The Art of Racing in the Rain

So guilty do I feel for not updating this blog more regularly!

Without further ado, here's a little post I wanted to write dearly:

This one deals with a most amazing book advised and sent by a dear friend,

And I must say, this story made me shed a few tears in the end.

I grew attached to the characters: the man, the woman, and most of all, the dog.

Each time I love a book, I fold a lot of page corners, and I keep it near me.

No need to say, this one is on my favourite shelf, and it won't leave.

The story is both simple, and hard to tell without losing too much of its content.

It is a story of love and hardship. There is a lot of love, and a lot of hardship.

Dreams we follow, the love of our life, illness, birth, death, parenthood, financial troubles...

The main character goes through joy and pain; he also has a passion (car racing), and the will to fight and survive.

And, he has a dog, Enzo, and this is where the book gets fascinating. The whole story is told by a dog, who is highly intelligent, and who loves his master more than the whole world. He gives all the support he can to his master, and later, to his master's wife. The world of humans seen through the eyes of a very smart dog is transcended by devotion and perception. It is beautifully written, with an abundance of all these mundane, little details that give so much meaning to our lives. The dog knows it, the humans around him not always...

Enzo also has a way of considering his animal instincts. Our animal instincts. Our self-destructive nature. Our will to survive and/or to give up. And the narration, together with Enzo, tends to assimilate car racing to life itself. It all depends on where you want to go, and how much you want to go there:

"In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes from the wall as he spins out of control will meet the wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.

Your car goes where your eyes go. Simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you".

This book is a wonderful philosophical tale and a beautiful love story between a man and his dog. It is full of simplicity and good common sense, full of wisdom and a kind of beautiful serenity, full of pure absolute love. 

In the last pages, Enzo speaks about racing again: "But racing in the rain is also about the mind!  [...] It is about believing that you are not you; you are everything. And everything is you." 

Garth Stein, the author, has wrapped an amazing narration with the themes of a love that goes beyond attachment and of a mind that shows incredible insight. The last pages show a master and a dog who reciprocally free each other through an unvoidable separation that holds in itself the promise of meeting again...

I am so thankful that Sachi brought this book to my knowledge.

Centering myself

I am glad to say that I was lucky enough to have met Val in this blog world.
Reading her previous two posts, I feel that it is getting stronger.
I have the same view as her.  Comparing ourselves with others and feeling bad boesn't achieve anything.
The same can be said of our children; comparing them to other children and pushing them will not accomplish anything.  The important thing is accepting ourselves for what we are or accepting them for what they are and also loving ourselves and loving them. That brings us confidence and peace.  If you accept them, they will accept you.  If you love them, they will love you.

There is something I do regularly these days.  That's "centering myself"; it's like a kind of meditation.
First, I focus on the center of my heart.  Next, I imagine letting my mind empty as much as possible, and imagine filling my center with something that makes me feel happiness, peace and love (such as nature, sunlight, animals, birds, etc.), for about five minutes in the morning.  Then, it's funny, I find myself filled with love, and I can handle anyone or anything, with a smile and without any negative feelings.  If possible, I do this in the afternoon and also before going to bed, focusing on feeling love at the center of my heart.

"Walden; Or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau is a book I read when I was young and I loved it.  I would like to share the following quotes from this book, because whenever I read this book, I deeply feel centering myself is important:

Let us spend one day in the same slow way that nature spends it. Let us rise early without hurry or rush.
Let us not get excited over the small things that lie in our way. Let company come, let company go.
Let children cry, let bells ring.  But we will still have our day.

Let us be steady and stable. Let us plant our feet on the hard rock of the earth. Let us not get caught up in the mud and mess of opinion and prejudice and tradition and delusion and appearance, wherever we find it.Whether it is religion or politics or poetry or philosophy, let us find the place we can call reality, where we can simply say, This is.

If you stand in front of a fact, face to face, you will see it shining with the light of the sun.  You will see it shining with the light of the sun.  You will feel it in your heart of hearts, and you will then be happy to end your time on this earth.  Whether in life or in death, what we want is reality.  If we are dying, then let us face that fact.  If we are alive, let us go about our business.

Time is a stream I fish in.  I drink its waters.  As I watch the thin current flow by, I see how shallow it is.  Only never-ending time remains.  I would like to drink deeper.  I would like to be as wise as the day I was born.

My deepest feeling tells me that my mind is a tool for digging into the heart of things.  It digs deep until it gets to the secret center.  I do not wish to use my hands.  My mind is my hands and my feet.  My mind wants to dig its way through these hills.  Gold is to be found there, and Walden is where I will begin my search.

"The dandelion has my smile.."

I learn a lot from nature.

Nature shows me everything: 

patience and perseverance, toughness and harshness,

interconnectedness that Val wrote in her post, 

capacity to heal, beautiy and piece..

and wholeness and LOVE.

We have ups and downs in our lives.

But if we truly believe that we are all one, we are wholeness,

whatever may happen, we would be all right;

we would be able to feel peace of mind, I think.

"I have lost my smile,

but don't worry.

The dandelion has it"

"...everything around you is keeping your smile for you.

You don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself

to the support that is all around you, and in you.

Like the friend who saw that her smile was being kept by the dandelion,

you can breathe in awareness, and simle will return."

(from "Peace is Every Step"by Thich Nhat Hanh.)

It is heartening to think that we are all one...

"Peace is every step.

The shining red sun is in my heart.

Each flower smiles with me.

How green, how fresh all that grows.

How cool the wind blows.

Peace is every step."

(also from Peace is Every Step)

We are all children of Mother Nature. 

Maybe we've just come too far away from what we truly are,

and forgotten our innate ability.

Wishing you a beautiful and peaceful day :)

                                                                   Sachi

A Pace of Grace

This is a short post. I'd like to share the book I'm reading now.
The book is A Pace of Grace by Linda Kavelin Popov. I am still about halfway through it, but I have found something related to my previous post, Music of the Mind. In her book, she offers a four-part program which contains ten rules for health. In my previous post, I described ourselves as a piece of music. Well, our bodies are something like instruments that make tunes. And in order to succeed in playing a beautiful tune, maybe our bodies need to be healthy:) When you have time, please take a look at her homepage , in which you can see more about this book. 

To me, it's not easy to put into practice the rules 100%, but when I did some of them, I felt that I could have peace of mind. So..well..I'll keep trying as much as possible from now on:)

Sachi