The Innocent Mistake

Art by Aliza Razellby
 

'The innocent mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular style of ignorance,
unkindness, and shut-downness is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is,
with gentleness. Instead, there’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try
to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves,
that we should try to get away from painful things,
and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things,
then we would be happy. That is the innocent,
naive misunderstanding that we all share,
which keeps us unhappy.

Pema Chödrön, Awakening Loving-Kindness

 

Stepping back from your emotional attachments

Art : Khaled Akil
 

"Detaching from our emotional responses encourages an objective perspective about our challenges.

 Our oversensitivity to difficulties is usually caused by our emotional
investment in a particular outcome.
By choosing instead to step back from our emotions,
we give ourselves the ability to remain impartial to the unsettling events in our lives.

While we may still feel concerned,
interested, and connected to our life circumstances,
we are no longer controlled by them.

This new, objective perspective gives us the freedom and courage
to embrace a peace-oriented state of mind

that cannot help but have a positive effect in every aspect of our lives.

Stepping back from your emotional attachments
can give you the objectivity to make wiser choices."

Lama Karma Chötso

Open heart.

Art : Adam Raasalhague

"When we find ourselves in a situation in which our buttons are being pushed,

we can choose to repress or act out, or we can choose to practice.

If we can start to do the exchange, breathing in with the intention of keeping our hearts

open to the embarrassment or fear or anger that we feel,

then to our surprise we find that we are also open to what the other person is feeling.

Open heart is open heart."

Chögyam Trungpa

 

 

 

King Creosote and Jon Hopkins - First Watch

 

 

 

 

My Soul

La Mo " Praying "
 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,

for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

And wait without love,

for love would be love of the wrong thing.

Yet there is faith.

But the faith and the hope and the love, are all in the waiting.

And the darkness shall be the light

and the stillness the dancing.

　

~ T.S. Elliot

Life as it is lived suffices

Photo : Olivier Föllmi, Nepal

"Life as it is lived suffices.
It is only when the disquieting intellect steps in and tries to murder it that we stop
to live and imagine ourselves to be short of or in something.
Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere,
but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.
If you are at all tempted to look into it, do so while letting it flow.
The fact of flowing must under no circumstances be arrested or meddled with…

　

[…]

The great fact of life itself … flows altogether outside of these vain exercises of the intellect or of the imagination.

　

[…]

　

No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves.
The more you explain, the further it runs away from you.
It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow."

D.T. Suzuki

be BUDDHA

One becomes Buddha the moment one does not feel anger when one says or does
something against one's interest and does not feel proud when one says good about
one's goodness.........remain unattached in both Situation ..........perhaps we lead our
life towards this perfection and be BUDDHA

The Six Ways

Hell:
Bright autumn moon --
pond snails crying
in the saucepan.

 

The Hungry Ghosts:
Flowers scattering --
the water we thirst for
far off, in the mist.

 

Animals:
In the falling of petals
they see no Buddha,
no Law.

 

Malignant Spirits:
In the shadow of blossoms,
voice against voice,
the gamblers.

 

Men:
We humans --
squirming around
among the blossoming flowers.

 

The Heaven Dwellers:
A hazy day --
even the gods
must feel listless.

 

~ Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), whose name means "a single bubble in steeping tea" is famous for his hundreds of haiku and poems about the smallest of life's creatures -- the tiniest insects.
Above he wrote of the 6 realms of existence and rebirth in Buddhist cosmology.

Meditation

"Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquility, nor is it attempting to be a better person.
It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games,
our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes."

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The Big No

"There is no special reality beyond reality. That is the Big No, as opposed to the regular no.
You cannot destroy life.
You cannot by any means, for any religious, spiritual, or metaphysical reasons, step on an ant or kill your mosquitoes—at all.
That is Buddhism. That is Shambhala.
You have to respect everybody. You cannot make a random judgment on that at all.
That is the rule of the kingdom of Shambhala, and that is the Big No. You can't act on your desires alone.
You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated."

Chögyam Trungpa, "The Big No," in Great Eastern Sun.

See yourself in others.

Photo : Ching Yang Tung

See yourself in others,
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

Buddha

Inside Yourself

Art : "Inside Yourself" by Elena Ray

"It is useful to consider the body as the anchor for the senses and the mind; they are all interrelated.

Feel your entire physical body. Allow your breathing to become relaxed and quiet.

When your body and breath become very still, you may feel a very light sensation, almost like flying, which carries with it a fresh, alive quality.

Open all your cells, even the molecules that make up your body, unfolding them like petals.

