Listen, are you breathing just a little,
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII
I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015
If you have one hour of air and many hours to go,
you must breathe slowly.
If you have one arm’s length and many things to care for,
you must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must
set your heart on fire.
We are blessed.
Every day is a chance.
We have two arms
Fear wastes air.
Mark Nepo, Freefall
A really clear and succinct definition of mindfulness practice, showing how it includes a evaluating, even judging aspect, discerning between helpful and unhelpful mental energies:
I often like to summarize correct practice in the following way:
Have mindfulness
and know bodily and mental phenomena as they really are
with a mind that is stable and impartial.
Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth
According to the ancient Chinese, one of the main goals in life is to reach the evening of our life without regret. So we can ask: What fears hold us back from fully embracing what is offered now? What preoccupied thoughts hinder us from seeing the beauty that is before us in each moment?
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
