Who sees all beings in his own Self
and his own Self in all beings,
loses all fear.
Isha Upanishad
Tag: Life
What Springtime teaches us
Heaven and Earth give themselves.
Air, water, plants, animals, and humans give themselves to each other.
It is in this giving-themselves-to-each-other that we actually live.
Whether you appreciate it or not, it is true.
Kodo Sawaki, 1880 – 1965, Japanese Sōtō Zen teacher
The light is always there
A beautiful idea, similar to the Eastern understanding of natural goodness, or original mind:
Our hands full or not:
The same abundance.
Our eyes open or shut:
The same light.
Yves Jean Bonnefoy, French poet and art historian, 1923 – 2016
with, as before, thanks to david kanigan, Live and Learn blog
photo carrotmadman6
Holding both sides
Our problems are a big deal for us.
So we need to make space for an attitude of honouring things completely and at the same time not making them a big deal. It’s a paradoxical idea, but holding these two attitudes simultaneously is the source of enormous joy: we hold a sense of respect toward all things, along with the ability to let go. In Buddhist terms, the space that opens is referred to as ‘shunyata,’ or emptiness. It’s basically just a feeling of lightness. When you begin to see life from the point of view that everything is spontaneously arising and that things aren’t ‘coming at you’ or ‘trying to attack you,’ in any given moment you will likely experience more space and more room to relax into. So shunyata refers to the fact that we actually have a seed of spaciousness, of freshness, openness, relaxation, in us.
Pema Chodron
photo Manfred Werner
The difficulties of being on this journey
We use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. Heartbreak, we hope, is something we can avoid; something to guard against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way…
David Whyte,
Sunday Quote: Springtime: Just paying attention
Nothing you ever understand
will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
Mary Oliver, Terns
