Beautiful summer mornings here these last few days…
But this morning, a kind day has descended, from nowhere,
and making coffee in the usual way, measuring grounds
with the wooden spoon, I remembered,
this is how things happen, cup by cup, familiar gesture
after gesture, what else can we know of safety
or of fruitfulness?
Marie Howe, From Nowhere
To see the Way with your own eyes,
quit agreeing and disagreeing.
This battle between likes and dislikes – that’s the primal disease of the mind.
Seng–ts’an, 529 – 606, Inscription on Faith in Mind
When your eyes are closed, you can listen to the inner voices that “speak” in the mind. They say “I am this…”I should not be like that”. You can use those voices for bringing you to the space between thoughts. Rather than making a big problem about the obsession and fears that go on in your mind, you can open your attention and see those obsessions and fears as mental conditions that come and go in space.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way
The universe does not revolve around us.
The stars and planets,
spinning through the ballroom of space,
dance with one another
quite outside of our small life.
We cannot hold gravity or seasons;
even air and water inevitably evade our grasp.
Why not, then, let go?
We could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing the native element.
Why pretend we can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in our blood
before breath releases us into the world again.
Did we think the fragile boundary of our skin
could build a wall?
Let’s listen.
Every molecule is humming its particular pitch.
Of course we are a symphony.
Whose tune do we think
the planets are singing
as they dance?
Lynn Ungar, Boundaries
Mindfulbalance 