The eve of the feast of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season. It was the most important of the four Celtic Festivals, the start of winter and the darker part of the year. Bonfires were lit as a reminder of the victory of light over the increasing dark days.
When you do something,
you should burn yourself completely,
like a good bonfire,
leaving no trace of yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki
Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.
You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.
Only, who could have the courage to see it.
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
I like this idea of over-borrowing, always demanding more from the present moment.
If you know how to be happy with the wonders of life that are already there for you to enjoy, you don’t need to stress your mind and your body by striving harder and harder, and you don’t need to stress this planet by purchasing more and more stuff. The Earth belongs to our children. We have already borrowed too much from it…..Much of our modern way of life is permeated by mindless over-borrowing. The more we borrow, the more we lose. That’s why it’s critical that we wake up and see we don’t need to do that anymore. What’s already available in the here and now is plenty for us to be nourished, to be happy.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is.
Jiddu Krisnamurti
In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.
John Cage, quoted in Mark Epstein, Going on Being
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.…The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Mindfulbalance 