sey090

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.    ...

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

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

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

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

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

~ Jean Vanier

He who rules men lives in confusion; He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. Yao therefore desired Neither to influence others Nor be influenced by them. The way to get clear of confusion And free of sorrow Is to live with Tao In the land of the great Void. If a man is crossing a river And an empty boat collides with his own skiff, Even though he be a bad-tempered man He will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, He will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, And yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, He would not be shouting, and not angry. If you can empty your own boat  Crossing the river of the world, No one will oppose you, No one will seek to harm you. The straight tree is the first to be cut down, The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry. If you wish to improve your wisdom And shame the ignorant, To cultivate your character And outshine o...

In humility is the greatest freedom.    As long as you have to defend the imaginary self  that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.   As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people,  you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and  there is no joy in things that do not exist. ~Thomas Merton  with thanks to louie, louie  

The natural way of being after death of a loved one is suffering at first, then there is a deepening. In that deepening, you go to a place where there is no death. And the fact that you felt that means you went deep enough, to the place where there is no death. Conditioned as your mind is by society, the contemporary world that you live in, which knows nothing about that dimension – your mind then tells you that there is something wrong with this. Your mind says “I should not be feeling peace, that is not what one feels in a situation like this”. But that’s a conditioned thought by the culture that you live in. So instead we can recognize when this happens, when that thought comes – recognize it as a conditioned thought that is not true.   It doesn't mean that the waves of sadness don’t come back from time to time. But in between the waves of sadness, you sense there is peace. As you sense that peace, you sense the essence of your children as well – the timeless essence. ...

Nature uses few words: when the gale blows, it will not last long; when it rains hard, it lasts but a little while; What causes these to happen? Heaven and Earth. Why do we humans go on endlessly about little when nature does much in a little time? If you open yourself to the Tao, you and Tao become one. If you open yourself to Virtue, then you can become virtuous. If you open yourself to loss, then you will become lost. If you open yourself to the Tao, the Tao will eagerly welcome you. If you open yourself to virtue, virtue will become a part of you. If you open yourself to loss, the lost are glad to see you. "When you do not trust people, people will become trustworthy." ~ Lao Tzu from the Tao Te Ching,  23 translation by j.h. mcdonald

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed, cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub of watery fingers along its edge. The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe, remembers being a veil over the face of the sun, gathering itself together for the fall. The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down the sand under the beaks of savage birds. The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years of drought, the floods, the way things came walking slowly towards it long ago. And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches where it was broken. The feet remember the dance, and the arms remember lifting up the child. The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away, everything it lost and found again, and everyone it loved, the heart cannot forget. ~ Joyce Sutphen from Coming Back to the Body

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love.  Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced.  The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers.  We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone,  in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood.  We know it, because we have had to learn it.  We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand  will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach  out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing.  You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy.  Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled.  You will not know what it is to come home… Fulfillment… is a function of time.  The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal… It has an end....