Tag: balance

Earth stuff and star stuff

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The practice of cultivating a loving and kind attitude towards ourselves and others, is not a self-improvement technique but an act of quiet daring. As we let down our habitual guard, as we soften and relax, allowing ourselves to loosen the grip of the thoughts and fears that haunt us, we remember the life is here, quietly offering itself to us in this very moment. We remember that we inhabit bodies that come to us from ancestors who endured and overcame much. We remember our deep connection to the earth and also to the stars. We are made of earth stuff and star stuff.

Tracy Cochran

Sent out

Karl Duffy2 Comments

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear: “You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing“….

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 59

Don’t keep a chair

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There will always be times when you feel discouraged. 
I too, have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it.

I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Resting In How Things Are

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Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities.

Geshe Shawopa 1070–1141(?), quoted in Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of my Perfect teacher

A raindrop

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The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest gem.
Cherish your body.
It is yours this time only.
The human form is won with difficulty.
It is easy to lose.
All worldly things are brief,
Like a flash of lightning in the sky.
This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop
That disappears even as it comes into being.
Therefore set your goal.
Make use of every day and night to achieve it

Je Tsongkhapa, 1357–1419, Tibetan Buddhist monk

With all your energy

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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View