Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
William Stafford, You Reading This, Be Ready
for E and B, wandering through Italy at this moment
Someday we’ll live in the sky.
Meanwhile, the house of our lives is the world.
The fields, the ponds, the birds.
The thick black oaks — surely they are the
children of God.
The feistiness among the tiger lilies,
the hedges of runaway honeysuckle, that no one owns.
Where is it? I ask, and then
my feet know it.
One jump, and I’m home.
Mary Oliver, Boundaries
He knows how to enjoy the fullness of each moment, as his own mind is serene and at peace. There is a sufficiency in the things around him
At Nantai I sit quietly with an incense burning,
One day of contentment, all things are forgotten,
Not that my mind is stopped and thoughts are put away,
But that there is really nothing to disturb my serenity.
Shou-an , quoted in Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism – First Series
Some ideas to counter the frequent thought that our life would be better if only this or that happened, or indeed, if this or that had not happened to us.
No creature ever falls short of its own completion.
Wherever it stands it does not fail to cover the ground
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist thinker, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen
I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made.
Psalm 139: 14
There is great happiness
in not wanting,
in not being something,
in not going anywhere.
J. Krisnamurti. 1895 – 1986
Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our life can be like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation of our breathing. We don’t need to go to China to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to travel into the future to enjoy our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now.
Thich Nhat Hanh
