When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.
P’ang Yün (Layman Pang) died 808, famous lay practitioner of Ch’an Buddhism
All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are
and who you are is where you will be
when death takes you across the river.
John Squadra, 1932 – American artist and poet
And, if I may say it in a very condensed way, it is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against.
This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods.
Abraham Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being
Mind can only create the qualities of good and bad by comparing. Remove the comparison, and there go the qualities. What remains is the pure unknown: ungraspable object, ungraspable subject, and the clear light of awareness streaming through.
The pivot of the Tao is the mind free of its thoughts. It doesn’t believe that this is a this or that that is a that. Let Yes and No sprint around the circumference toward a finish line that doesn’t exist. How can they stop trying to win the argument of life until you stop?
Stephen Mitchell, The Second Book of the Tao
In some fundamental way, happiness is found within, not in external circumstances, and we cannot give responsibility for it over to another person
So Ānanda, be your own island,
your own refuge,
with no other refuge
The Buddha’s Last Teaching, recorded in the Mahā-parinibbāna Sutta (sutra)
Early Spring growth is all around, reminding us to trust…
Settling, white dew
does not discriminate,
each drop its home.
Nishiyama Sōin, 1605 – 1682 Japanese poet, founder of the Danrin school of haikai poetry
