To me, life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate; otherwise not. Celebration means: whatsoever happens is irrelevant – I will celebrate. Celebration is not conditional on certain things: “When I am happy then I will celebrate,” or, “When I am unhappy I will not celebrate.” Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate life.
Osho
All wisdom traditions, religious and secular, speak of the ability to maintain a still place within, no matter how busy we are. The word mindfulness traces its origin to the pali word “to remember”
The true saint goes in and out amongst the people
and eats and sleeps with them
and buys and sells in the market
and marries and takes part in social intercourse,
and never forgets God for a single moment.
Abu Sa’id ibn Abi l-Tkayr, Sufi Poet, 967 – 1049
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
C.S. Lewis, The Fours Loves
Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself
… and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.
Donald Winnicott, English paediatrician and psychoanalyst
A nice poem for a rainy Saturday.
Her capacity to see wonder in nature, and in life, no matter what the weather, was extraordinary
Last night
the rain spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves at the moment,
at which moment
my right hand was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
Mary Oliver, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
A stormy morning here with high winds predicted for the day. Turbulent news reports also these days, full of dire predictions and evidence that we live in an age of division and suspicion.
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands and climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen, the terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
Hafiz, from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky.
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