In the pursuit of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.
True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can’t be gained by interfering
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching,
The waters before, and the waters after,
Now and forever flowing,
follow each other.
Alan Watts, The Flow of Zen
This is the art of the soul:
to harvest your deeper life
from all the seasons of your experience.
John O’Donohue
Somewhat easy to learn impermanence in Ireland this Summer… one day sun, the next grey, then rain…. Do not need the great Ryoken to remind me.
See and realize
that this world
is not permanent.
Neither late nor early flowers
will remain.
Ryokan, Zen Monk and Poet, 1758 – 1831
I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing. I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be a prayer that transforms us.
Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
Seneca, On the Shortness of life
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