Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
Wu Men Hui-k’ai, 1183 – 1260, Chinese Chan master
Stephen Mitchell translation
The ship is always off course.
Anybody who sails knows that.
Sailing is being off course and correcting.
This gives a sense of what life is about.
Michael Meade, 1944 – American Author
The next message that you need
is always right where you are
Ram Dass
This, a world seen no longer from the human point of view,
but inside the angel,
is perhaps my real task.
Rilke, in a Letter, 1915
Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into it and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route of becoming.
All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the tough core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in your world, and to come into your own.
Difficulty is always a school, though learning is optional.
Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
I think of the past twenty years,
when I used to walk home quietly
from Kuo-ch’ing,
All the people in the Kuo-ch’ing monastery –
would say, “Hanshan is an idiot.”
“Am I really an idiot:” I reflected.
But my reflections failed to solve the question:
for I myself do not know who the self is,
So how can others know who I am?
Hanshan, 9th century, Chinese Buddhist/Taoist poet
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