Two Bags

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There are two kinds of thoughts that dominate almost all humans: thoughts revolving around our own history and thoughts revolving around our own future. These thoughts are mesmerising, and they all have the same fingerprints: my life.

It’s as though you’re walking through life lugging these two big, heavy, important bags with you – one containing all your thoughts about your history, the other all your thoughts about your future. They’re wonderful, valuable bags. But try putting them down, just for a bit. See if you can greet some part of life more immediately, here and now. And if you’re successful, you can pick the bags back up later. If you want to.


 Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be wrong: and Other Wisdoms from Life as a Forest Monk

The End Is Not an End.

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One path seems to end. He sits. And he sees life continuing in another form. The same energy that flowed and ended as water, now flows and rises as clouds.

Sometimes wisdom arises after we have reached a limit or let something go

In middle years I came to love the Dao (Way)
When the mood comes, I go for a walk alone.

I walk up to where the water runs out [is exhausted]

And sit to watch the moment the clouds effortlessly arise [being born]

Wang Wei, 701–761 CE, Tang Dynasty poet, painter, and devout Buddhist, Final Retreat at Zhongnan

Sunday Quote: Containing the energy

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If we can face our fear instead of running from it, we find that

it contains the energy of the transformation we are seeking.

The terror becomes the teacher.

Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames

periods of not-knowing

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The moon in her poetry is rarely just the moon. She sees only enough to keep moving. Often, wisdom lies not in seeing the destination but in taking the next step. Darkness can be part of the journey,

From darkness
into a darker path
I must make my way;
Faintly shine from afar,
moon on the mountain’s edge.

Izumi Shikibu, 976–1030 CE,

The Stillness We Never Learn

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The fundamental human condition: we are surrounded by things that are silent and still.

Look: trees simply are; the houses
we live in still remain in place

We alone
fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind.

And all things conspire to keep silent about us, partly from shame, perhaps, and partly as unutterable hope.

Rilke Duino Elegies (Second Elegy)

Don’t invite the future

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Rest isn’t the opposite of work – it’s the ground we return to within work, letting go of fixed outcomes, letting go of fears.

The practice is

to restore yourself to the here and now,

so that you can rest.

The deepest kind of rest is the letting go of views, of hopes, of fears, and of the idea of a self.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation.