Each line is worth a deep reflection in itself.
Simplicity, patience, compassion: These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 67, Stephen Mitchell translation
A welcome new Bank Holiday here in Ireland, to mark the start of Spring and Saint Brigid’s Day
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person
In the Buddhist teachings, it’s clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Who you are ….is more
than you are thinking you are
most of the time.
Ram Dass
When we go to a medicine person or a healer because we are feeling disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, he or she might ask questions like,
“When did you stop singing?”
“When did you stop dancing?”
“When did you stop being enchanted by stories?“
“When did you begin finding discomfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
Angeles Arrien, 1940 – 2014) Basque-American cultural anthropologist, educator and writer.
The Gate of Liberation is always open. Dogen
Liberation from what? Liberation from walking around in a dream, like a zombie looking for contentment outside your immediate and precious life. If only you could recognize and receive what was actually here in front of you, rather than what you wish were here instead.
Why is that so hard? I don’t know, but I do know that I certainly have a tendency to want to adjust my environment to myself, not the other way round. Instead is it possible for us to constantly give thanks for whatever our life gives us? This is how to practice being truly content with what we have – even when that seems impossible
Koshin Paley Ellison, Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up
In the Christian Calendar today is the feast of Candlemas, reflecting the deep human need to mark this period between the winter and the spring solstices. The celebration of light gave encouragement in those years when the darkness seemed to be never-ending. This can also apply to the seasons in our lives
Any deep wound or loss can be transformed into fierce grace when we meet the pain with a caring presence. We can find grace I the immediacy of a frightening experience or in working with long-held trauma. Although the pain fo trauma may lead us to believe that our spirit has been tainted or destroyed, that isn’t so. Waves of fear or shame may possess us temporarily, but as we continue to entrust ourselves to loving presence, as we let ourselves feel loved, our lives become more and more an expression of who or what we are.
This is the essence of grace – homecoming to who we are.
Tara Brach
