The waters before, and the waters after,
Now and forever flowing,
follow each other.
Alan Watts, The Flow of Zen
The nature of reality
Tag: impermanence
Living life to the full
I will be like
someone who cannot
hide their love
but my joy will become
ordinary
and everyday
and like a lover
I will find out
exactly what it is like
to be the happiest,
the only one in creation
to really
understand
how much,
I’m just a hair’s breadth
from dying.
David Whyte, Mortality My Mistress [extract]
Impermanence
Somewhat easy to learn impermanence in Ireland this Summer… one day sun, the next grey, then rain…. Do not need the great Ryoken to remind me.
See and realize
that this world
is not permanent.
Neither late nor early flowers
will remain.
Ryokan, Zen Monk and Poet, 1758 – 1831
The year goes round
If I could gear my mind to the year’s round,
take season into season without a break,
instead of feeling my heart bound and rebound
because of the full moon or the first snowflake,
I should have gained something.
John Hewitt, 1907 – 1967 Northern Irish Poet, O Country People
Sunday quote: Even in darkness
Deep in their roots,
all flowers keep the light.
Theodore Roethke
Meeting with life
We may in the past have had marvellous spiritual experiences – almost everyone in this world is lucky enough to experience satori once in their life . . . Ever afterwards, you search for that experience again: ‘I want it that way.’ You once had a wonderful girlfriend, and now you want another just like her. That way of thinking blocks the possibility of meeting with life. This is why meditation…. means affirming that your everyday mind is the way – not the mind you ought to have or the mind you might have if you practiced acceptance or concentration. We want you to look at it just the way it is right now – that’s Buddha. Just like that.
Alan Watts, Zen: The Supreme Experience
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