If we are not attached to outcomes then we will not suffer from the pain of fallen expectations.
~ Master Cheng Yen
Challenges
(Painted Mines. Colorado.)
I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life — he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions — gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling — have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The ‘place’ (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take nature’s stricter lessons with some grace.
~ Gary Snyder
(Sitting on the edge of the world II. Pike’s Peak, Colorado)
Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
~ Herbert Otto
How to Grow Clouds
It takes a lot of work: it is necessary to weed very carefully, to toss out muck and small stones by hand, to kneel on the earth, bend over, dig about in the soil, water profusely, collect caterpillars, exterminate aphids, loosen the ground and serve the earth; when your back hurts from all this and you straighten up and look at the sky, you will have the prettiest clouds.
~ Karel Capek
From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stage of one’s journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination.
~ Shimon Peres
Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.
~ The Buddha
To seek the living manifestation of spiritual and ethical values themselves, regardless of the label they come under, is to discover unexpected kinship… In this view, faith is no longer a matter of an allegiance to a specific community or identity, but a ceaseless search for the beautiful ways to realize the human potential in every given age and place.
~ Mohja Kahf
(Fishing the Colorado River.)
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
~ Ted Hughes
Journeys bring power and love
Back into you. If you can’t go somewhere,
Move in the passageways of the self.
They are like shafts of light,
Always changing, and you change
When you explore them.~ Rumi
You whole past was but a birth and a becoming.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Bountiful Healing 