The wise person uses the mind like a mirror.
It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing.
It receives but does not keep.
Zhuangzi, Chinese Philosopher, 4th Century BC
Sunday Quote: Like a mirror
Tag: balance
Drops of Dew
The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
catch and hit so that it won’t fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
it collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
the kitchen door won’t close,
there are cracks in the foundation,
the torn knees of children’s pants . . .
One can’t keep everything in mind.
The wonder is
that beside all this one can notice
the spring which is so full of everything
continuing in all directions – into evening clouds,
into the redwing’s song and into every
drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
as far as the eye can see, into the dusk.
Jaan Kaplinski, 1940 – 2021, Estonian poet, philosopher and cultural critic, The wonder is
More wonderful
I do not live happily or comfortably
with the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
the news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
having felt something more wonderful
Than all the electricity of New York City.
Mary Oliver, With Thanks to the Field Sparrow Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble
Be faithful
The river is famous to the fish…
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse…
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom…
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Famous [extracts]
Flow
Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Rilke, Part I, Sonnet IV
Sunday Quote: Contentment
I have a room all to myself;
it is nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Mindfulbalance 