A lesson on really paying attention, from an unusual guide:
“Holmes you see everything!” Watson exclaimed.
“I see no more than you,
but I have trained myself to notice what I see“, said Holmes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
photo ian kirk
Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think.
Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
A. A. Milne, The House on Pooh Corner
Let us come alive to the splendour that is all around us
and see the beauty in ordinary things
Thomas Merton
photo Lewis Ronald
Dogen Zen-ji said, “To know yourself is to forget yourself.” We might think that knowing ourselves is a very ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are — we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling separate from everything else and everyone else, are made up of opinions. They are made up of dogma; they are made of prejudice. These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves. There is a Tibetan teaching that is often translated as, “Self-cherishing is the root of all suffering.” It can be hard for a Western person to hear the term “self-cherishing” without misunderstanding what is being said. I would guess that 85% of us Westerners would interpret it as telling us that we shouldn’t care for ourselves….. But that isn’t what it really means. What it is talking about is fixating.
Pema Chodron, To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself
photo U.S fish and wildlife service
More wisdom, this time from the Taoism tradition, on keeping our sense of self fluid:
Can you call your mind back from its wandering
and keep to its original oneness?
Can you concentrate the energy of life
and keep it supple like a newborn child?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and in this way understand all things?
Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 10
photo amolnaik3k
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension,
which we feel as paralysis because
we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.
Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet
photo of the coffee shop in Kilcullen, called An Tearmann, which is Irish for “Refuge” or “Sanctuary”
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