Tag: Present moment

Be faithful

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The river is famous to the fish…

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse…

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom…

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Famous [extracts]

Flow

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Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

Rilke, Part I, Sonnet IV

Look up

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We have so many allies in this world,

including just the colour blue in the sky. 

David Whyte

A simple wish

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Lovingkindness is a feeling that blesses others and oneself with the simple wish, “Be happy.”

The Japanese poet Issa [1763–1828] expresses this open-hearted feeling so well:

“In the cherry blossoms’ shade, there’s no such thing as a stranger.”

 Joseph Goldstein, Triumph of the Heart

Groundlessness

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To a disciple who begged for wisdom the Master said, 

“Try this out: Close your eyes and see yourself and every living being thrown off the top of a precipice.

Each time you cling to something to stop yourself from falling understand that that is falling too.” 

The disciple tried it out and never was the same again.

Anthony de Mello, sj., One Minute Wisdom

Fears

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“I’m never free of fear,” some people say, implying that there should be a state of mind and body that is free of fear.

How can we possibly be free from fear when we live in the conditioned mode of the me-story most of the time? We’re deeply programmed to believe in this separate me by inaccurate language and by growing up in a world of other mes, all of whom think of and experience themselves as separate entities. . . . With separation inevitably goes fear and pain.

Toni Packer, Touching Fear