Contemplative Monday

The following quote is from Pema Chodron's

'Heart Advice, Weekly Quotes from Pema Chodron'.

HEARTFELT RITUAL

"Genuine, heartfelt ritual helps us reconnect with power and vision

as well as with the sadness and pain of the human condition.

When the power and vision come together,

 there's some sense of doing things properly for their own sake.

Making a proper cup of tea means that you thoroughly and completely 

make that tea because you appreciate the tea

and the boiling water and the fact that together they make something

that's nourishing and delicious, that lifts one's spirit.

   You don't do it because you are worried that someone's

not going to like you if you don't do it right.                                                                

Nor do you do it so fast that it's over before you even realize

that you made a cup of tea, let alone that you drank six cups.

So whether it's smoking a cigarette or drinking a cup of tea, 

or making your bed or washing the dishes 

---whatever it might be---  it's ritual in the sense of doing it properly,

if you can hold the sadness in your heart as well as the vision of the Great Eastern Sun*."

Tibetan 'prayer flags' blowing in the wind yesterday.

* The Great Eastern Sun vision means we appreciate ourselves

and our world.