When Nothing Is Missing

Eternity is not somewhere beyond this life. It is this moment when we stop reaching backward and forward. When thought stops measuring time, the eternal is simply what remains: entirely present, always.

Eternity is not infinity.

It is not a long time.

It does not begin at the end of time.

It does not run parallel to time.

In its entirety it always was.

In its entirety it will always be.

It is entirely present always.

Wendell Berry, From Leavings.

Wendell Berry died on Monday aged 92. He was an activist, a poet and a farmer whose poems, as one writer said, “should be read as part of a spiritual practice and as poems, in some sense, devoted to dwelling, to living thoughtfully in one place“

Beyond the confines of labels

Just as a flame blown out by the wind
Goes to rest and cannot be defined,
So the wise person, freed from name and form
Goes to rest
beyond all reckoning.

The Buddha,  Sutta Nipāta 4.6

The Buddha often used the image of a flame going out – not destroyed, but freed from conditions. Likewise, the liberated mind is not annihilated but beyond all definitions.

Ajahn Amaro, The Island

Open door

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark.

That’s where the most important things come from,

where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

the secret of life

The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.

Dorothy Parker

Sunday Quote: two rules

There are two rules on the spiritual path:
Begin.
Continue

Sufi Saying

Real religion

Bread for myself is a material question;

bread for my neighbour is a spiritual question

N.A. Berdyaev, 1874–1948, Russian Christian writer on human dignity and the dangers of oppressive systems, The Fate of Man in the Modern World