The Great Way has no gate,
A thousand roads enter it.
When one passes through this gateless gate,
They walk in freedom between heaven and earth.
Wu Men Hui-k’ai, 1183 – 1260, Chinese Chan Master
Every moment
Tag: impermanence
The windblown clouds
No matter how long you live,
the result is not altered.
Who will not end up as a skeleton?
Cast off the notion that “I exist.”
Entrust yourself to the windblown clouds,
and do not wish to live forever.
Ikkyu, Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet.1394 – 1481
The paths we choose
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Thoreau
Our astonished emotions
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.
Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.
That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its inner most chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our bloodstream.
Rilke, Letters to a Yong Poet
Your echo depends on you
This world is like a mountain. Your echo depends on you. If you scream good things, the world will give it back. If you scream bad things, the world will give it back. Even if someone says badly about you, speak well about him.
Change your heart to change the world
Shams-i Tabrīzī, 1185 – 1248 Shams-i Tabrīzī, Persian Shafi’ite poet, credited as the spiritual instructor of Rumi
Taking the step
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes
because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it
Simone Weil, 1909 -1943, French Philosopher
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