Hold nothing back: open more than your heart; open your entire body, every atom of it.

Then a beautiful experience can arise that has a quality you can come back to again and again, a quality that will heal and sustain you."

Tarthang Tulku, Openness Mind

The Buddha

Art : Meditating Maitreya, Japan

"The Buddha was not different from you. No different.
That is why he serves as a good model, because he was as you are now.
So don't worship the Buddha. Don't put him on a pedestal.
Don't even look up to him. Become him. "

Adyashanti

On Intent

Art : Elena Ray

"Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise and sustained.
If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else.
If that is accomplished the road is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential.
 

 Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish.
Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable.
Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity."

 

 

- Carlos Castaneda

THE SOUL LIVES CONTENTED

"Woman Through A Window"

Topkapi Palace
Istanbul. Turkey. January 6th 2016

The soul lives contented
by listening,
if it wants to change
into the beauty of
terrifying shapes,
it tries to speak.

That’s why
you will not sing,
afraid as you are
of who might join with you.

The voice hesitant,
and her hand trembling
in the dark for yours.

She touches your face
and says your name
in the same instant.

The one you refused to say,
over and over,
the one you refused to say.

The Soul Lives Contented: in
‘River Flow:
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

Self

Image: Detail of the female Buddhist deity Simhavaktra Dakini, 1736-1795, China. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. 

"The Self is not difficult.

It’s not even easy.

It is the only fact there is.

Everything else is fiction including

the one who is searching for the Self."

Mooji

Letting there be room for not knowing

"Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.
When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story.
It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that.
We don’t know anything.
We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know."

Pema Chödron

Embracing the groundlessness of our situation

Art : He Iaying

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught.

Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation.

Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness.

When we resist change, it’s called suffering.

But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality,

that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness.

Another word for that is freedom — freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

–  Pema Chödron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

Opening our hearts to others

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they
trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

–  Pema Chödron, "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times"

Dying

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. 

We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, 

we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: 

our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… 

It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. 

So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?


Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, 

an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. 

Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, 

to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?”

―  Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Self-consciousness

Art : Daria Petrilli

"Self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double,
and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous.
Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering."


Alan W. Watts

Live in joy

Art : Elena Ray

‘Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.
Live in joy,
In health,
Even among the afflicted.
Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.
Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment.
Know the sweet joy of the way.'



from the Dhammapada

The Song of Creation from the Rigveda

The Song of Creation from the Rigveda (over 3,000 years old)

At first there was neither Being nor Non-being,

No kingdom of air, no sky beyond it.

Who straddled what, and where? Who gave shelter?

Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

There was no death then, nor immortality,

No sign of stirring, no curtain of day or night.

Only one thing, Breath, breathed, breathing without breath

Nothing else, nothing whatsoever.

Also, there was Darkness, darkness within darkness,

The darkness of undiscriminated chaos

Whatever existed then was void and formless,

Then came the stirring of warmth, giving shape…

Then rose Desire, primal Desire,

The primal seed, the germ of Spirit.

The searching Sages looked in their hearts, and knew:

Being was a manner of non-Being.

And a line cut Being from non-Being transversely:

What was above it, and what below it?

Only might makers, mighty forces,

Action flowing freely and a fund of energy

A Happy New Year to everybody!

When I heard the sound of the bell ringing,
there was no bell,
and there was no I -
there was only the ringing.

Once you stop clinging and let things be,
you’ll be free, even of birth and death.

You’ll transform everything…
And you’ll be at peace wherever you are.

Even as fire finds peace
in its resting place without fuel,
when thoughts become silence
the soul finds peace in its own source.

When the mind is silent,
then it can enter into a world
which is far beyond the mind:
the highest End.

The mind should be kept in the heart
as long as it has not reached the highest End.
This is wisdom, and this is liberation.

~ Upanishads

Just be ordinary

Elena Ray "Dreamstime"

"In Buddhism there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special.

Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you’re tired go and lie down.

The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand."

Lin Chi

The older I become

"The older I become,

the more I sense,

the less I speak,

the more I pray —

in ever so many ways."

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Virgin of Guadalupe & the Memorae Prayer
http://kaykeys.net/spirit/mary/memorae.html

Sandstorm

Photo : Karoline Hjorth, Eyes as Big as Plates

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.
You change direction but the sandstorm chases you.
You turn again, but the storm adjusts.
Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.
Why?
Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away,
something that has nothing to do with you.
This storm is you. Something inside of you.
So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm,
closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in,
and walk through it, step by step.
There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time.
Just fine white sand swirling into the sky like pulverized bones.
That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine."

