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
Radiant
Tag: Life
Our true nature
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
Dark and bright
We are the driven ones.
But the pressing on of time,
Takes us as small things
Into the everlasting.
All this rushing
Will soon be over;
For it is in lingering
That we receive insight.
All is in repose:
the darkness and the brightness,
the flower and the book.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus First Part, 22
Sunday Quote: A dark place
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
A momentary crossing
A full moon tonight, the last of the year, the Cold Moon, as we approach the shortest day of the year.
There are times when,
If the circumstances are just right,
Like a full moon,
A light rain,
Twilight, or fog,
There is a momentary crossing
From time to timelessness,
Form to Formless,
Blood and bone to earth and rock,
Past and future to present.
Where the atoms, the molecules of me
Forget to stop
From fusing into the earth and other places
Where I am not lost, but found,
Not part, but whole,
No longer longing for myself.
Parker Palmer
Bareness of being
So often we run from feeling and yet it is only through feeling that we can know the depth of life. Only through feeling can we hold the smallest shell or bone and feel the tug of the Universe. Such raw being aches, for, as the Buddhists say, the bareness of being here is so full. …With no way to that bareness but through feeling and the listening that feeling opens….. Through this bareness of being, we refresh our openness and enliven our innate connection to the one living sense. Through our unblocked, sincere response to life, we can tune our inner person with the great mysteries.
Mark Nepo
Mindfulbalance 