I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.
Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.
There, I said to myself,
that’s done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.
Jane Hirshfield, Changing Everything
There is a famous phrase in Japanese Buddhism that tries to explain this. “Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self,” it suggests. Then “body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.” This backward step is another way of describing Right Action.
You settle into yourself rather than trying to make the troubling thing go away. If anything drops away, it does so by itself. You cannot make it happen directly.
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.
John O’Donoghue
We have been given bad advice about the ego.
We know we need it
but we think we are it.
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
Only a total dance, an authentic love, a whole-hearted joy, may perhaps create some miracles around you.
But you will not be the one who has done them; you will not be the one who can brag about them.
They will happen only when you are not.
Osho
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