We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed […]
TROUBLEMAKERS SHOW US WHERE WE’RE STUCK Those who give us a hard time, who are difficult to be around or who constantly blow our cover, are the very ones who show us where we we’re stuck. The great meditation master Atisha always traveled with his belligerent Bengali tea-boy because it kept him honest. Without his
Donovan – “Universal Soldier” He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,He fights with missiles and with spears.He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,He’s been a soldier for a thousand years. He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.And he knows he shouldn’t kill,And he knows he
“When one of the emperors of China asked Bodhidharma (the Zen master who brought Zen from India to China) what enlightenment was, his answer was, “Lots of space, nothing holy.” Meditation is nothing holy. Therefore there’s nothing that you think or feel that somehow gets put in the category of “sin.” There’s nothing that you
So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So
Mary Oliver–When Death Comes When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what
“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver Look, the treesare turningtheir own bodiesinto pillars of light,are giving off the richfragrance of cinnamonand fulfillment, the long tapersof cattailsare bursting and floating away overthe blue shoulders of the ponds,and every pond,no matter what itsname is, is nameless now.Every yeareverythingI have ever learned in my lifetimeleads back to this:
Mary Oliver–Wild Geese You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and
Observing oneself without judging what one sees: Thus, to observe without judgment means to hold the attention steadily on bodily-sensation,* stay steady and unmoved in the body, relax the body, and allow the process to dissolve. When the intellectual-emotional complex triggers any movement not called for by the situation at hand, let that movement of
Self Observation without Judging Oneself–by Red Hawk Read More »
Go out one clear starlit night to some open space and look up at the sky, at those millions of worlds over your head. Remember that perhaps on each of them swarm billions of beings, similar to you or perhaps superior to you in their organization. Look at the Milky Way. The earth cannot even
Preparing for the journey…from ‘Views From the Real World’ by Gurdjieff Read More »
