How many times is the world created when, each morning, we open our eyes? —Richard Jackson

 

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Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead.

If my fingers pressed the roundness of an apple, I didn’t know whether I was touching the apple or the apple was touching me. As I became part of the apple, the apple became part of me. And that is how I came to understand the existence of things.

As a child I spent hours leaning against objects and letting them lean against me. Any blind person can tell you that this exchange gives a satisfaction too deep for words.

Touching the tomatoes in the garden is surely seeing them as fully as the eye can see. But it is more than seeing them. It is the end of living in front of things, and the beginning of living with them.


—Jacques Lusseyran
And There Was Light, excerpts

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Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. 

Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. 

From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.

—Huang Po

The Zen Teaching of Huang Po

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You are not here to clean it up. You are not here to make it right. You are not here to fix it. For all of the outer world is an illusion. 

You are here to love it. Take the world in your arms and embrace it. This is how you came to serve. This is your glory and your crown. Wear it well and rejoice in being here.


—Q’uo

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