Fall floods have washed away the planks of the bridge;
shouldering our sandals, we wade the narrow stream.
I dabble in the flow, delighted by the shallowness of the stream,
admiring how firm the stones are.
The point in life is to know what’s enough –
why envy those otherworld immortals?
With the happiness held in one inch-square heart
you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.
Gensei, Japanese monk and poet,
1623―1668
I want to learn how to walk down the ladder gracefully.
I have this image – I would like to get smaller and smaller in a relevant way.
Carly Simon, on what she learned from dealing with cancer and other life setbacks, quoted in Sara Davidson, The First Day of the Rest of My Life
Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out
to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing, as we must, how the vivacity of what was, is married
to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on
though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.
Mary Oliver, Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
The festival of Samhain, which is behind modern-day Halloween, marked the end of the Celtic year and of agricultural work. People followed the rhythm of nature and wound down their activity. This festival began that period of resting, and was an occasion for meeting up, for building bonfires, celebrating the harvest and for storytelling. It was felt that the gap between the material and spiritual worlds was very thin at this time. The bonfire tradition still persists in Ireland and England to this day. The Western Churches took over the importance of this date – with its themes of endings and beginnings – and added to them remembrance for those who have gone before us. So…reminders of change but also of celebration, of fully living each moment that is given to us.
We must make good use of this life for the time we have left. This brief flash of light, like the sun appearing through the clouds.
Kalu Rinpoche
There is a famous phrase in Japanese Buddhism that tries to explain this. “Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self,” it suggests. Then “body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.” This backward step is another way of describing Right Action.
You settle into yourself rather than trying to make the troubling thing go away. If anything drops away, it does so by itself. You cannot make it happen directly.
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.
John O’Donoghue
Mindfulbalance 