Inspirations on Allowing 

Quotes to inspire from The Venerable Ajhan Summedho, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leonard Cohen and Milarepa…

‘Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.’

Friedrich Nietzsche

“ My witness is the empty sky.
Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”

Jack Kerouac

“Because I fear great hunger,
I seek for some food and beg,
Samadhi is a good food,
I feel hungry no longer.
Because I fear the thirst,
I seek for something to drink.
Mindfulness is a good wine,
I need nothing else to think.
Because I fear being lonesome,
I seek for a friend handsome.
The void-bliss is the best one.”

Milarepa

“The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen

“Whatever we fix on is going to be miserable. Being a man, or being a woman, as a permanent belief, is always going to make life difficult. Any class we identify with - middle class, working class, American, British, Buddhist, Theravadin Buddhist - grasping to any of these will produce some kind of complication, frustration and despair.
Yet conventionally, one can be all these things - a man, an American, a Buddhist, a Theravadin; these are merely perceptions of mind. They are adequate for communication; but they’re nothing more than that. They’re what is called sammuttidhamma - ‘conventional reality’.
When I say, ‘I’m Ajahn Sumedho,’ that’s not a self, not a person; it’s a convention. Being a Buddhist monk is not a person - it’s a convention; being a man is not a person, it’s a convention. Conventions are as they are. When we attach to them out of ignorance, we become bound and limited. That’s the sticky web! We’re blinded; being deluded by the convention.
When we let go of the conventions, we don’t throw them away. I don’t have to kill myself or disrobe; the conventions are all right. There’s no suffering involved in any of these if there is the awakened mind seeing them for what they are; they just are as they are. They’re merely a convenience; expedient to time and place.”

The Venerable Ajhan Summedho