Heaven and Earth are impartial;
they treat all of creation as straw dogs.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she treats everyone like a straw dog.
The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows;
it is empty, yet has not lost its power.
The more it is used, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you comprehend.
It is better not to speak of things you do not understand.
—Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching
J. H. McDonald version
What I like about the trees is how
they do not talk about the failure of their parents
and what I like about the grasses is that
they are not grasses in recovery
and what I like about the flowers is
that they are not flowers in need of
empowerment or validation. They sway
upon their thorny stems
as if whatever was about to happen next tonight
was sure to be completely interesting.—Tony Hoagland.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don't swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that they can
never
categorize you.
reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.
be self-taught.
and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.
—Charles Bukowski
supposing i dreamed this)
only imagine,when day has thrilled
you are a house around which
i am a wind-
your walls will not reckon how
strangely my life is curved
since the best he can do
is to peer through windows,unobserved
-listen,for(out of all
things)dream is noone’s fool;
if this wind who i am prowls
carefully around this house of you
love being such,or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark
if light should flower:
or laughing sparkle from
the shut house(around and around
which a poor wind will roam
–E. E. Cummings
.
Rest awhile.
Your unrest is the last cramp in your legs
as you climb this mountain. Rest awhile, if you like.
But do not return to your old house.
It is not your home any longer.
—Shyamananda
What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?I think it is the hope of loving,or being loved.I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journeyto find its source, and how the moon weptwithout her lover'swarm gaze.We weep when light does not reach our hearts, We witherlike fields if someone closedoes not rain theirkindnessuponus.—Meister Eckhart
There is a profound ground of unity that is more pertinent and authentic than all the unilateral dimensions of our lives. This we discover when we keep open the door of our heart.
This is one’s ultimate responsibility, and it is not dependent upon whether the heart of another is kept open for us.—Howard ThurmanStay Open
The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking
it is necessary to go through
dark and deeper dark
and not to turn—Stanley KunitzThe Testing Tree
We are a wave appearing on the surface of the ocean. The body of a wave does not last very long - perhaps only ten to twenty seconds.
The wave is subject to beginning and ending, to going up and coming down. The wave may be caught in the idea that ‘I am here now, and I won’t be here later.’ And the wave may feel afraid or even angry.
But the wave also has her ocean body. She has come from the ocean, and she will go back to the ocean. She has both her wave body and her ocean body. She is not only a wave; she is also the ocean.
The wave does not need to look for a separate ocean body, because she is in this very moment both her wave body and her ocean body. As soon as the wave can go back to herself and touch her true nature, which is water, then all fear and anxiety disappear.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care
—Wallace Stevens
We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean
of the element air.
—Evangelista Torricelliletter to Michelangelo Ricci, 1644
Although most are totally nakedand too scant for even the slightestcolor and although they have no voicethat I’ve ever heard for cry or song, they are,nevertheless, more than mirage, morethan hallucination, more than falsehood.They have confronted sulfuricboiling black sea bottoms and stayed,held on under ten tons of polar ice,established themselves in dense saltsand acids, survived eating metal ions.They are more committed than oblivion,more prolific than stars.Far too ancient for scripture, eachone bears in its one cell one text—the first whit of alpha, the firstjot of bearing, beneath the rilingsun the first nourishing of self.Too lavish for saints, too triflingfor baptism, they have existedthroughout never gaining girth enoughto hold a firm hope of salvation.Too meager in heart for compassion,too lean for tears, less in substancethan sacrifice, not one has evercarried a cross anywhere.And not one of their trillionshas ever been given a tombstone.I’ve never noticed a lesseningof light in the ceasing of any oneof them. They are more mutablethan mere breathing and vanishing,more mysterious than resurrection,too minimal for death.
—Pattiann Rogers
Address: The Archaeans, One Cell Creatures
The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing
I was looking up and I saidI thought youwere supposed to be doing that
the sky said Manyare clinging to thatI am giving you a chance
I was looking up and I saidI am the only chance I havethen the sky did not answer
and here we arewith our names for the daysthe vast days that do not listen to us
—W. S. Merwin
What Goethe means by the Urpflanze is the dynamic unity of the coming-into-being of all plants as the self-differencing of One plant, which in therefore intensively multiple but appears to extensively as all the many different plants.
What this means is that each plant is the Urpflanze being one possible mode of itself - the number of possibilities is indeterminate. Hence, paradoxically, it is everywhere visible and nowhere visible - although once we begin to think dynamically, this is no paradox at all. Instead of being separate from the many particular plants that we see, i.e., as 'the one over many', Goethe's Urpflanze is One which comes into concrete manifestation simultaneously with the many - with which it is identical because the many are now the self-differences of One.This is very different indeed from the two-world theory which separates the One from the many. There is no such dualism in Goethe's thinking, for which in his own words: 'The universal and the particular coincide: the particular is the universal, appearing under different conditions.'
—Henri Bortoft
Taking Appearance Seriously
... actually, climate change is a far more frightening thing right now than this pandemic. The pandemic will go away. It will not actually kill that many people, but if we don't address climate change with as much vigor as people are addressing this pandemic, the globe will heat up and we will reach a time, i don't know when, where basically everywhere is not habitable for humans.
Hopefully, this wakes us up a little bit.
We're vulnerable and we really need to learn to understand that we are part of the natural world, not separate from it.
And we rely on it for clean air, for clean water. We rely on the forest to regulate temperature and to regulate rainfall.
So, we've just got to start thinking differently.
"Listen, shariputra,
form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.
The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
"Listen, shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness.
They are neither produced or destroyed,
neither defiled or immaculate,
neither increasing or decreasing.
Therefore, in emptiness there is neither form, nor feeling, nor perceptions,
not mental formations, nor consciousness.
No eye, or ear, or nose, or tongue, or body, or mind.
No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind.
No realms of elements (from eyes to mind-consciousness),
no interdependent origins and no extinction of them
(from ignorance to death and decay).
no ill-being, no cause of ill-being, no end of ill-being, and no path.
No understanding and no attainment.
—Thich Nhat Hanh verion
from Awakening of the Heart
essential buddhist sutras and commentaries
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Para Sam gate Bodhi svaha
Gone, gone, gone all the way
all beings gone together
into the light inside!
When we practice deep looking directed toward the heart of reality, we receive help, we receive understanding, we receive the wisdom that makes us free.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart
