Every place is the road of enlightenment
Everywhere is a forest of virtues
Fa-Yen Wen-I, 885 – 998 Chinese Chan teacher
Month: April 2019
In this moment
Back to work after the long Easter weekend:
The way to attain balance:
Who dares to equal the person
who falls into neither being nor non-being!
Everyone wishes to step out of
the current of ordinary life,
But this person, after all, comes back
To sit among the coals and the ashes.
Dongshan Liangjie, Chinese Chan (Zen) teacher (806-869), Verses on the Five Ranks
Follow your own path
Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way
Martin Buber
Sunday Quote: Hold things lightly
Aeschylus says, “There is no effort in what is divine.” There is an easiness in salvation which is more difficult to us than all our efforts.
In one of Grimm’s stories there is a competition between a giant and a little tailor to see which is the stronger. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before it comes down again. The little tailor lets a bird fly and it does not come down at all. Anything without wings always comes down again in the end.
Simone Weil, Waiting on God
Stilling the mind’s questions
I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
Mary Oliver, What Gorgeous Thing
Calling our lives to attention
That the silent presence of your death
Would call your life to attention,
Wake you up to how scarce your time is
And to the urgency to become free
And equal to the call of your destiny.
That you would gather yourself
And decide carefully
How you can live
The life you would love
To look back on
From your deathbed.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
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