We need the tonic of wildness
Thoreau
Some people want it pure white
but sweep as you may,
you can’t empty the mind
Keizan Jokin, 1268 – 1325, second founder of Soto Zen
photo gloumouth1
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now...
Mary Oliver, One or Two things
photo david shankbone
What we sense as self is always changing and unsatisfactory. The sense of self always has to have something or do something. It wants to be approved of by somebody, or be busy winning at something, or be analysing itself or trying to wipe itself out. It is always orbiting around some need or another. There’s the need to know something, or have an opinion; or the need to feel one’s doing good enough; the need to feel that one is useful; the need to feel that other people like me. The need to be the same as everyone else. Or the need to be different from everyone else. Or, different on some days, the same on other days. And the need to be able to change from being same to being different when I need to. And so on – it never really settles.
Ajahn Sucitto, Good Enough
photo ketterechts
It may be that
when we no longer know
what to do,
we have come
to our real work,
and when we
no longer know
which way to go,
we have begun
our real journey
Wendell Berry, The Real Work
photo Anna16
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired,
so long as we can see far enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
photo from the top of Skellig Michael by mike shields
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