Don’t call it a way; it is more a kind of skill.
It is not even that.
Stay open and quiet, that is all.
What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way.
Sri Nisargadatta, 1897 – 1981 Indian non-dualist teacher
Stay open and quiet
Month: March 2025
Slow down
The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.
Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are travelling for
Louis L’Amour, Western author
Keep the mind high
What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty.
No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self, which is poetry.
Matsuo Bashō, 1644 – 1694
New Spring blossoms
Long ago and far from here, a pilgrim was traveling in the hills. His thoughts were like clouds and dreams. He became lost in his walking.
He rounded a bend, and on the opposite wall of the canyon there was a peach tree in blossom. The blossoms were white with crimson in the center. No veil separated him from them, and suddenly the peach blossoms were him. The tree, the river, the birds, the sunlight, the morning cold – everything was peach blossoms. He laughed out loud. His name was Lingyun, and he wrote:
“For thirty years I searched for a Master Swordsman.
How many times did the leaves fall, and the branches burst into bud?
But from the moment I saw these peach blossoms,
I’ve had no doubts”.
It can be a shock – the heart coming forth. Anything, anything that we meet, is a peach blossom. An email about cancer, a phone call, the winter moonrise. When we truly meet any part of the universe, we recognize it. It feels like I’m seeing my own face. The things I thought I needed to be happy, I don’t need. I don’t need the perfectly respectable life that everyone wants. Mainly I don’t need to know what happens next. My own life is an unknown path through peach blossoms.
John Tarrant, The World Catches Us Every Time
The trick
The trick, as far as Buddhism is concerned,
is to accept the fact that no experience can ever be as complete as we would wish,
that no object can ever satisfy completely
Mark Epstein
Sunday Quote: a river that flows
There is no end.
There is no beginning.
There is only the passion of life.
Federico Fellini
Mindfulbalance 