When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are fixed. However, if you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing at all that has an unchanging self.
Dogen
If the path before you is clear,
you’re probably on someone else’s
Joseph Campbell
photo gthills
I went for a walk yesterday, but being Ireland, it started to rain and I had to abandon my plans. The day before had been so warm and bright…At times like this we can get irritated, as what “should” have happened gets disrupted. We rush on to the next moment, not noticing what is actually in front of us. We want reality to correspond to what we think should be going on, and do not go slow enough to notice what actually is:
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
John O’Donohue, A Blessing for One who is Exhausted.
photo adrian benko
Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
Mary Oliver, I Ask Percy How I should live my Life
photo of dog hurrying to the beach by andrew thomas
In novels – as in life – there is no perfection. We do the best we can with the tools we have at our disposal. Given that we are changing, the tools are changing, the thing itself is changing — there must be a moment when we stop. When we say, This is the best I can do for now… There is nobility in the effort, courage in the dailiness — the doggedness. It is a process of trying and failing. Of beginning again.
Dani Shapiro, Devotion
photo filiberto strazzari
Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.
Be. And know as well the need to not be:
let that ground of all that changes
bring you to completion now.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13
photo stephen sweeney
