the inner landscape of beauty











~ John O'Donohue


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listen

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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly writte...
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wherever we taste

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. A wife loves her husband not for his own sake, dear, but because the Self lives in him. The husband loves his wife not for her own sake, dear, but because the Self lives in her. Children are loved not for their own sake, but because the Self lives in them. Everything is loved not for its own sake, but because the Self lives in it. This Self has to be realized. Hear about this Self. As a lump of salt thrown in water dissolves  and cannot be taken out again,  though wherever we taste, the water it is salty,  even so, beloved,  the separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness,  infinite and immortal.   Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body,  which is made up of the elements;  when this physical identification dissolves,  there can be no more separate self. ~ from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad .
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many routes

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Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls. - Robert M. Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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