Haruki Murakami, from 'Kafka on the Shore'

I want to give thanks

Photo : Ernst Haas

I want to give thanks to the divine

Labyrinth of causes and effects

For the diversity of beings

That form this singular universe,

For Reason, that will never give up its dream

Of a map of the Labyrinth,

For Helen’s face and the perseverance of Ulysses,

For love, which lets us see others

As God sees them,

For the solid diamond and the flowing water,

For Algebra, a palace of exact crystals,

For the mystic coins of Angelus Silesius,

For Schopenhauer,

Who perhaps deciphered the universe,

For the blazing of fire,

That no man can look at without an ancient wonder,

For mahogany, cedar, and sandalwood,

For bread and salt,

For the mystery of the rose

That spends all its colour and can not see it,

For certain eves and days of 1955,

For the hard riders who, on the plains,

Drive on the cattle and the dawn,

For mornings in Montevideo,

For the art of friendship,

For Socrates’ last day,

For the words spoken one twilight

From one cross to another,

For that dream of Islam that embraced

A thousand nights and a night,

For that other dream of Hell,

Of the tower of cleansing fire

And of the celestial spheres,

For Swedenborg,

Who talked with the angels in London streets,

For the secret and immemorial rivers

That converge in me,

For the language that, centuries ago, I spoke in Northumberland,

For the sword and harp of the Saxons,

For the sea, which is a shining desert

And a secret code for things we do not know

And an epitaph for the Norsemen,

For the word music of England,

For the word music of Germany,

For gold, that shines in verses,

For epic winter,

For the title of a book I have not read: Gesta Dei per Francos,

For Verlaine, innocent as the birds,

For crystal prisms and bronze weights,

For the tiger’s stripes,

For the high towers of San Francisco and Manhattan Island,

For mornings in Texas,

For that Sevillian who composed the Moral Epistle

And whose name, as he would have wished, we do not know,

For Seneca and Lucan, both of Cordova,

Who, before there was Spanish, had written

All Spanish literature,

For gallant, noble, geometric chess,

For Zeno’s tortoise and Royce’s map,

For the medicinal smell of eucalyptus trees,

For speech, which can be taken for wisdom,

For forgetfulness, which annuls or modifies the past,

For habits,

Which repeat us and confirm us in our image like a mirror,

For morning, that gives us the illusion of a new beginning,

For night, its darkness and its astronomy,

For the bravery and happiness of others,

For my country, sensed in jasmine flowers

Or in an old sword,

For Whitman and Francis of Assisi, who already wrote this poem,

For the fact that the poem is inexhaustible

And becomes one with the sum of all created things

And will never reach its last verse

And varies according to its writers

For Frances Haslam, who begged her children’s pardon

For dying so slowly,

For the minutes that precede sleep,

For sleep and death,

Those two hidden treasures,

For the intimate gifts I do not mention,

For music, that mysterious form of time.

–  Jorge Luis Borges

Still the Mind

Art : Katia Chausheva

"What I am really saying is that you don't need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds,
the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy.
You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all."

-  Alan Watts, Still the Mind

Remember it

"All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid.

Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Love

"The question of love is one that cannot be evaded.
Whether or not you claim to be interested in it,
from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love,
because love is not just something that happens to you:
it is a certain special way of being alive.
Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness,
a fullness, a wholeness of life."

- Thomas Merton

The Sound of Silence

"When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion.
It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water.
Its color is silver.
And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it.
The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking.
Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words,
the blindness of its light."

- Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

As you wander under the moon...

Photo by MARC LESTER / ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

The moon rises into view over the Chugach Mountains in this view from the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge
on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010, in Anchorage, Alaska.

As you wander under the holding of the moon,

stay embodied to the vulnerability as it washes through you.

Receive the transmission of lunar essence as it emerges from inside her.
 

In one moment of pure astonishment, behold the colors, the sounds,

and the somatic spinning of light that have arrived as her emissaries,

come to remind you of something the world has forgotten.
 

As you receive her into the coming days, do whatever you can to help others.

Hold them and offer them the gift of your kindness and your presence.

Show them how much you love them and how much you care about

how they are making meaning of their life as a sensitive,

alone, and connected human being.
 

Look carefully at the one you love for in the not-so-distant future they will no longer be here.

You may not be able to touch and to hold them tomorrow.
 

As the veil is parted and the secret moon inside your heart appears,

you will remember how precious it truly is here.

And what a rare opportunity you have been given

to break open in a star of love.

