for another person

All you can do for another person is be an environment

in which if they wanted to come up for air,

they could.

Ram Dass

Sunday Quote: heart

Everybody is nothing until you love them

Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo

Sunday Quote: live by love

Trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward
)

e.e.cummings

A pure, flowing river

The Buddha taught his students to develop a power of love so strong that their minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.

No matter what kind of material is thrown into it, it will not burn.

Many experiences – good, bad, and indifferent – are thrown into the flowing river of our lives, but we are not burned, owing to the power of the love in our hearts.

Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness

Soft yet strong

A slight antidote to some of the overly sentimental messages popular on this day:

In Irish, when you talk about trust, there’s a beautiful phrase from West Kerry where you say, “mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne” — “You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.” That is soft and kind language, but it is so robust. That is what we can have with each other.

Padraig O’Tuama, On Being Blog

Complicating things

Dhamma is simple:

Live with love and be aware.
It is only the mind that complicates this teaching and says that it is not enough.

Michael Kewley, Former Buddhist monk, currently teaching courses on Awareness and meditation