Sunday Quote: waiting

It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life

waiting to start living.

Eckhart Tolle

The Source is full

Everything you see has its roots
    in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
    yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
    But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal–
growing, branching out,
    giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?–
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
    is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
    Do not grieve,
    drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry —
This is the endless Ocean!

Rumi, A Garden beyond Paradise

Entrusting oneself to heaven

When one has given up chasing after happiness…

Traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three quarts of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.

If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion
I cannot say – wealth and honor are nothing but dust.
As the evening rain falls,  I sit in my hermitage. 
And stretch out both feet in answer

Ryoken, 1758–1831, Zen Buddhist monk and poet

Each moment is precious

One day we’ll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I’ll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

 Li-Young Lee, To Hold (extract)

Sunday Quote: Dazzled

It must be a great disappointment to God

if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day

Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

The quiet ordinary things

Happiness is
in the quiet, ordinary things.
A table, 
a chair, 
a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages.
And the petal falling from the rose,
and the light flickering
as we sit silent.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves