I hope you are enlightened on day 4 of Zen Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. A shout out to all my Napkin Kin who have recently bought coffee mugs, thank you!
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Enlightenment always wants to be grand. We like to make the grand proclamation that we have been enlightened about something. Maybe after we have done something bad, been caught, and had to publicly apologize. Maybe after having an amazing life transformation that makes us aware of new things. Maybe travel to a new country that opens our eyes to ways we didn’t know existed.
We like to make a spectacle of enlightenment.
But enlightenment is sustained when it is small, not large. When it finds the mundane being just as capable of expanded awareness as the heroic, then it has food to live on. We can’t feed our enlightenment every day with only our heroic deeds and thoughts any more than we are likely to feed our bodies on only gourmet restaurant fare. We feed ourselves in our daily life with more everyday fare and if you want enlightenment to stay with you, you have to find it there too.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote is a Zen proverb
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One year ago today at The NDD – Homelessness in Palm Springs
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zen buddhism religion enlightenment mundane everyday hero heroic spectacle 2011