Do not speak to me of angels
unless you want to lie by
their side on the surface of emerald lake
and live forever with your eyes open.
My own angels take many forms.
Today they are trees.
Etel Adnan, born Beruit 1925 Lebanese-American poet
Some Taoist wisdom for the journey. Real relationship with what is deepest in our hearts is something we know instinctive and survives our poor words and concepts:
I confess that there is nothing to teach:
There is no religion, no science, no writings, which will really show your mind the Way.
Today I speak in this way, tomorrow in another,
but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind.
Lao Tzu (attributed), The Huahujing
The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God.
I’m not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
Starting on holidays today…
Our early childhood interactions with our parents establish our own particular balance between being and doing. Society’s dominant model tells us that we need to be constantly doing, getting places, with careers that are “going somewhere”. “Going nowhere” is not a good sign. However, not leaning into the future allows the little present moments to be more rich, and sometimes the more complex things in life require us to hold the present and push down deeper into the unknown. As John Tarrant reminds us, in-between is where we humans always are.
Do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.
Dogen
As long as we conceive reality in terms of self and time, as a “me” who is someplace and can go some other place, then we are not realizing that going forwards, going backwards, and standing still are all entirely dependent upon the relative truths of self, locality, and time. In terms of physical reality, there is a coming and going. But think about it. Where can we truly go? Do we ever really go anywhere? Wherever we go we are always “here.”
Ajahn Amaro
separation, the unsayable absence.
There’s a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it.
Give more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to
the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue
and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.
Rumi
The line from the Dhammapada, a compilation of sayings attributed to the Buddha, that seems the best expression of wisdom, is: “Anyone who understands impermanence, ceases to be contentious.”
Does that make sense to you on as many levels as it does to me? I understand it, primarily, as meaning “I have only a certain span of life allotted to me, so I don’t want to waste a single moment of it fighting.” Other times, if I catch myself on the brink of contention, the instruction reminds me, “Whatever is happening will change, and what I add to this situation is part of the change. Agonizing makes it worse.” And sometimes, if I remember that whatever is happening will cause results that I really cannot anticipate (although I often do and worry needlessly), I say to myself, “I have no idea whether this changed circumstance, which I resent, is actually a good or a bad thing in the long run. I can wait to see.”
Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an Inside Job
The Buddha’s instructions to his son, Rahula, who was aged seven:
Rahula, develop your meditation so that it is like space,
for when you develop meditation that is like space,
the agreeable and disagreeable contacts that arise will not invade your mind and remain.
Just as space is not established anywhere, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like space.
Mindfulbalance 