Tag: heart

Breathe out gratitude

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No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.

Wendell Berry,  Sabbaths – 1993, I


This poem is not first and foremost about aging and dying. It’s about generosity, one of the most life-giving of all virtues. Generosity does not require material abundance. When I think back on the many people who have been so generous toward me, I never think of money or “things.” Instead, I think of the way they gave me their presence, their confidence, their affirmation, support, and blessing — all gifts of “self” that any of us can give.

And where does generosity come from? Perhaps from another life-giving virtue, the one called gratitude. When I take the time to breathe in my life and breathe out my gratitude for the gifts I’ve been given, only one question arises: “How can I keep these gifts alive?”

I know only one answer: “Become a giver yourself, pass your gifts along, and do it extravagantly!” As Wendell Berry says, “Every day you have less reason/not to give yourself away.”

Parker Palmer, Breathe In My Life, Breathe Out My Gratitude

Nothing to achieve

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A lot of modern stress comes from the mistaken belief that we should always be working on a better version of ourselves, always looking for greater success. 

In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth.

When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.

What can ever be lost? What can be attained?

If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.

If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.

Ryokan, 1758–1831, Zen Monk and poet

Always there

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Happiness is permanent. It is always there.
What comes and goes is unhappiness. 
If you identify with what comes and goes, you will be unhappy.

If you identify with what is permanent and always there, you are happiness itself.

Poonjaji, 1910 – 1997, Indian non-dualist teacher

Sunday quote: Never certain

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Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you.

It is trust, not certainty

Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Sunday Quote: All around

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Zen Master Dogen wrote, ‘The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading.’ 

I’m already in it.

We are all in it; we are made of it.

Susan Moon

Emerging and disappearing

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Feelings are often born from a matrix of conditions beyond your control. Just like you can’t control the weather, or or your boss’s mood, you can’t control the feelings in your body. They are just passing through, like clouds in the sky. They, too, dissipate on their own. But if you take them too seriously and start internalizing them as part of your identity, then you will resuscitate them every time you think about the past. Remember that you are neither your feelings nor the story your mind tells about you to make sense of them. You are the vast silence that knows of their emergence and their disappearance.

Haemin Sunim, The Things You can see Only when you Slow Down