Saying yes to everything in a day, including things we would prefer not to be happening, is not easy, but it helps us remember that life is made up of both pleasant and unpleasant:
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water —
not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
Jane Hirshfield, A Cedary Fragance from Given Sugar, Given Salt
I keep looking for one more teacher,
only to find that fish learn from water
and birds learn from sky.
Mark Nepo, Behind the Thunder
Body, like a mountain,
Heart, like the sea
Mind, like the sky.
Dogen
photo of portmarnock strand by bonners2
I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
Kabir
When you treat your time as though you are a machine;
a doing machine;
you are committing violence against the sacredness of life itself.
Philip Moffitt
Happy are those who know:
Behind all words, the Unsayable stands;
And from that source alone, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness,
and us — free of our bridges,
Built with the stone of distinctions;
So that always, within each delight,
We gaze at what is purely single and joined.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Mindfulbalance 