Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn’t the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that’s actually the easy part. The hard part is what’s right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just how to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home.
Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was.
I would only open my eyes a little more
Jules Renard, 1864 – 1910, French author
Your heart muscle goes on working for as long as you live. It does not get tired, because there is a phase of rest built into every single heartbeat. Our physical heart works leisurely. And when we speak of the heart in a wider sense, the idea that life-giving leisure lies at the very center is implied. Seen in this light, leisure is not a privilege but a virtue.
Leisure is not the privilege of a few who can afford to take time, but the virtue of all who are willing to give time to what takes time – to give as much time as a task rightly takes.
David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
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
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
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
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