The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.
Tolerant like the sky,
all-pervading like sunlight,
firm like a mountain,
supple like a tree in the wind,
he has no destination in view
and makes use of anything
life happens to bring his way.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 59, translated Stephen Mitchell
Everything is ceremony
in the wild garden of childhood
Pablo Neruda
I was reminded of these texts – one Christian, one zen – driving to work on Monday and seeing the blossoms and buds return to the trees. Both speak of profound inner experiences – one when just 18, the other after 30 years of searching – just on seeing the blossoms bloom, the leaves fall, the branches grow, and the new leaves appearing. Miracles in everyday life which we rush past each day.
In the winter I saw a tree stripped of its leaves and I knew that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and that afterwards the flowers and the fruit would appear. From this I received a profound view of the care of God which has never since left my soul. The view I grasped that day freed me completely and kindled in me such a love for God that I cannot say that it has increased during the more than forty years since that time.
Brother Lawrence, 1693, The Practice of the Presence of God.
For thirty years, I have been looking for the sword,
How many times have the leaves fallen and the branches grown anew?
But then once I saw the peach blossoms,
and from then up to now, I have never had any more doubts.
Lingyun Zhiqin, dates unknown, Searching for Thirty Years
All beings are encompassed within one all-encompassing great energy:
This I understood from the coolness of this morning’s passing breeze
Wu-men Hui-k’ai, 1183 -1260, Chinese Chan Master
If you only walk on sunny days you’ll never reach your destination.
Paolo Coehlo
The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest. Being able to travel both ways matters, and sometimes the way back into the heart of the question begins by going outward and beyond. This is the expansiveness that sometimes comes literally in a landscape or that tugs you out of yourself in a story.
Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
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