Unconditional expression

"There is such a thing as unconditional expression that does not come from self or other.

It manifests out of nowhere like mushrooms in a meadow,

like hailstones, like thundershowers."

– Chögyam Trungpa

Aesthetic appreciation

"The next bodhisattva action is meditation.
In this case, meditation is almost, we could say, aesthetic appreciation.
This means awareness of body, awareness of colors, awareness of things around you,
awareness of people's different styles.
There's always room for everything that comes up.
Everything is treated reverently, respectfully.
Nothing is regarded as rubbish. Even the garbage heap is a work of art.
Things have their own place, and you appreciate this,
which is meditation in the broader sense.
Both the relevant and the irrelevant are respected,
so you don't have to economize on your time and energy.
Because of that, everything becomes an object of meditation,
of greater awareness, panoramic awareness.
You take tremendous interest in different styles, people's different approaches,
and the different physical situations of objects around you,
and the different emotional states within yourself.
For the bodhisattva, the whole thing is constantly meaningful and workable.

Aesthetic appreciation does not mean looking for beauty alone.
It means looking at things with space around them.
When things are seen with space around them,
they have their own pictorial quality, so to speak.
Things are seen in perspective rather than as representing demands or expectations.
So bodhisattvas make a wonderful audience for the theater of life and death.
This is meditation.
But at the same time, the bodhisattva takes part in this theater,
so the whole thing does not become merely a matter of impersonal observation."

– Chögyam Trungpa

The Rain Spoke to Me

Photo : Igor Zenin

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,


what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again


in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,


smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches


and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing


under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,


and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment


my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars


and the soft rain —
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.



~ Mary Oliver

 

One World

There is but one world

and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it.

For this world also, which seems to us a thing of stone and flower

and blood, is not a thing at all but is a tale.

And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales

and yet these are also the selfsame tale and contain

as well all else within them.

So everything is necessary. Every least thing.

This is the hard lesson.

 Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised.
Because the seams are hid from us, you see.
The joinery. The way in which the world is made.
We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted.
We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall.

 And those seams that are hid from us are of course in the tale itself
and the tale has no abode or place of being except in the telling
only and there it lives and makes its home
and therefore we can never be done with the telling.

 Of the telling there is no end.
And in whatever place by whatever name or by no name at all,
all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.

–  Cormac McCarthy

Yeshe Tsogyal

This image from the murals of Samye in Tibet was created by Dechen Yeshe Wangmo
and published as a notecard to raise funds for the Tsogyal Latso nuns.
It is copyrighted by Jnanasukha.

: Yeshe Tsogyal :

Now until the dualistic identity mind melts and dissolves,

 it may seem that we are parting.

 Please be happy.

 When you understand the dualistic mind,

 there will be no separation from me.

 May my good wishes fill the sky.

~ Yeshe Tsogyal as she ascended into the sky...

Synchronizing #2

..“Synchronizing body and mind is not a concept or a random technique

someone thought up for self improvement.

Rather, it is a basic principle

of how to be a human being

and how to use your sense perceptions,

your mind and your body together.”

Chögyam Trungpa

Synchronizing

“This method of synchronizing your mind and body is training you to be very simple

that you are not special, but ordinary, extra-ordinary.”

Chögyam Trungpa

Healing

Healing is not a process which you need to ‘complete.’
There is no practice you can undertake to discover what you already are,
and life is not waiting for you to awaken or to transform.

Please do not postpone the freedom you are longing for, until you are ‘healed,’
have ‘resolved’ your past, created some dream reality of the seeking mind,
or are experiencing only those states of consciousness
you have deemed correct, ‘spiritual,’ and evidence that you are okay.
Dare to see that what you are is beyond okay
and not subject to the trance of the conceptual.

Take a risk, slow down and see that love will never organize itself
around your preferences. For it is a firestorm of creativity,
inviting you at all times into greater levels of wholeness and cohesion.
But this environment is wild and unprecedented
and will never conform to your hopes and fears.

What you are is a miracle. Your experience is sacred and holy.
Your senses and your body are outrageous and alive,
and filled with intelligence and originality.
Even your confusion is filled with wisdom.
Even your darkness is weaved of particles of light.

Matt Licata

Daring To Love

https://www.youtube.com/embed/v2o0nCLLDUQ?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0

For one human being to love another:

that is perhaps the most difficult task of all....,
the work for which all other work is but preparation.

It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen...
a great claim upon us, something that chooses us out
and calls us to vast things.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Giving Up Everything

Miranda Meeks

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mx5Iq0LTYw0?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0



"The best way to look at suffering is with gratitude,
that it is happening in order to teach us some very important lesson.

It is useless to want suffering to go away.

It is impermanence, it will go away anyway,
but if we don’t learn the lesson that it is trying to teach us,
it will come back in exactly the same manner."

- Ayya Khema

Suffering

"Stunned and still not suffering.

Swollen with care and anxiety

and still not suffering.

Useless, old and full of grief,

but still not suffering."

―  Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

War.

Steve McCurry



Untitled (from the War series), Kuwait, 1991.

Autumn



Monet

"Deep in the mountains --
falling into my heart
autumn streams."

~ Shinkei (1406-75), Japanese renga Poet

Companion

Make the universe your companion,

always bearing in mind the true nature

of all creation - mountains and rivers, trees and grasses,

and humanity - and enjoy the falling blossoms and scattering leaves.

 

 

Basho, Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel



Lisbon

Lisbon

 

 

Everynight I say a prayer

Look at me: nobody cares

Just a mirror, passing by...

Looked inside:

I've lost my pride...

 

 

Stay with me not for so long

It's alright: no needs, no hope

Such a miracle, looking back...

Time gone by, and life wasn't bad...

 

 

Lord, light my way

Fill these withered, careless hands...

 

 

Oh, skies are falling down

Skies are falling down

Oh, skies are falling down

Skies are falling down

 

 

See the birds are back...

At the docks and everywhere

Here in Lisbon, realized

This whole world so strange and divine

 

 

Lord, light my way

Fill these withered, careless hands...

 

 

Oh, skies are falling down

Skies are falling down

Oh, skies are falling down

Skies are falling down

 

 

nada & nada