The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering,
it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.
What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth.
Suffering is part of life,
and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Hard Times
Apprentice yourself to the curve of your own disappearance
David Whyte
The autumn equinox arrives at 9:54 PM on Saturday, September 22, officially marking the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere…..
Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
– the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay — how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures
When I rise up
Let me rise up joyful
like a bird.
When I fall
Let me fall without
regret
like a leaf
Wendell Berry, Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer
Become totally empty.
Let your heart be at peace.
Amidst the rush of worldly comings and goings,
observe how endings become beginnings.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 16
Very windy these days, as first the tail end of the tropical storm passed over the country, and this morning Storm Ali shakes things up.
The first of the leaves start to fall.
The Heart Sutra says, “all phenomena in their own-being are empty.” “Own-being” means separate, independent existence… everything is a tentative expression of one seamless, ever-changing landscape. So no individual person or thing has any permanent, fixed identity.
Lewis Redmond, Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism
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