air carries the taste
of ocean-going liners
shadows of Canada geese
colour the salt grass
water trickles inland
suggests the threat of nesting swans
black Essex mud
refuses to take shape
I can live with this promise
that nothing is in place
but everything is here
Levinia Greenlaw, Estuary
All that we are looking for in life — all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind — is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don’t take the time to pause and notice what we already have…Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, pause from time to time and relax your mind. You don’t have to change anything about your experience. You can let thoughts and feelings come and go freely, and leave your senses wide open. Make friends with your experience and see if you can notice the spacious awareness that is with you all the time. Everything you ever wanted is right here in this present moment of awareness.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Letter to students before starting three year wandering retreat.
In silence, we learn to make distinctions. Those who fly silence, fly also from distinctions. [The person]….who loves …silence ..fears the noise that takes the sharp edge off every experience of reality. He avoids the unending movement that blurs all beings together into a crowd of undistinguishable things.
Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
photo a davey
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil.
We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy,
but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are,
not where we wish we were.
Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work”
