If I am not careful – if I rise frantic from my bed, full of small concerns – the mystical flow of imagination at rest will be broken, the past and the future will rush in to claim my mind and I will be swept up into life’s petty details and myriad obligations…Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.
Kent Nerburn, Small Graces, The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows
Jack Gilbert, American Poet, 1925 – 2012
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
We frequently identify quite closely with our moods…never the best idea on a Monday morning….
In a world where nothing is as fixed as it seems,
it comes as a great relief to discover that even the ego is impermanent
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting over Yourself
The beauty of a mountain is that it is so much like a mountain, and of water that it is so much like water
Zen saying
