Source: Suspended Person
This an older post from July 2013, but Chief Seattle‘s quote is a beautiful reminder that resonates.
We connect to each other and the world. We are one thread of an intricate tapestry woven throughout time.
When we remember we are connected, we unite with each other through a deep and abiding love for all that exists and all that has traveled down through time. Our mindfulness and presence reflects this love.
Moving away from Nature …
I am presenting something different..
There is no special teaching: The most ordinary things in our daily
Life hide…
Source: Hands…
Siram provides several wonderful pictures of hands and poetry with quotes from Buddha for each. Each one called me to be mindful and present to what happened in that image.
The images and words reminded me, even in the midst of a busy world, it is in silence between words and sounds that I find meaning. I find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Even the most familiar moments take on new meaning, filled with extra and overflowing meaning, when I pause and am present.
I know I have posted this poem before, but it has a beautiful message. Rumi reminds me I cannot accept only the good that comes into my life. When the darker emotions show themselves at the door of my life, I should welcome them and accept them as a guide from beyond.
Like my delightful emotions, the darker ones are fleeting and temporary. While they are with me, the metaphor of a guesthouse allows me to experience them more fully and be mindful to what they mean at that point in my life.
In those moments, those closest to me help me understand what each arrival may mean. We can ask questions without presuming the answers in advance.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Although the title sounds eerie, Mary Oliver‘s poem is about how we can live life. To live a life as fully as she describes, we can seek to be mindful and attentive to each moment as we live through it.d
Several years ago, Kathy and I drove out to pick up her mother who had a form of non-verbal dementia. It was about 5:30 AM and the sun was just peeking up over the horizon as we drove into it on the way home. As I drove, I felt a movement beside me and turned to see my mother-in-law smiling and pointing at the fields with freshly cut hay laying on the fields. Even thought she did not speak, the moment somehow spoke to her as it reminded her of days on the farm during haying season.
Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that we find the extraordinary in the ordinary. That experienced reminded me of what I might otherwise take-for-granted: a beautiful morning in the company of others.
When death comes
like 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 comes
like the measles-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Rabindranath Tagore‘s poem echoes the words of Thomas Merton: humans fall in love and falling is painful. If rejected, the rejection is painful. When accepted by another, it is true gift that speaks through acceptance and the other’s reciprocity.
Love is an endless mystery is a perfect line. There is no full explanation of what love is and why people love one another. When two people find each other and find love, it just is and is freely given and accepted. There are no conditions attached and its beauty radiates from an internal place.
When we are in love, we express a presence and attentiveness to the other person and objects that move beyond words. Mindfulness is a silent expression of love.
Love adorns itself;
it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty.
Love does not claim possession,
but gives freedom.
Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it.
Love’s gift cannot be given,
it waits to be accepted.
Much like poetry, living comes to each of us and it blunders along just out of view from us. It is like sitting around a campfire and knowing there is something outside the ring of light the fire casts.
Within the ring of light, there is a warmth, perhaps a certainty. We think we know what is happening next. In truth, the living happens just outside our reach. Wendell Berry describes it as happening, but, once it happens, we cannot be fully describe it.
Gary Snyder wrote about his poetry writing as having to go meet the poetry just outside the range of his campfire. When we are attentive and mindful of each moment and what is just beyond our reach and vision, life dances at the edge of the light, like poetry.
Instead of certain answers, we encounter questions that cannot be fully answered, but help form the conversation and poetry that is our living.
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
Kahlil Gibran wrote many poems that he embedded in The Prophet. I think this poem was an excellent choice for Valentine’s Day, but it reminds us how we can live each of our lives day-to-day; moment-to-moment.
In loving-kindness, we illuminate the world that surrounds us and the path we each walk. Being mindful and present to who and what accompanies each of us is awakening to see the world as a beautiful dream we share.
Love is a magic ray
emitted from the burning core
of the soul
and illuminating
the surrounding earth.
It enables us
to perceive life
as a beautiful dream
between one awakening
and another.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 