Udaya Sutta: Breaking the Cycle (SN 7.12)

Again and again, the seeds all get planted;

Again and again, the rain-god sprinkles rain.

Again and again, the farmer farms the field;

Again and again, the food grows in the realm.

Again and again, beggars do their begging;

Again and again, the givers give out gifts.

Again and again, the giver who has given;

Again and again, goes to a better place.

Again and again, he tires and he struggles;

Again and again, the fool goes to the womb.

Again and again, he's born and he dies;

Again and again, they bear him to his grave.

But one who's wisdom is wide as the earth

Is not born again and again,

For he's gained the path

Of not becoming again.

slightly modified from Andrew Olendski's translation

Space

Our minds tend to get caught up with thoughts of attraction or aversion to objects, but the space around those thoughts is not attractive or repulsive. The space around an attractive thought and a repulsive thought is not different, is it?

Concentrating on the space between thoughts, we become less caught up in our preferences concerning the thoughts. So if you find that an obsessive thought of guilt, self-pity, or passion keeps coming up, then work with it in this way—deliberately think it, really bring it up as a conscious state, and notice the space around it.

Ajahn Sumedho

Infinite Regress

Two young boys were playing together. One asked the other, “We stand on the ground and the ground holds us up. What does the ground stand on?” “Oh, my father explained that to me,” the second boy said. “The ground is supported by four giant elephants.” “What do the elephants stand on, then?” “They stand on the shell of a huge turtle.” “What does the turtle stand on?” The second boy thought for a long time and then said, “I think it’s turtles all the way down.”

-Unknown

Situated not in Space but in Time

It is in vain that we return to the places that once we loved. We shall never
see them again because they were situated not in Space but in Time, and
because the man who tries to rediscover them is no longer the child or the
youth who decked them with the fervour of his emotions.

The classic philosopher assumes that "our personality is built about a hard
and changeless core, is a sort of spiritual statue" which stands like a rock
against the assaults of the external world. Such is man as viewed by Plutarch,
by Moliere, and even by Balzac. But Proust shows us that the individual,
plunged in Time, disintegrates. The day comes when nothing at all remains of
the man who once loved, who once made a revolution. "My life, as I saw it, "
wrote Marcel Proust, "presented me with the spectacle of a succession of
periods so occurring that, but for a brief space of time, nothing of that
which had been one's sustaining force continued to exist at all in that which
followed it. I saw human life as a complex from which the support of an
individual, identical, and permanent 'self' was so conspicuously absent, was
something so useless for the future, so far extended into the past, that death
might just as well intervene at this point or that; because it could never
mark a conclusion that was other than arbitrary..."

The successive "selves" are so different from one another that each ought,
really, to have a different name.

The Quest For Proust
Andre Maurois, Ch. 6.

What's So Great About Now?

This article by Cynthia Thatcher is probably my favorite of all time:

tricycle.com

A few quotes:

"The more mindfulness we have, the less compelling sense-objects seem, until at last we lose all desire for them."


"Our entire lives are nothing but a chain of moments in which we perceive one sight, taste, smell, touch, sound, feeling, or thought after another. Outside of this process, nothing else happens."


"We think sense-impressions desirable only because we can't see beyond the conventions to their real characteristics."


"Note the difference between saying 'The present moment is wonderful' and 'It's wonderful to stay in the present.' This is more than a semantic quibble. The first statement implies that the bare sensory data occurring in the present are themselves little bits of divinity. The second allows that, by staying in the now, one can be free from the distress that comes from clinging to those sensations."

No Meaninful Routine, No Meaningful Vision

Though the emphasis may alternate from phase to phase, ultimate success in the development of the path always hinges upon balancing vision with routine in such a way that each can make its optimal contribution. However, because our minds are keyed to fix upon the new and distinctive, in our practice we are prone to place a one-sided emphasis on vision at the expense of repetitive routine. Thus we are elated by expectations concerning the stages of the path far beyond our reach, while at the same time we tend to neglect the lower stages—dull and drab, but far more urgent and immediate—lying just beneath our feet.

To adopt this attitude, however, is to forget the crucial fact that vision always operates upon a groundwork of previously established routine and must in turn give rise to new patterns of routine adequate to the attainment of its intended aim. If we are to close the gap between ideal and actuality—between the envisaged aim of striving and the lived experience of our everyday lives—it is necessary for us to pay greater heed to the task of repetition.

Every wholesome thought, every pure intention, every effort to train the mind represents a potential for growth along the Noble Eightfold Path. But to be converted from a mere potential into an active power leading to the end of suffering, the fleeting, wholesome thought formations must be repeated, fostered, and cultivated, made into enduring qualities of our being.

Feeble in their individuality, when their forces are consolidated by repetition they acquire a strength that is invincible.

Bhikku Bodhi Vision and Routine

Costly ignorance

"An untaught worldling, O monks, does not know of any other escape from painful feelings except the enjoyment of sensual happiness. Then in him who enjoys sensual happiness, an underlying tendency to lust for pleasant feelings comes to underlie (his mind).

He does not know, according to facts, the arising and ending of these feelings, nor the gratification, the danger and the escape, connected with these feelings.

In him who lacks that knowledge, an underlying tendency to ignorance as to neutral feelings comes to underlie (his mind).

When he experiences a pleasant feeling, a painful feeling or a neutral feeling, he feels it as one fettered by it. Such a one, O monks, is called an untaught worldling who is fettered by birth, by old age, by death, by sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. He is fettered by suffering, this I declare."

SN 36