Year: 2013

Sunday Quote: On not holding things too tightly

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Things are not as they are seen,

nor are they otherwise. 

Lankavatara Sutra

What we see, what we know

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The relation beP1000373tween what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Beauty and life

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white-cherry-flowersOur sense of beauty

and our understanding of the nature of the good life

are intertwined.

Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

Holding

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holding a spaceBy not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation,  we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. If it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than the tendency to get to know them. Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently,  thoughts and feelings come and go  in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

How we carry

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....in the ordinary moments of this life.

How we carry what has gone wrong for us

is essential to being at home in ourselves,

and present to the world with all of its failings.

Krista Tippett

Keeping here

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daffodils11

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; 

And give us not to think so far away 

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here 

All simply in the springing of the year.

Robert Frost