 

Matt Licata

Taking place around our world

 

 

 

"Without this world, we cannot attain enlightenment.

Without this world, there would be no journey.

By rejecting the world, we would be rejecting the ground and rejecting the path.

All our past history and all our neuroses are related with others in some sense.

All our experiences are based on others, basically.

As long as we have a sense of practice,

some realization that we are treading on the path,

every one of those little details, which are seeming obstacles to us,

becomes an essential part of the path.

Without them, we cannot attain anything at all – we have no feedback,

we have nothing to work with.

So in a sense all the things taking place around our world,

all the irritations and all the problems, are crucial."

- Chögyam Trungpa

Wandering in the forests of the inner and the outer worlds.

Today I feel the need to share with you that...

 

There are pieces of you wandering in the forests of the inner and the outer worlds.
Do you sense them nearby? Do you feel them gathering around you?

 

Sadness, shame, loneliness, and grief.
Abandoned joy, unbearable openness, and long-forgotten aliveness.
Even the ancient ones anxiety, unworthy, and unlovable have arrived and are circling.

 

Look carefully as they are being assembled for an extraordinary meeting.
Your raw, sensitive heart – your tender, ripening body – the most outrageous host.

 

Open to your fellow travelers and keep them close, for they are weary from a long journey.
They have not come from outside to harm you,
but are only longing for one moment of your presence and your care.
They have not appeared in order to be ‘understood,’ ‘transformed,’ or ‘healed,’
but have come spinning out of the unseen only to be held.
Held, not ‘healed.’ For what you are has never been unhealed.

 

While they may appear as obstacles along the way, they are only seeking wholeness.
If you will provide sanctuary where they can unfold and illuminate,
they will reveal their essence as pure,
wisdom-allies on the raging path of metabolization by love.

 

Matt Licata

No Knowing

Art : Wang Yi Guang

No Knowing

Do not follow the path I say

for it does not exist

you cannot find enlightenment

contained within a list

do not follow leaders

they cannot set you free

and perhaps now most importantly

listen not to me.

 

- Ikkyu

Birth, old age, Sickness and death

"Birth, old age,
Sickness and death:

From the beginning,
This is the way
Things have always been.
Any thought
Of release from this life
Will wrap you more tightly
In its snares.
The sleeping person
Looks for a Buddha,
The troubled person
Turns toward meditation.
But the one who knows
That there's nothing to seek
Knows too that there's nothing to say.
She keeps her mouth closed."

~ Ly Ngoc Kieu (11th century), Vietnamese Buddhist nun & temple director; earliest known woman writer of Vietnam

(poem translated by Thich Nhat Hanh and Jane Hirshfield)

Prayer

Grandfather,

Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk the Sacred Way.
Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.

-  Ojibway Prayer

The Body

"The body is an instrument,

and unlike the mind is blessed with a permanent limitation.

Thoughts can soar and emotions can roar,

but the feet are subject to laws that keep them on the ground.

The body lives in the present, doing only one thing at a time.

It is a faithful companion in the search for presence

when it is given more attention and respect,

when one tries to listen to its messages,

even though they are expressed in

a language foreign to the mind."

— Patty de Llosa on befriending the Body

I Am Not Old



Photo : Riitta Ikonen and Norwegian photographer Karoline Hjorth

I Am Not Old


I am not old…she said
I am rare.
I am the standing ovation
At the end of the play.
I am the retrospective
Of my life as art
I am the hours
Connected like dots
Into good sense
I am the fullness
Of existing.
You think I am waiting to die…
But I am waiting to be found
I am a treasure.
I am a map.
And these wrinkles are
Imprints of my journey
Ask me anything.

- Samantha Reynolds

Humanity

"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

Farewell

Art : Christian Schloe, Farewell

Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skyward.
Higher and higher did it rise,
yet larger and larger did it grow.
At first it was but like a swallow,
then a lark,
then an eagle,
then as vast as a spring cloud,
and then it filled the starry heavens.
Out of my heart a bird flew skyward.
And it waxed larger as it flew.
Yet it left not my heart.

~ Kahlil Gibran
from The Forerunner, His Parables and Poems

Connection

Siddhartha said someone who brushes

against you in the street has

shared an experience

with you for five

hundred

lives.

- Mary Ruefle from Talking to Strangers

Decision

"I don't know what I'm doing most of the time.
 

There's a certain humor in realizing that.

I can never figure out the kind of tie to put on in the morning.

I don't have any strategy or plan to get through the day.

It is literally a problem for me to decide which side of the bed to get out on.

These are staggering problems.

