Satisfaction is very close and simple: the strange happiness of completely joining with whatever we are doing in that moment… When the writer Thoreau was on his deathbed, a visitor asked him – “from where you lie, so close to the brink of the dark river, can you say how the opposite shore looks to you?”
It is said that he replied gently, “One world at a time”
Susan Murphy, Upside Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the ordinary
Stress is caused by the mind’s response to events and suffering by the stories we tell ourselves about our lives:
Not being able to govern events,
I govern myself.
(Ne pouvant régler les événements, je me règle moi-même)
Michel de Montaigne ( 1533 – 1592), Essais, Book II
Another Autumn Saturday, another poem.
A second storm is hitting Ireland today – clouds obscure the sun, but the sun is still there.
This world –
absolutely pure
As is.
Behind the fear,
Vulnerability.
Behind that,
Sadness,
then compassion
And behind that the vast sky.
Rick Fields, 1942–1999, American journalist, poet, editor-at-large of Tricycle: A Buddhist Review.
Died at 59 of cancer. He wrote a series of poems on his illness from a Buddhist perspective.
Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.
Eckhart Tolle
Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.
G. K Chesterton
The storm passed over Ireland yesterday, blowing down trees, cutting power and diverting plans. How easy it is to be blown off course.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Wendell Berry
Should I not have intelligence with the earth?
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself?
Thoreau, Walden
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