The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one with oneself.
(La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi)
Michel de Montaigne, Essais Book I, ch. 39
Tag: Life
What we do not see
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one
John O’Donohue, The Inner History of a Day
photo of Trim, Co Meath, by Denis O’Donovan
Letting light fill our fears
And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And I thought I was in danger.
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing.
To live and see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
Traditional Inuit (Copper Eskimo) Song
photo andy waddington
Sunday Quote: On the shortest day in the year
With life as short as a half taken breath,
don’t plant anything but love.
Rumi
photo gila national forest
Seeing all we have
It is important to emphasize, in discussing meditation … that you shouldn’t start out with some idea of gaining. This is the deepest paradox in all of meditation: we want to get somewhere—we wouldn’t have taken up the practice if we didn’t — but the way to get there is just to be fully here. The way to get from point A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection to the present, which is all we ever have. If your breathing is shallow, your mind and body restless, let them be that way, for as long as they need to. Just watch them. The first law is that everything is constantly changing. No one is saying that the breathing should be some particular way all the time. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation, there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that, and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is. You may think that you want it to change, but that act of acceptance is in itself a major change.
Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing
photo griff le riff
Staying still
A certain brother went to Abba Moses in Scete,
and asked him for some good advice.
And the elder said to him:
“Go, sit in your room, and your room will teach you everything.”
Sayings of the Desert Fathers
I discovered that all of our problems stem from a single cause, – we do not know how to sit at ease in a room alone.
(J’ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose,
qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre)
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and Philosopher, 1623 – 1662, Pensees
photo bujar I gashi
