You should train yourself thus:
In the seen, there is only the seen,
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the sensed, there is only the sensed,
in the cognized, there is only the cognized.
Thus you should see that
indeed there is no thing here;
…as you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place betwixt the two.
This alone is the end of suffering.
The Buddha, The Udana, 1.10
I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
photo Glendalough, County Wicklow ,Ireland by cqui
True meditation is making everything — coughing, swallowing, waving, movement and stillness, speaking and acting, good and evil, fame and shame, loss and gain, right and wrong — into one single koan.
Hakuin, Zen teacher, 1685 – 1768.
photo russavia
Who hasn’t thought, “Take me with you,”
hearing the wind go by?
And finding himself left behind, resumed
his own true version of time
on earth, a seed fallen here to die
and be born a thing promised
in the one dream
every cell of him has dreamed headlong
since infancy, every common minute has served.
Born twice, he has two mothers, one who dies, and one
the mortar in which he’s tried. His double
nature cleaves his eye, splits his voice.
So if you hear him say, while he sits at the bed
of one mother, “Take me home,”
listen closer. To Life,
he says, “Keep me at heart.”
Li-Young Lee, American Poet, To Life
Nothing’s worth noting that is not seen with fresh eyes.
Bashō, (1644 – 1694)
