All your heart

"Wheresoever you go,
go with all your heart."

-- Confucius

Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives,
the touch of spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling!

At night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door and
open the love window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

-- Rumi

Rejoicing

"In the Zen tradition, students are taught to bow to other people as well as ordinary objects as a way of expressing their respect. They are taught to take equal care of brooms and toilets and plants in order to show their gratitude to these things. Watching Trungpa Rinpoche set the table for breakfast one morning was like watching someone arrange flowers or create a stage set. He took such care and delight in placing every detail -- the place mats and napkins; the forks, knives, and spoons; the plates and coffee cups. Since then, even though I usually have only a few minutes, I appreciate the ritual of setting the table as an opportunity to be present and rejoice.

Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world. We can do this even at the most difficult moments. Everything we see, hear, taste, and smell has the power to strengthen and uplift us."

-- Pema Chödrön

Hurry

"Nature does not hurry,
yet everything is accomplished."

-- Lao Tse

Ring the bells

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

-- Leonard Cohen

Whispers of truth

"It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence
that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us,
as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts."

-- K. T. Jong

Being alive

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life
as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

-- Joseph Campbell

Projection

"To me, the single most powerful tool available to us in our attempt to go beyond our egocentric social conditioning and move into conscious, compassionate awareness is recognizing our projections. Projection means attributing one's own traits to others. From the perspective of spiritual practice, everything you experience is your projection. Everything you think, feel, see, and know is a mirror of yourself. You look out into the world, and because you are looking from yourself through the filter of your personality, the only thing to see is you. You think it's the world you're seeing, but it is the totality of your own preferences, habits, beliefs, and assumptions projected onto the world. The fact that we are unconscious of this idea does not mean it is not so."

-- Cheri Huber

Love

"Love is everything."

-- Jane Siberry

Illusion of separateness

"The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: 'I think, therefore I am.' He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this concept of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate 'other.' You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By 'forget,' I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating."

-- Eckhart Tolle

Bodhichitta

"Chitta means 'mind' and also 'heart' or 'attitude.' Bodhi means 'awake,' 'enlightened,' or 'completely open.' Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love. Even the cruelest people have this soft spot. Even the most vicious animals love their offspring. As Trungpa Rinpoche put it, 'Everybody loves something, even if it's only tortillas.'

Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion -- our ability to feel pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are build on a deep fear of being hurt.

An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all."

-- Pema Chödrön

Energy flows

"Learn to become still, and to take your attention away from what you don't want, and all the emotional charge around it,
and place the attention on what you wish to experience....
Energy flows where attention goes."

-- Michael Bernard Beckwith

Nirvanah

"Yes, there is a Nirvanah;
it is leading your sheep to a green pasture,
and in putting your child to sleep,
and in writing the last line of your poem."

-- Kahlil Gibran

Cookie of Childhood

"When I was four years old, my mother used to bring me a cookie every time she came home from the market. I always went to the front yard and took my time eating it, sometimes half an hour or forty-five minutes for one cookie. I would take a small bite and look up at the sky. Then I would touch the dog with my feet and take another small bite. I just enjoyed being there, with the sky, the earth, the bamboo thickets, the cat, the dog, the flowers. I was able to do that because I did not have much to worry about. I did not think of the future, I did not regret the past. I was entirely in the present moment, with my cookie, the dog, the bamboo thickets, the cat, and everything.

It is possible to eat our meals as slowly and joyfully as I ate the cookie of my childhood. Maybe you have the impression that you have lost the cookie of your childhood, but I am sure it is still there, somewhere in your heart. Everything is still there, and if you really want it, you can find it. Eating mindfully is a most important practice of meditation. We can eat in a way that we restore the cookie of our childhood. The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Waking up

"Waking up involves a moment-to-moment recognition of how we perceive reality through a filter of our beliefs, associations, and interpretations. In a sense, when we look at the world or other people, we see our own mind. This recognition allows us to grasp the peaceful, calm, objective reality that lies just beyond the veils of the mind.

Waking up -- getting real -- involves a process rather than a single event. But even the first glimmer of recognition can change our life forever. To awaken, we have to realize we've been asleep; to break our chains, we have to realize we're bound."

-- Dan Millman

Maitri

"Loving-kindness (maitri) toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything.
Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry.
We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness.
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away or become something better. It's about befriending who we are already."

-- Pema Chödrön

Ode to Nature

There is a throb in Nature,
like that of a quickened lover.
Reach out gently, and with reverence.
One cannot help but fall in love.

Receptivity

Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God.
Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely -- only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening -- you don't listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes and no -- but you are not listening.

When you listen, you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb; you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only... or it will be better to say; God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become yin, a receptivity, the door is open."

-- Osho

Within

"What lies before us is a small matter,
compared,
to what lies within us."

-- Richard Kirsten Daiensai

We Are Succulent

"We are succulent with our shredded fantasies,
our unread books,
our misguided perfectionism,
our hiding in bed eating rows of cookies,
or neurotically running to and away from things.
We are succulent just like this.
Just the way we are NOW.
Our mysteries, our insanities, our relentless self-improvement programs
are all pieces of succulence.
We are succulent.
Half finished, in process,
eyes swollen from crying and denying our weaknesses.
We are this.
We are succulent."

-- SARK

Don't go back to sleep

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep."

-- Rumi

Synchrodestiny

"Take five minutes every day and just sit in silence. In that time, put these questions to your attention and heart: 'Who am I? What do I want for my life? What do I want from my life today?' Then let go, and let your stream of consciousness, your quieter inner voice, supply the answers. Then, after five minutes, write them down. Do this every day and you'll be surprised at how situations, circumstances, events, and people will orchestrate themselves around the answers. This is the beginning of synchrodestiny."

-- Deepak Chopra

4th of July

Swimming all day at Megunticook Lake
Nan's potato salad
Running through the cool grass at night, barefooted, twirling sparklers in the air
Fireworks
Family

Fourth of July memories
from long ago

America's Day

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Simple Life

To find the universal elements enough,
to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter;
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring --
these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

-- John Burroughs

Compassion

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."

-- Pema Chödrön

Security

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

-- Helen Keller