“Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything. So he tries, without craving, all of everything.”
— Carlos Castaneda
All too often our preferences prevent us from giving all of ourselves to this, here, now. We would rather be doing such and such with so and so. We prefer to be elsewhere.
This leads us to obsess about the future, an imaginary time when we will finally be satisfied.
But that time will never come. All we have is now.
So can you abandon yourself to what is going on here and now?
Can you try all of everything?
This doesn’t mean scrambling to try all things—to try every thing. It means immersing yourself completely in what you are doing, whatever that may be in a given moment.
Give all of yourself to everything you do.
“When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, leaving no trace of yourself.”
— Shunryu Suzuki
