“You know, you’re a little complicated after all”
“Oh no”, she assured him, “I’m not really,
I’m just a – I’m just a whole lot of different people”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
Parts
Tag: Be fully present
Don’t Know Mind
In this whole world, everyone searches for happiness outside, but nobody understands their true self inside. Everybody says, “I, I want this, I am like that” . . . But nobody understands this I.
Before you were born, where did your I come from? When you die, where will your I go? If you sincerely ask, “What am I?”, sooner or later you will run into a wall where all thinking is cut off.
We call this “Don’t know”.
Zen is keeping this Don’t Know Mind always and everywhere.
Seungsahn Haengwon, 1927 – 2004, Korean Seon (Zen) master and founder of the international Kwan Um School of Zen.
What’s known and unknown
Look at love – how it tangles
with the one fallen in love
look at spirit – how it fuses with earth
giving it new life.
Why are you so busy with this or that, or good or bad –
pay attention to how things blend.
Why talk about all the known and the unknown –
see how the unknown merges into the known
Rumi, Look at Love [extract]
Sunday Quote: Good
What matters is the good we did
Not the good we expected others to do.
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times can Help us Grow
The best season
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
Wu Men Hui-k’ai, 1183 – 1260, Chinese Chan master
Stephen Mitchell translation
Correcting is normal
The ship is always off course.
Anybody who sails knows that.
Sailing is being off course and correcting.
This gives a sense of what life is about.
Michael Meade, 1944 – American Author
