Searching for a home

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, the Patron Saint of the Irish, so a few posts on identity, home,  the self and being secure in who we are.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

Josephine Hart

Different rhythms

 

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.

Rumi

All shall be well

 

I was recently reminded that this was my favourite phrase for many years. It comes from the 14th Century Christian Anchoress Julian of Norwich. It reflects the same wisdom in the face of impermanence as the previous Taoist quote and Sylvia Boorstein’s words yesterday. It helps us to look deeper even when the mind gets confused and life seems difficult.

All shall be well, and all shall be well,

and all manner of things shall be well

Julian of Norwich

The 10,000 things rise and fall…

The “10, 000 things” is a shorthand way of talking about all the experiences –  good and bad – which arise and pass away in our lifetime.  It stands for all of reality, which contains the right mix of experiences for our growth, and with its ebbs and flows is continually rearranging itself.
The ten thousand things arise together;  In their arising is their return.
Now they flower, and flowering sink homeward,  returning to the root.
The return to the root is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be, and to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.

Lao Tzu

The heart

 

Li Po ( 760 A.D), considered the greatest of the Chinese poets,  wrote these famous words on friendship

What is the use of talking,

and there is no end of talking,

There is no end of things in the heart.

Sometime today drop into the calm beneath

 

The nature of the mind is comparable to the ocean. The incessant movement of waves  on the surface of the ocean prevents us from seeing its depths.

If we dive down there are no more waves; there is just the immense serenity of the depths….

Pema Wangyal Rinpoche