If we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves,
it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
(Si nous sommes incapables de trouver la tranquillite en nous-mêmes,
il ne sert à rien de la chercher ailleurs)
La Rochefoucauld,
Tag: balance
True potential
Calm in quiet times is not real calm:
When you can be calm in the midst of activity, this is the true state of nature.
Happiness in time of comfort is not real happiness
When you can be happy in the midst of challenges, then you see the true potential of the mind.
Hanchu Daoren, Chinese philosopher, 1572 – 1620
photo bureau of land management
Learning from nature
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant.
Let your awareness rest upon it.
How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being.
Allow nature to teach you stillness
Eckhart Tolle
photo hans braxmeier
Birdsong on the first day of Spring
I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don’t know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.
But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t a prayer?
Mary Oliver, I Happened to Be Standing
photo sylvain haye
Elsewhere
Often what keeps us from joy
is the menacing assumption
that life is happening other than where we are
Mark Nepo
photo of Bantry from outside the town by pam Brophy
Sunday Quote: Be still and know
To a mind that is still
the whole universe surrenders
Chuang Tzu, Chinese philosopher, 4th Century BC.
photo Joanne Bergenwall