I remember talking to this Trappist monk in a monastery.

He's been there twelve years. A pretty severe regime.

I expressed my admiration for him and he said

'Leonard, I've been here twelve years and every morning,

I have to decide whether I'm going to stay or not.'

I knew exactly what he was talking about."

- Leonard Cohen

Relationship

"But only someone who is ready for everything,

who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible,

will live the relationship with another person as something alive

and will himself sound the depths of his own being."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

THE SHELL

 

THE SHELL

An open sandy shell

on the beach

empty but beautiful

like a memory

of a protected previous self.

The most difficult griefs,

ones in which

we slowly open

to a larger sea, a grander

sweep that washes

all our elements apart.

So strange the way

we are larger

in grief

than we imagined

we deserved or could claim

and when loss floods

into us

like the long darkness it is

and the old nurtured hope

is drowned again,

even stranger then

at the edge of the sea,

to feel the hand of the wind

laid on our shoulder,

reminding us

how death grants

a fierce and fallen freedom

away from the prison

of a constant

and continued presence,

how in the end

those who have left us

might no longer need us,

with all our tears

and our much needed

measures of loss

and that their own death

is as personal

and private

as that life of theirs

which you never really knew,

and another disturbing thing,

that exultation

is possible

without them.

And they for themselves

in fact

are glad to have let go

of all the stasis

and the enclosure

and the need for them to live

like some prisoner

that you only wanted

to remain incurious

and happy in your love,

never looking for the key,

never wanting to

turn the lock and walk

away

like the wind,

unneedful of you,

ungovernable,

unnamable,

free.

THE SHELL.

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

"I'm going to miss you"

Art : Cheiko

Zen teacher Issan Dorsey, who established the Maitri Hospice in San Francisco,

was on his deathbed when one of his closest friends came to visit him.

"I'm going to miss you," the friend said.

"I'm going to miss you, too," responded Issan. He was silent for a moment.
Then he asked, "Are you going somewhere?"



- Sean Murphy
One Bird, One Stone

Meeting Life with Gratefulness

Père Lachaise Cemetery Paris - Letters from the other side

"I am grateful for this precious life."

"I am grateful for this old and beautiful earth."

"I am grateful for the holy gift of friendship."

"I am grateful that I have the heart to serve."

"I am grateful for the silence and stillness that join us."

"I am grateful for those hard lessons learned."

"I am grateful for every given day."

"I am grateful for you."

Paris 13. 11. 15

Samsara

Samsara literally means "wandering-on."

Many people think of it as the Buddhist name for the place where we currently live.
But in the early Buddhist texts, it's the answer, not to the question,
"Where are we?" but to the question, "What are we doing?"
Instead of a place, it's a process:
the tendency to keep creating worlds and then moving into them.
As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there.
At the same time, you bump into other people who are creating their own worlds, too.

The process can sometimes be enjoyable.
In fact, it would be perfectly innocuous if it didn't entail so much suffering.
The worlds we create keep caving in and killing us.
Moving into a new world requires effort:
not only the pains and risks of taking birth,
but also the hard knocks - mental and physical - that come
from going through childhood into adulthood, over and over again."

- Geoffrey DeGraff

The Thangka Painter

giving-themselves

"Heaven and Earth give themselves.
Air, water, plants, animals, and humans give themselves to each other.
It is in this giving-themselves-to-each-other that we actually live.

Whether you appreciate it or not, it is true."
 

- Kodo Sawaki

The truth about ourselves

Photo : Anna O, Started to blossom in my box

"Something happens when we face the truth about ourselves.

For one thing,
 

there is no room for pomposity, arrogance, or self-absorption.

More than one person has pointed out

how closely conjoined "humility" is with "humor."

A sense of humor, like a true sense of humility,

involves ruthless honesty about who we are,

without disguise or pretense.

The temptation, of course,

is to become weighted with gravity,

and to take ourselves very seriously indeed.

The point is that the opposite route is the direct one.
The truth of the matter is that we are

singularly gifted in avoiding self-discovery,

even though we pay lip service to it.

Impressed with our self-importance and weighted

with the seriousness of the adventure of self-discovery,

we are sitting ducks for missing the meaning of what is going on."

-  Doris Donnelly

That's what makes us human

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

We're all looking for heaven, which is later and elsewhere.

Actually everything in front of us right now

is a miracle, here and then gone, forever.

What's the nature of that miracle?

I don't know:

no one does, and that's it's nature.

You can't even really say that:

but you have to keep on asking the question.

That's what makes us human."

Norman Fischer