Holding our concepts and views about ourselves lightly:
Without abiding anywhere,
let the mind come forth
The Diamond Sutra
Sunday Quote: Non-abiding
Month: November 2023
The heaven of the grass
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.
Mary Oliver, What Is There Beyond Knowing
A vale of soul-making
Our path will always be strewn with broken branches and stones, yet even the obstacles in our path are part of the path. They make it real. We are not angels and the hard edges of the physical world offer a resistance that, if they do not break us first, can temper the soul and open it to another world, which is nowhere if not here .
This life is a “vale of Soul-making” Keats says. When we see it that way, being lost is not only part of the journey; it is the royal way of becoming real, meaning that our outer knowing can be an accurate reflection of our inner knowing.
Roger Housden, Ten poems for Difficult Times
Valuing simplicity
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness
Having glimpsed the state of perfect peace,
Let them be able and honest,
Upright and gentle in speech, humble and not proud
Contented and easy to satisfy,
Not burdened in their duties, and simple in living.
Peaceful and calm, wise and skilful,
not proud or demanding in nature.
The Metta Sutta
Every moment
Treat every moment as your last.
It is not preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki roshi, 1904 – 1971
Resources
You understand so little of what is around you
because you do not use what is within you
Hildegard of Bingen, 1098 – 1179, German Benedictine abbess and polymath, writer, composer, philosopher and medical practitioner
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