More teaching in nature

File:2015-365-303 This Will Be The Last Ohio Rose? (22598266216).jpg

Following on from yesterdays post…Issa’s poems are very simple and very beautiful

Simply trust:
Do not the petals flutter down,
Just like that?

 Issa (1763-1828), Japanese Buddhist poet

photo: cogdogblog

Sunday Quote: Hear the bird’s song

The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you?

You hold on to things, causing your confusion.

Let nature teach you.

Hear the bird’s song,  then let go.

Ajahn Chah

Sunday Quote : Where to focus

 

Hold tight to what is most yourself, Don’t squander it

Don’t let your life be governed by what disturbs you.

Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri , c. 973-1058, Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. 

True freedom is related to absolute trust

It is hard to find better guidance than this. Knowing it deep down would be so nice: to be without anxiety about my imperfections or messy reality or about what is not fully achieved in my life:

One thing, all things,  they move and intermingle without distinction.

To live in this realization

is to be without anxiety about imperfection.

The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving,

is perfectly at peace,  for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.

Seng T’san, 7th Century Zen Patriarch,  Hsin Hsin Ming

Sunday Quote: rest

Take rest;

a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop

Da requiem; requietus ager bene credita reddit 

Ovid

A dash of foolishness

Maybe because it’s the end of the working week, or people starting on holidays, or simply because its July….. but this post follows the same theme as other Fridays in this month: Let’s keep a capacity for play and for non-doing in our lives..

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation

in which discipline and order

are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

May Sarton

with thanks to Ben Naga for this lovely quote

and for being one of the longest and most faithful followers of this blog.