This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness
Having glimpsed the state of perfect peace,
Let them be able and honest,
Upright and gentle in speech, humble and not proud
Contented and easy to satisfy,
Not burdened in their duties, and simple in living.
Peaceful and calm, wise and skilful,
not proud or demanding in nature.
The Metta Sutta
Treat every moment as your last.
It is not preparation for something else.
Shunryu Suzuki roshi, 1904 – 1971
You understand so little of what is around you
because you do not use what is within you
Hildegard of Bingen, 1098 – 1179, German Benedictine abbess and polymath, writer, composer, philosopher and medical practitioner
Layman Pang’s daughter said:
“The hundred grass tips:
The teachings of the ancestors
Are shining from them”
Wherever you look, whatever you see, think, feel…the teachings are shining from them
This is the invitation to come back into our life
Henry Shukman, Zen teacher, Mountain Cloud Zen Center
Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind
In the primal sympathy which, having been, must ever be.
William Wordsworth, Splendour in the Grass
I thought of happiness how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day,
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work,
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours,
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone.
May Sarton, The work of Happiness [extract]
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