It is easy enough to see that all through our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites
which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
photo: pjposullivan
Tag: Life
Holding tension
We must cultivate the ability to hold tension in life-giving ways. Our lives are filled with contradictions — from the gap between our aspirations and our behavior to observations and insights we cannot abide because they run counter to our convictions. If we fail to hold them creatively, these contradictions will shut us down and take us out of the action. But when we allow their tensions to expand our hearts, they can open us to new understandings of ourselves and our world, enhancing our lives and allowing us to enhance the lives of others. We are imperfect and broken beings who inhabit an imperfect and broken world. The genius of the human heart lies in its capacity to use these tensions to generate insight, energy, and new life.
Parker Plamer, Healing the Heart of Democracy
photo gocheganas
Only present time
The river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
photo: vincent, la rivière Rouvre.
Seizing the moment
Although the reflection in the pond
is often blurry to us:
Grasp the image.
Only in the double world
do voices become
tender and eternal.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I,9
Dreams that purify
I have noticed in my life that all men have a liking for some special animal, tree, plant, or spot of earth. If men would pay more attention to these preferences and seek what is best to do, in order to make themselves worthy of that toward which they are so attracted, they might have dreams which would purify their lives.
Brave Buffalo, Teton Sioux, By the Power of their Dreams (late 19th century)
Not limiting
When you are identified on the level of “I am the body and I am my feelings, thoughts and memories”, you’re always limiting, binding yourself to unsatisfactory conditions. These conditions can never satisfy you, because they’re changing: when you try to find security and lasting happiness in things that are forever changing, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. You going to feel this… sense of lack, and we tend to take that as a very personal flaw: “There’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with me that I should feel lonely, inadequate, incomplete, or unfulfilled?“
Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of SIlence
