When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A bunch of shepherd’s purse.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Ryoken
Month: February 2014
Noticing the journey
Every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Bashô, Oku no Hosomichi (1689).
photo Graham Cole
….its already here
“The Island that you cannot go beyond” is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware. [It]….is very powerful, because it points to the principle of an awareness that you can’t get beyond. It’s very simple, very direct, and you can’t conceive it. You have to trust it. You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings. The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are. We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both.
Ajahn Sumedho, A difficulty with the word nibbana
photo of full moon over the Skellig islands, off Co Kerry, by bloodybucaneer
Sunday Quote: wherever you are…
Wherever you stand
be the soul of that place
Rumi
photo harald hoyer
Moving along
When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine multiple things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and essence are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will become clear that nothing at all has unchanging self
Dogen
photo wilfredo r rodriguez
Not seeing
As I was driving the other day in Kildare I noticed silhouettes of bare trees on the hill tops and it remanded me of this quote. We do not always see the full story of what is happening in our lives. We have to hold a space for not-knowing, for allowing things to develop at their own pace.
I prefer winter ……when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
Andrew Wyatt, American Painter
Mindfulbalance 