The nature of our presence

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

Happiness is an inside job

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.

A pure, flowing river

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

Sunday Quote: Goodness

The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness.

Now, in this life

Leo Tolstoy

To look

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

Sunday Quote:Blessed

Sometimes I need only to stand

wherever I am

to be blessed

Mary Oliver, It was Early