It is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
False views make up the world
true views are from the world beyond,
when true and false are both dismissed
your buddha nature will manifest
this is simply the straightforward teaching…
delusion lasts countless kalpas
awareness takes but an instant.
Huineng, 638 – 713, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” school of Buddhism
[a kalpa is a long period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thinking]
Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.
And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tranquil, undisturbed, unified.: a nice plan for this day
My body was tranquil and undisturbed, my mind concentrated and unified. The Buddha MN 4.22 (i 21)
In the body, tranquillity is like a deep, clear lake with a wide, still surface.
In the mind, it’s like the soft, quiet, fresh air over the lake at dawn.
Gil Fronsal, Tranquility
Can you remember who you were,
before the world told you who you should be?
Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994, American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
A new month…
The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.
May Sarton, The Angels and the Furies
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