The eve of the feast of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season. It was the most important of the four Celtic Festivals, the start of winter and the darker part of the year. Bonfires were lit as a reminder of the victory of light over the increasing dark days.
When you do something,
you should burn yourself completely,
like a good bonfire,
leaving no trace of yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
Mary Oliver, Fall Song
In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Mindfulness is paying attention to real time reality. This can seem like such a small thing – and it is. It is a state of attention that is as natural and soft and wordless as our peripheral vision. Yet mindfulness also means to remember… what? Mindfulness pulls us back to a greater living reality, reminding us that life is more than our own repetitive thoughts or fears or desires. Rooted in the present tense world of the body rather than the thoughts, the strangely named mindfulness (bodyfulness? Lifefulness?) delivers us from the hellish centrifugal force of our own egos.
Tracey Cochran, The Open Door
Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next.
Jack Kornfield
Mindfulbalance 