Not perfect but complete

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A thousand times I have ascertained and
found it to be true:

The affairs of this world are really nothing
into nothing.

Still though, we should dance.

Hafiz

As it comes

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I have learned to live each day as it comes,

and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.

It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.

Dorothy Day, American journalist and Catholic Social activist

photo Audrey

In touch with a source within

duck

One of the aims of meditation practice is to develop a mind that sees, and does not get hooked into events too easily. The “Ten Thousand things” in this quote is a shorthand way of talking about all the experiences –  good and bad – which arise and pass away.  It stands for all of reality, which contains the right mix of experiences for our growth, and with its ebbs and flows is continually rearranging itself.

When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness

we return to the origin

and remain where we have always been.

Sosan, Third Zen Patriarch, died 606

Inside not beyond

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The most heartbreaking thing is not heartbreak; it’s avoiding heartbreak. Inside the transience of life is the thusness of everything, of the tree with forty crows on it in the winter, the sound of death-metal drums from the kids in the barn, and the feeling of sadness when you lose someone. A lot of suffering is resistance to the life of feeling. If you surrender, you are surrendering to what is really going on. This is just to notice that nothing beyond your life is more important than your life.

John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way

Other places

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I will always have fears,

but I need not be my fears—

for I have other places in  my inner landscape

from which I can speak and act

Parker Palmer

photo of morning sun at Portmarnock, Co. Dublin

Sunday quote: A Wide heart

bali

But I always think that the best way to know God

is to love many things

Vincent van Gogh

with thanks to Nicolas for the photo