Praise and blame,
gain and loss,
fame and disrepute,
pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind.
To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.
The Buddha
The eight worldly winds
Tag: Life
Running after something
If you do not trust yourself completely, you will just hurriedly go along with whatever happens in all situations. You cannot be independent: all these myriad situations cause you to undergo changes.
If you were able to put a stop to the mentality in which every thought is running after something, then you would be no different from a Zen master or a Buddha.
Lin-chi Yixuan, died 866, founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism
Circles and figures of eight
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn;
that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning;
that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon,
and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles
Everything is miraculous
The great lesson from the true mystics, from the zen monks, from the humanistic and transpersonal psychologists, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s own back yard. This lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.
Abraham Maslow
Sunday Quote: The key journey
You are the traveler,
you are the path
and you are the destination.
Be careful never to lose the way to yourself.
Shahāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī, 1154 -1191, Persian Philosopher known as The Master of Illumination
At ease
In the forest or by the sea, the learning is the same…
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun is shining and I am mending my robe;
When the moon comes out I will read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find meaning,
stop chasing after so many things.
Ryokan 1758–1831, Zen Buddhist monk and hermit
Mindfulbalance 