Tag: heart

Sunday Quote: Beautiful

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In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart. 

 Blaise Pascal 

Comparing, rehearsing, regretting

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The effect of life in society is to complicate our existence,

making us forget who we really are,

by causing us to become obsessed

with what we are not

Chuang Tzu, 4th Century BC, Inner Chapters

Why I am happy

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Make yourself a refuge…

There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by, and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer…
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.

William Stafford, Why I am Happy

Sunday Quote: A day of rest

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I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal,

as fragmented people make for better consumers.

Kathleen Norris

Listen

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Wait awhile, close your eyes, let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and essence and ecstasy of ever having been and ever to be the golden eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.

Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

A swinging door

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Came across this image in Tim Burkett’s book Nothing Holy about It: The Zen of Being Just Who You Are, one of the best books I read last year.  It is one of the most famous ideas of this great teacher… Easy to understand, not so simple to do.

We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say”I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

Suzuki Roshi