Tag: heart

Sunday quote: Eyes of wonder

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Everything is ceremony

in the wild garden of childhood

Pablo Neruda

Comparing and complaining

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The comparing mind frequently takes us away from the unique form of our own life …

One morning the teacher announced to his disciples that they would walk to the top of the mountain. The disciples were surprised because even those who had been with him for years thought the teacher was oblivious to the mountain which looked serenely down on their town.

By midday it became apparent that the teacher had lost direction. Moreover, no provision had been made for food. The disciples grumbled but he continued walking, sometimes through underbrush and sometimes across crumbling rock.

When they reached the summit in the late afternoon, they found other wanderers there ahead of them who had strolled up a well-worn path.

The disciples complained to the teacher. He only said, “Those others have climbed a different mountain.”

From James Carse, Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Everyday Life

In the concrete

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Money is human happiness in the abstract;

He, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Schopenhauer

Sunday Quote: Unsettled

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People wish to be settled;

only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is this?

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A classic practice in the Korean Zen tradition – may help with staying open to our experience today

In the Korean Zen tradition, one generally meditates on the koan, What is this? This question derives from an encounter between the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng (638–713 C.E.), and a young monk, Huaijang. The most important part of the practice is for the question to remain alive and for your whole body and mind to become a question. In Zen they say that you have to ask with the pores of your skin and the marrow of your bones. A Zen saying points out: Great questioning, great awakening; little questioning, little awakening; no questioning, no awakening. 

Martine Batchelor, What is this?

The beauty within us

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Incredibly warm Spring weather here these days, signs of growth all round

It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.

The question is not what you look at but what you see. 

Henry David Thoreau