Consumed with anger,
The world is an ugly place.
Bathed in happiness,
The world is a wonderful place.
But….aha! It’s the same world.
Taitetsu Unno, 1929 – 2014, scholar and author on Pure Land Buddhism, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble turn into Gold
Once, when I was in college, I wrote home complaining about the food, and my mother sent me a Julia Child cookbook. In the book was a section on dealing with eggs in which she said that the sign of a really good cook is knowing eggs. And so I took an egg out. You can watch an egg – you can learn certain things just by watching it, but you don’t learn very much. To learn about eggs you have to put them in a pan and try to make something out of them. If you do this long enough you begin to understand that there are variations in eggs, and there are certain ways that they react to heat and ways that they react to oil or butter or whatever. And so by actually working with the egg and trying to make something out of it, you really come to understand eggs.
And it’s the same with the mind: unless you actually try to make something out of the mind, try to get a mental state going and keep it going, you don’t really know your own mind. You don’t know the processes of cause and effect within the mind. There has to be a factor of actual participation in the process. That way you can understand it. This all comes down to being observant and developing a skill.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Path of Concentration & Mindfulness
What I know in my bones is that I forgot to take time to remember what I know.
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
Terry Tempest Williams, 1955 – American writer, educator, conservationist, Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer.
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give,
and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Once there was a man who hated his own shadow.
When he walked and found that his shadow was close behind him, he began to walk faster and faster.
But every time he put his foot down, there was another step, while his shadow kept up with him without the slightest difficulty.
He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough.
So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead.
Those who do not understand the Dao are just like this man who hated his shadow. It is actually very easy to be rid of one’s shadow – just rest under a tree.
Just rest.
Chuang Tzu, 369 – 286 BC, Chinese Philosopher
[The Tao or Dao is the natural order of the universe. Health and happiness comes from being in harmony with this natural way]
A man who has never experienced this has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.
For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.
Carl Jung
