The whole world is self

Don’t disregard your life.  It is too precious.  This moment, right now, is the only life you will ever have.  You can’t store it up for the ideal time.  When you walk, walk with your whole body and mind joining the floor.  Place your eyes in the soles of your feet, walking as if the floor were a dear friend.  This is intimacy with all things, where the whole world is self, where there is no ‘outside’ or other.

~ Pat Phelan

Walking into the here and now

Life is available only in the present.  That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and now.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

The sublime seas

Be not the slave of your own past —
plunge into the sublime seas,
dive deep, and swim far,
so you shall come back
with self-respect,
with new power,
with an advanced experience,
that shall explain
and overlook
the old.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The middle way

As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution.  However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution.  We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

~ Pema Chödrön

This everything dance

I like to live in the sound of water, in the feel of the mountain air.  A sharp reminder hits me:  this world still is alive; it stretches out there shivering toward its own creation, and I’m part of it.  Even my breathing enters into this elaborate give-and-take, this bowing to sun and moon, day and night, winter, summer, storm, still — this tranquil chaos that seems to be going somewhere.  This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.  This motionless turmoil, this everything dance.

~ William Stafford

Going to the next level

(Approaching the abyss)

We have no where to go (really) but down — eventually we must all let go and jump — it is supposedly that act which propels us to the next level — to enlightenment.  What would bring us to this point — where are we willing to give up the self?  Does the fall into the abyss always result in enlightenment?  How would we know?  What do we have to give up to make such a leap?

~ Hakuin Ekaku

I don’t know how we know.  I do know one of the things we have to give up to make a leap, any leap, is fear.  I’ve had to give it up a few times, to carry on with the commitment I made to get outside every day.  I think it was the commitment that gave me the courage to give up the fear so I could make those leaps.

Or maybe I’m just plain crazy, like The Fool in the Tarot, a card I have long identified with.  Sometimes it takes a little crazy to move on or move up, or even just to carry on.

One living organism

(Mushrooms found early one morning in Rocky Mountain National Park.)

Always think of the universe as one living organism, with a single substance and a single soul.

~ Marcus Aurelius

An interesting little clip to go with the post can be found here.

Growing clouds

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

Appearances

Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.

~ Maya Angelou

Your whole past…

You whole past was but a birth and a becoming.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery