Tag: impermanence

The still mind of winter

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Very unlike the mild winter we are having here in Ireland, but a mind that is perfect for meditation

One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the January sun;

and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land

full of the same wind that is blowing in the same bare place
for the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

Wallace Stevens

Sent out

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God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear: “You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing“….

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 59

Resting In How Things Are

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Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities.

Geshe Shawopa 1070–1141(?), quoted in Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of my Perfect teacher

Nothing to Seek

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Birth, old age, Sickness, and death:

From the beginning this is the way things have always been.

Any thought of release from this life will wrap you only more tightly in its snares.

The sleeping person looks for a Buddha, The troubled person turns toward meditation.

But the one who knows that there’s nothing to seek, knows too that there’s nothing to say.

She keeps her mouth closed.

Ly Ngoc Kieu, 1041 – 1113, Vietnamese zen Buddhist nun.

Translation Thich Nhat Hahn and Jane Hirshfield

A raindrop

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The human body at peace with itself
Is more precious than the rarest gem.
Cherish your body.
It is yours this time only.
The human form is won with difficulty.
It is easy to lose.
All worldly things are brief,
Like a flash of lightning in the sky.
This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop
That disappears even as it comes into being.
Therefore set your goal.
Make use of every day and night to achieve it

Je Tsongkhapa, 1357–1419, Tibetan Buddhist monk

Take the time

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It takes a long time to sift through the more superficial voices of your own gift in order to enter into the deep signature and tonality of your Otherness. When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to develop your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World