the way is in the heart

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All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. 

It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. 

It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.


—Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry

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You are far from the end of your journey.
The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.
See how you love

There is no fire like passion,
No crime like hatred,
No sorrow like separation,
No sickness like hunger,
And no joy like the joy of freedom

All that we are arises with our thoughts. 
With our thoughts we make the world. 
Speak or act with a pure mind 
And happiness will follow you 
As your shadow, unshakable.


—shakyamuni buddha

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leave nothing untouched

    

 

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The fourteenth-century Tibetan master Longchenpa said there are five characteristics we should cultivate in order to practice the four immeasurables — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity:

(1) a fundamental attitude as vast as space;
(2) a mind as constant as the depths of the ocean;
(3) seeing all occurrences, inner and outer, as mist floating in the sky;
(4) a compassionate attitude as even as the rays of the sun
(5) sensing negativities to be like specks of dust in our eyes.


—Longchenpa

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Return to the most human, nothing less will nourish the torn spirit, the bewildered heart, the angry mind: and from the ultimate duress, pierced with the breath of anguish, speak of love.

Return, return to the deep sources, nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve, to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

Return to the most human, nothing less will teach the angry spirit, the bewildered heart; the torn mind, to accept the whole of its duress, and pierced with anguish… at last, act for love.

—May Sarton
Unison Benediction

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Whatever experience is present
you clearly see right there,
right there—not taken in,
unshaken: that’s how you develop the heart.


—Shakyamuni Buddha
View of an Auspicious Day

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