Paradise

You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it.

—Charlotte Joko Beck

This is from 21 July on my Zen calendar. How to explain this one... The world is what it is: that we cannot change. Misery comes from trying to make the world something other than what it is. It also comes from trying to hold on to things that are temporary. When we let go of our illusions, of our insistence and attachments, of our fears... we find that paradise was in this world all along. We just weren't seeing it. We weren't allowing ourselves to see it.