If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind. This is being free. That is my belief.
Jeong Kwan, Buddhist nun and chef of Korean cuisine
A small green island where one white cow lives alone,
a meadow of an island.
The cow grazes till nightfall, full and fat,
but during the night she panics
and grows thin as a single hair. “What shall I eat
tomorrow? There’s nothing left!”
By dawn, the grass has grown up again, waist-high.
The cow starts eating and by dark the meadow is clipped short.
She’s full of strength and energy, but she panics
in the dark as before, and grows abnormally thin overnight.
The cow does this over and over, and this is all she does.
She never thinks, “This meadow has never failed
to grow back. Why should I be afraid every night that it won’t?”
The cow is the soul. The island field is this world where
that grows lean with fear and fat with blessing.
Lean or fat.
White cow, don’t make yourself miserable
with what is to come, or not to come.
Rumi
To know what you’re going to draw,
you have to begin drawing.
Picasso
Bien commencer amène à bien terminer
A good beginning makes for a good conclusion
French proverb
You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount. Travel lighter. Wings will be given.
Be clear like a mirror, reflecting nothing.
Be clean of pictures and the worry that comes with images.
Gaze into what is not ashamed or afraid of any truth.
Contain all human faces in your own without any judgment of them.
Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask. Silence is all I can say.
Lovers have some secrets That they keep.
Rumi
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
