This world is like a mountain. Your echo depends on you. If you scream good things, the world will give it back. If you scream bad things, the world will give it back. Even if someone says badly about you, speak well about him.
Change your heart to change the world
Shams-i Tabrīzī, 1185 – 1248 Shams-i Tabrīzī, Persian Shafi’ite poet, credited as the spiritual instructor of Rumi
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes
because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it
Simone Weil, 1909 -1943, French Philosopher
or, in Ireland’s case these days, a lot of rain….
Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another — why don’t you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,
I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.
Mary Oliver, Black Oaks
Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else
is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit
Tara Brach
The past is already past — Don’t try to regain it.
The present doesn’t stay — Don’t try to hold onto it over and over.
The future isn’t here yet — Don’t ponder it beforehand.
When we can see the three times as non-existent,
the mind is the same as awakened nature.
Layman P’ang, c740 – 808, Chinese Zen
The thing that blinds us and deafens us is the ceaselessly moving mind, the preoccupation we have with our thoughts. It is the incessant internal dialogue that shuts out everything else. ….All day long we talk to ourselves. We preoccupy ourselves with the past, or we preoccupy ourselves with the future, and while we preoccupy ourselves, we miss the moment and miss our lives. Looking, we do not see. It is as if we were blind. Listening, we do not hear. It is as if we were deaf. Loving, we do not feel. It is as if we were dead. Preoccupied, we do not notice the reality around us. How can we be present? How can we taste and touch our lives?
The answer to these questions is not outside yourself. To see this truth requires the backward step, going very deep into yourself to find the foundation of reality and of your life. To see it is not the same as understanding it or believing it. To see it means to realize it with the whole body and mind.… Know that deep within each and every one of us, under layers of conditioning, there is an enlightened being, alive and well. In order to function, it needs to be discovered.
John Daido Loori, 4, 1931 – 2009, Zen Buddhist rōshi
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