Year: 2018

A lightness of touch

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If we do our work with a focus on future results or only for those who are “deserving”, we are likely to start judging others and ourselves. Similarly, if we focus on ‘the way it should be’,  we get frustrated when it does not turn out that way.

Staying in the present moment, holding things lightly and with generosity, changes things; it is joyful and promotes gratitude

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection;

The water has no mind to retain their image.

Zen poem from the Zenrin-kushū, a 15th Century compilation of Zen writings

A new morning

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If only we could have this understanding each new day…

Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning

Izumi Shikibu, born 976, Japanese poet.

She is considered the greatest poet of the Heian period

Under the shadows

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Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.

When the mind has settled, we are
established in our essential nature, which
is unbounded consciousness.

Our essential nature is usually overshadowed
by the activity of the mind.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Sunday Quote: Empty

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Everything that seems empty

is full of the angels of God.

Hilary of Poitiers, 310 – 368 AD

Each moment is a new moment

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Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, ‘Can a person lay a new foundation every day?’

The old man said,

‘If they work hard, they can lay a new foundation at every moment.‘ 

From the sayings of the Desert Fathers. Abba Moses lived 330 – 405 AD

Here and not here

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Acknowledging that there is a groundlessness at the heart of the human condition, or an unsatisfactory element to our experience, is part of most spiritual traditions. As Pema Chodron says: “The truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure.…”

Why are we made the way we are made, that to love

Is to want?

Well, you are gone now, and this morning I have walked out

To the back shore,

To the ocean which, even if we think we have measured it,

Has not final measure.

Sometimes you can see the great whales there,

Breaching and playing.

Sometimes the swans linger just long enough

For us to be astonished.

Then they lift their wings, they become again

A part of the untouchable clouds.

Mary Oliver, There you were and it was like spring