We pray for the big things
and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
photo maxo
Month: February 2015
Looking directly
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
photo mathias krumbholz
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Not running after but staying in the here and now
Zen master Daowu visited the assembly of master Shitou.
Daowu asked, “What is the fundamental meaning of the teachings?”
Shitou said, “Not to attain, not to know”.
Daowu, Zen Master, China, 748 – 807
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Never happy with ourselves
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them, we may forget altogether to live them
Alan Watts, This is it
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Just being
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness
and simply be happy.
(De temps à autre, il est bon de faire une pause dans notre quête du bonheur
et d’être simplement heureux)
Guillaume Apollinaire
photo jim pennucci
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Little pieces of heaven
A beautiful description of what meditation time is: an act of kindness towards ourselves, a time when we do not have to be anything or get anywhere. We can allow trouble and judgment to be busy somewhere else, while we allow ourselves be supported and held in a kinder space.
Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.
People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.
Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People wont even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.
Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.
William Stafford, Any Morning
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