May whatever circumstances that arise serve the awakening of compassion.
Buddhist Aspiration quoted by Tara Brach, Radical Compassion in Challenging Times
Tag: friendship
Sunday Quote: love
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich, 1886 – 1965, German-American philosopher and theologian
How we work with our minds
Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds. We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false conceptions of separation.
Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness
Where real worth lies
Once a learned Bishop was traveling by ship from Archangel to the great monastery at Solovetsk. As the ship neared a remote island, the captain told the bishop that three old hermits had spent their entire lives there in deep prayer. The bishop was intrigued, and insisted on visiting. So the captain dropped anchor and the bishop went to the island in a small dinghy.
The three hermits were ancient, with white beards down to their knees, and they were dressed in rags. They greeted the bishop, bowing to the ground. He blessed them, and then asked them how they served God on their tiny bit of island. They replied that they had no idea how to serve God. They just served one another.
Well then, the bishop asked, how do you pray? They replied that they simply lifted their arms heavenward and chanted: “Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us.” The bishop was alarmed at all this, and he spent the rest of the day teaching the three aged hermits the Lord’s Prayer and the rudiments of theology. But they were slow learners, and the bishop had to keep repeating his lessons.
As the sun was setting, the bishop bade the hermits farewell and returned to the ship. But as it sailed away from the island, he saw something….. The three hermits were running after the ship, on water, as if they were on dry land. When they caught up with the ship, they bowed down and humbly begged the bishop to remind them of how the Lord’s Prayer went, because they’d already forgotten it. The bishop crossed himself and, in tears, told the hermits to continue with their old way of praying because they had no need of his poor instruction. Then he bowed deeply before them, and asked for their blessing. After giving it, the hermits ran back across the sea to their island, and a light shone until daybreak on the spot where they were lost to sight.
from, Tolstoy, Три Старца, (Three Hermits), An Old Legend current in the Volga district, 1886
As you do
The self is relatedness. Only when the self mirrors itself in so many mirrors does it really exist. . . You can never come to your self by building a meditation hut on top of Mount Everest; you will only be visited by your own ghosts and that is not individuation. . . .
The self only exists inasmuch as you appear.
Not that you are, but that you do the self.
The self appears in your deeds and deeds always mean relationship.
Jung, Seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,
Support
A stormy morning here with high winds predicted for the day. Turbulent news reports also these days, full of dire predictions and evidence that we live in an age of division and suspicion.
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands and climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen, the terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
Hafiz, from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky.
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