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small beauties

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After she’s gone to camp, in the early evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes from the rosewood table, and find a dinky crystallized pool of maple syrup, the grains standing there, round, in the night, I rub it with my fingertip as if I could read it, this raised dot of amber sugar, and this time, when I think of my father, I wonder why I think of my father, of the Vulcan blood-red glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a broken-open coal. I think I learned to love the little things about him because of all the big things I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to. So when I fix on this image of resin or sweep together with the heel of my hand a pile of my son’s sunburn peels like insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,  I am doing something I learned early to do, I am paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have - as if it were our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.    ...
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can you

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2nd century BC Ink-on-silk manuscript of the Tao Te Ching Can you keep your soul in its body, hold fast to the one, and so learn to be whole? Can you center your energy, be soft, tender, and so learn to be a baby? Can you keep the deep water still and clear, so it reflects without blurring? Can you love people and run things, and do so by not doing? Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven, can you be like a bird with her nestlings? Piercing bright through the cosmos, can you know by not knowing? To give birth, to nourish, to bear and not to own, to act and not lay claim, to lead and not to rule: this is mysterious power. ~   Lao Tzu   from Tao Te Ching   version by Ursula K. Le Guin with thanks to brain pickings
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the single face

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The world is no more than the Beloved's single face; In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist. Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being. Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness. Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to trance; Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine. Wherever the Footprint is found, that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds. This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light. ~ Ghalib translated by Jane Hirshfield from The Enlightened Heart , An anthology of sacred poetry edited by Stephen Mitchell photo by eliot porter
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not anyone

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The true person is Not anyone in particular; But, like the deep blue color Of the limitless sky, It is everyone, everywhere in the world. ~  Eihei Dogen with thanks to poetry chaikhana
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skin around the organ

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What we often forget is that thought is to be used to correct life. It's not a way of life. If you make thought the center of your life, you're not going to live it. So, what you have to do is be this kind of hysterical, emotional, vibrant creature who lives at the top of his lungs for a lifetime and then corrects around the edges so that he doesn't go insane or drive his friends mad. Thought is the skin around the organ. The organ is full of blood and a beating heart, a soul and the exaltation of being alive! ~ Ray Bradbury with thanks to whiskey river
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the smoke of ideas

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The full beauty of the mountain is not seen until  you consent to the impossible paradox:  it is...  and is not....  When nothing more needs to be said,  the smoke of ideas clears,  the mountain is seen.  ~ Thomas Merton with thanks to louie,louie
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how to lose power

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~ Jean Vanier
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