Each line is worth a deep reflection in itself.
Simplicity, patience, compassion: These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 67, Stephen Mitchell translation
When we go to a medicine person or a healer because we are feeling disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, he or she might ask questions like,
“When did you stop singing?”
“When did you stop dancing?”
“When did you stop being enchanted by stories?“
“When did you begin finding discomfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
Angeles Arrien, 1940 – 2014) Basque-American cultural anthropologist, educator and writer.
Sometimes the programming we grew up with is not the best tool for cultivating appreciation and contentment, especially our deep-rooted impulse to imagine how much better things could be than they actually are now.
My progress report
concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging.
I lack certain indispensable aptitudes.
Furthermore, it appears
that I packed the wrong things.
James Baldwin, 1924 – December 1, 1987, American Writer, Inventory/ On Being 52 in Jimmy Blues: And other poems
Consumed with anger,
The world is an ugly place.
Bathed in happiness,
The world is a wonderful place.
But….aha! It’s the same world.
Taitetsu Unno, 1929 – 2014, scholar and author on Pure Land Buddhism, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble turn into Gold
What I know in my bones is that I forgot to take time to remember what I know.
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
Terry Tempest Williams, 1955 – American writer, educator, conservationist, Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer.
Safety is not the absence of threat,
it is the presence of connection
Gabor Mate
Mindfulbalance 