Tag: balance

A lunar eclipse tonight

Just as we can’t see all the phases of the moon on any one night, we can’t hear the phases of truth or the heart unless we listen for how the truth of feeling grows full and dark and full again over time.

Patience, the art of waiting, is the heart-skill that opens the world. I’m discovering after all these years that listening deeply over time is one uninterrupted growing – one continuous act.

In this way, the tree on that ridge bending to the wind till it grows to the bend is how it listens over time. And in the act of receiving our darkest cries, the heart begins to soften the howl of our wound.

Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

The Buddha said that all conditions =

whether they are internal conditions, bodily conditions or external conditions –

are not self, their nature is to change.

Contemplate this truth until you see it clearly

Ajahn Chah, Our Real Home

Just as a rock is not shaken by a storm,

a wise person is not affected by praise or blame

The Dhammapada, 81

We are obsessed with speed, with cramming more and more into every minute. But as the poet William Stafford says, ‘The more you hurry, the more you feel like a stranger to your own life.’

The human soul does not want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed – to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is.

Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old