A new month…
The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.
May Sarton, The Angels and the Furies
To meditate is often to move through a land without paths.
In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves – There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind’s eye much wider…
Mindfulness …means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.
from Christophe Andre’s lovely book, Mindfulness: 25 Ways to Live in the Moment through Art
If you look for the Buddha outside of your own mind,
the Buddha becomes the devil
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.
The Buddha taught his students to develop a power of love so strong that their minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.
No matter what kind of material is thrown into it, it will not burn.
Many experiences – good, bad, and indifferent – are thrown into the flowing river of our lives, but we are not burned, owing to the power of the love in our hearts.
Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness
The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness.
Now, in this life
Leo Tolstoy
The beauty of the world is revealed when we learn how to look
To photograph is to put the head, the eye and the heart on the same line of sight.
Henri Cartier-Bresson 1908 – 2004, French Photographer
Mindfulbalance 