Tag: Joy

Now

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Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.
What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time
before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten –
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment
in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Kabir

Sunday Quote: A different way of knowing

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Certain things are known not by reasoning, but by the heart.

There are things that cannot be expressed.

And yet they show themselves

Wittgenstein

Incarnate

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Even the most transcendent visions of spirituality must shine through the here and now and be brought to life in how we walk, eat, and love one another. This is not easy. The power of our fear, the habits of judgment within us, repeatedly prevent our touching the sacred. Often we will unconsciously draw our spirituality back to the polarity of good and bad, sacred and profane. Where is liberation to be found? The Buddha taught that both human suffering and human enlightenment are found in our own fathom-long body with its senses and mind. If not here and now, where else will we find it?

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

Radiant

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Let the world be as it is
and learn to rock with the waves.

Remain ‘radiant,’ as Joyce put it,
‘in the filth of the world’.

Joseph Campbell

Our true nature

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The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year

In dark times  when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

Sunday Quote: A dark place

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Coming to the mid point of winter, short dark days

Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
If you are ….in a dark place, you still have what really counts.
If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.

John Tarrant, It Would Be a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis