Each line is worth a deep reflection in itself.
Simplicity, patience, compassion: These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 67, Stephen Mitchell translation
A welcome new Bank Holiday here in Ireland, to mark the start of Spring and Saint Brigid’s Day
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person
In the Buddhist teachings, it’s clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When we go to a medicine person or a healer because we are feeling disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, he or she might ask questions like,
“When did you stop singing?”
“When did you stop dancing?”
“When did you stop being enchanted by stories?“
“When did you begin finding discomfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
Angeles Arrien, 1940 – 2014) Basque-American cultural anthropologist, educator and writer.
The Gate of Liberation is always open. Dogen
Liberation from what? Liberation from walking around in a dream, like a zombie looking for contentment outside your immediate and precious life. If only you could recognize and receive what was actually here in front of you, rather than what you wish were here instead.
Why is that so hard? I don’t know, but I do know that I certainly have a tendency to want to adjust my environment to myself, not the other way round. Instead is it possible for us to constantly give thanks for whatever our life gives us? This is how to practice being truly content with what we have – even when that seems impossible
Koshin Paley Ellison, Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up
In Ireland, the first day of February marks the start of Spring, as an old poem we learnt in school states: Anois teacht an Earraigh beidh an lá dul chun síneadh, – “Now Spring is coming and the days will start getting longer“. It is the Celtic feast of Imbolc, one of their four great seasonal fire festivals, this one halfway between solstices, with themes of light and fertility, hidden seeds and new life.
In the Irish Christian calendar this became St Brigid’s Day, (Lá Fhéile Bríde), which this year is marked for the first time by a Bank Holiday and has given rise to a lot of interest in Brigid, especially here in County Kildare.. This interest in the feminine principle in nature and spirituality reflects a desire to move away the predominant patriarchal and power-based paradigm found in Western society – and in most religious traditions – and to find new ways of thinking and relating and being.
From a spiritual vantage point our major life task is much larger than making money, finding a mate, having a career, raising children, looking beautiful, achieving psychological health, or defying aging, illness, and death. It is a recognition of the sacred in daily life — a deep gratitude for the wonders of the world and the delicate web of inter-connectedness between people, nature and things — a recognition that true intimacy based on respect and love is the measure of a life well lived. This innate female spirituality underlies an often unspoken commitment to protect our world from the ravages of greed and violence
Joan Borysenko, A Woman’s Book of Life: The Biology, Psychology, and Spirituality of the Feminine Life Cycle
Sometimes the programming we grew up with is not the best tool for cultivating appreciation and contentment, especially our deep-rooted impulse to imagine how much better things could be than they actually are now.
My progress report
concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging.
I lack certain indispensable aptitudes.
Furthermore, it appears
that I packed the wrong things.
James Baldwin, 1924 – December 1, 1987, American Writer, Inventory/ On Being 52 in Jimmy Blues: And other poems
