Category: Make the most of life

Sunday Quote: Sitting with dragons

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File:Chinese draak.jpg

Our deepest fears

are the dragons guarding from us

our greatest treasures.

Rilke

What you already have within

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focus stained glass

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

Rilke, Book of Images

Curious about the mind

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File:Curiosity in children.jpg

The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether has to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness. The ground is ourselves; we’re here to study ourselves and to get to know ourselves now, not later.  One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem; the point is to see it.

Pema Chodron.

photo Vitold Muratov

Starting from where you are

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Coming home

Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all that you have to work with. The process of becoming who you will be, begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

Doors that open

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dark_windowEither you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

Adrienne Rich, Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Why disruption is good

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Carnival ride upside down.jpg

The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favour:

hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out

Hafiz

Image : Flickruser Brent and MariLynn