I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.
But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.
Lal Ded, 14th-century Kashmiri saint and mystic poet
Just sit
Tag: balance
The witness
There is one technique which is known as adopting the role of the witness – and holding onto that role – ultimately, to the exclusion of all roles. The witness is not evaluative. It does not judge your actions. It merely notes them. This point is important. Most of the time the inner voices of most people are continually evaluative. “I’m good for doing this” or “I’m bad for doing that.” You must make that evaluative role an object of contemplation as well. Keep in mind that the witness does not care whether you become enlightened or not. It merely notes how it all is.
Ram Daas, Be Here Now
Sunday Quote: Inside ourselves
There are people who are unhappy regardless of the work they do
or the relationship they are in,
and yet they continuously fool themselves into thinking
that an external makeover will affect them internally.
Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
Absolute presence
Reality met on its own terms demands absolute presence, and absolute giving away, an ability to live on equal terms with the fleeting and the eternal, the hardly touchable and the fully possible, a full bodily appearance and disappearance, a rested giving in and giving up;another identity braver, more generous and more here than the one looking hungrily for the easy, unearned answer.
David Whyte
Joy in every circumstance
A lovely image of joy in the midst of the changing currents of life
On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.
Issa, Japanese Buddhist poet, 1763-1827
Being open
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Izumi Shikibu c., 974 – 1034
The moon in Japanese poetry is always the moon; often it is also the image of awakening. This poem reminds that if a house is walled so tightly that it lets in no wind or rain, if a life is walled so tightly that it lets in no pain, grief, anger, or longing, it will also be closed to the entrance of what is most wanted.
Translation and commentary by Jane Hirshfield
Mindfulbalance 