggy
Who can stay slim despite his big appetite!
(Well, he runs a lot...)


Shaggy hanging onto Scooby's tail. The girl in front of the van is Velma. (Well, non-US visitors need some explanation...)

P.S.
Actually, I think Velma is quite cute... I like her more than Daphne.

Tags: Scooby-Doo, happiness

The Life in the World of Miracles

We are living in the world of miracles.
Close your eyes and think about
What you can easily do now.

Kissing your girl friend might be easy now.
But think about the very first time.
With your heart pounding
You might've felt it'd be even more difficult
Than to send a human to Mars.

But voilà!
When your lips touched hers
You made impossible into possible!
It was indeed a miracle!

Think about the first time when you wrote a letter.
Think about the first time when you rode a bike.
Think about the first time when you spoke a foreign language.
Think about the first time when you sold anything
To a customer...

These were just a handful of examples
Of the miracles you've experienced...

Be mindful of what you can do.
Welcome pleasant surprises for ever.
Then we continue to see miracles happen
All the time around us...

Tags: Thich Nhat Hanh, Miracles, ACIM, Mindfulness

Taoist/Zen Memo Pad

MEMO
You can print this space out and use it as a memo pad...
(Please see the note at the bottom of this post!)
































A memo pad has to be empty
So that we can write something on it...

We always need some emptiness
So that we can fill it with goodies, too!
Empty some of contents of your mind now
So that you can pour new ideas into it!

Tags: Taoism, Zen, Emptiness

Step Back and Take a Wider Look

What agitates you isn't the world around you.
It's how you interpret what you see.
Step back and take a wider look.
You'll find that you've been just looking
At an extremely small part of the world around you.

See the right extreme with your right eye
At the same time the left extreme with your left eye.
You'll find the world actually is quite different
From what you saw a minute ago.

A narrow, fixed view agitates you
While a wider view allows you
Put down your heavy and painful burden
Of fear or anger...

I wrote this for reminder to myself. But I want to share it with you because the healing power of panoramic (peripheral) view is so great...

Tags: ACIM, NLP, Panoramic View, Zen