Sunday Quote: speed

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Isaac Asimov

autumn lessons – trust

Nature does not hurry

yet everything is accomplished

Lao Tzu

In your own back yard

The great lesson from the true mystics, from the zen monks, from the humanistic and transpersonal psychologists, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s own back yard. This lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.

Abraham Maslow, 1908 – 1970, American psychologist

Compensatory programs

Beginning in infancy (or even before) each of us, in response to perceived threats to our well-being, develops a false self: a set of protective behaviors driven at root by a sense of need and lack. The essence of the false self is driven, addictive energy, consisting of tremendous emotional investment in compensatory “emotional programs for happiness.” 

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

What’s real

We live the given life, and not the planned

 Wendell Berry

each situation, fresh eyes

What is right today is wrong tomorrow

Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Japanese Zen monk and poet

Next time is next time.

Now is now

The words of Hirayama in the beautiful, meditative, film Perfect Days, to his niece who wants to know when they will go to see the ocean.

It sums up his whole philosophy of life