Blessing

"May God shield us on every step, may He inspire us on every path And may He hold us safe on every slope, on every hill and on every plain"

Irish

All feelings

All feelings are sacred.

Brand new old year day everyone!

Thank You Love

Tiger, Tiger...

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

I Am

Real freedom

"Real freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things."

Andrew Olendzki

True pleasure

"True pleasure lies in the sharing of joy with another."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Possible is everything

"Because you are alive, everything is possible."

Thich Nhat Hanh

To get to know

As I learn to love the other one as myself..it just appears to me that the closest other one is actually my own body. To get to know it´s vital functions well: consciousness, breath, circulation - by watching or rather attending them, means not only to get to know the nature of nature better, but also to discover the nature of my soul..

TyL

Love

"Love inspires us to relax into the blessed flow of our being."

John Wellwood

Merry Christmas

The Lord of Love is before and behind.
He extends to the right and to the left.
He extends above; he extends below.
There is no one here but the Lord of Love.
He alone is; in truth, he alone is.

Mundaka Upanishad

Not one, not two

by Joan Hoeberichts

Not One, Not Two

Infant cries,
Dark night
Cold floor
Baby, warm, soft.
Seeking mouth turns towards mother's hand,
Pants with urgency.
Tiny mouth moves over neck, shoulder, breast, searching, searching,
Seizes nipple, s u c k s
Mother's milk releases
Small body sighs with satisfaction.
All eyes close, lost in mutual feeding.
Infant hand caresses mother's breast, strokes so gentle.
Tenderness deeper than pleasure.
Two bodies one body, nothing else exists.

Yell

Yell as loud as you can, now.

(but don`t wake the baby up.)

Closeness

I feel glad,
I love,
I live,
I learn,
It´s good,

Thank you Life

Personal responsibility

"Our language obscures awareness of personal responsibility."

"Communication is life-alienating when it clouds our awareness that we are each responsible for our own thoughts, feelings and actions."

In her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" which documents the war crimes trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, Hanna Arendt quotes Eichmann saying that he and his fellow officers had their own name for the responsibilty-denying language they used. They called it "Amtssprache", loosely translated into english as "office talk" or "bureaucratese." For example, if asked why they took a certain action, the response would be, "I had to." If asked why they "had to," the answer would be, "Superiors" orders." "Company policy." "It was the law."

We deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to factors outside ourselves:
- Vague, impersonal forces- "I cleaned my room because I had to."
- Our condition, diagnosis, or personal or psychological history.-
"I drink because I am an alcoholic."
- The actions of others- "I hit my child because he ran into the street."
- The dictates of authority- "I lied to the client because the boss told me to."
- Group pressure- "I started smoking because all my friends did."
- Institutional policies, rules, and regulations- "I have to suspend you for this infraction because it´s the school policy."
- Gender roles, social roles, or age roles- "I hate going to work, but I do it because I am a husband and a father."
- Uncontrollable impules- "I was overcome by my urge to eat the candy bar."

from: "Nonviolent communication, a language of life."

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Personal, not general

In order to become a better person
it´s important to be personal and not general,
to talk about myself and not another.

Doris

On One

The One I trust in is the Life
Who has never judged anyone.
So here is no need for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is my task only
When I judge without love.
The more I define, the more I limit.
Nevertheless that may and shall be
With Love

Thank Sweet Mystery

Beauty

Beauty is the soul
Who generates peace
By understanding.

That exists

"I was reminded of a sentence in chassidic literature: ´In each of us there is something precious that exists
in no other.`This sounds thrashy in a capitalistic society which has to concentrate on our equality in monetary manpower. But in friendship and love we feel the truth of this sentence. Martin Buber remarked on this: `That which is precious in a person he can discover only when he truly realizes his strongest feeling, his central wish that which is within him, which moves his core."

Michael Lukas Moeller

To be carried & to carry

Faith Heart
What is true carries through.
What is true helps all everywhere.

DI

Feeling

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."

George Eliot

Good

"An action is never good just because it obeys a rule, a custom or an impulse....."

Fernando Savater

Love

"Love, and do what you like."

St. Augustine

Shelter II

"Let him not see me who should not see me;
Let him not hear me who will not hear me;
Let him not know me who need not know me.
Beloved, veil and unveil me as Thy wisdom chooseth."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Shelter

On a clear day

I take the one seat

In a mountain shelter

With open windows

I discover

One is making tea.

Aaah

Oooohh

......................

First I wanted to say

> is able to < but

Now, now! my prejudicia.

Life is great.

Life is wonderful.

Thank You Life.

Thank You for the tea.

Doris

Returning

"Returning to the Center within us,
is the gateway to the Center of All."

John Main

On emptiness

Emptiness is in touch with the impartial witness.
The impartial witness walks always hand in hand
With an awakened being who enjoys to walk
Simply for the sake of walking..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the more i get used to emptiness,
the more i enjoy life´s presents.

to save emptiness means to save content,
and that has much to do with being content,
what does not mean to become non-ambitious.

the practice of non-striving leads to right striving.
the practice of non-judging leads to right judging.
the practice of non-doing leads to right doing.

non-being...being

yes, Great Spirit,
this way may i strive
for mutual understanding and love.

doris

(The book "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches an attitudinal base: non-judging, patience, beginners mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, letting go. time investment: 45 min. daily, six days a week)

More love..more freedom

"And who loves the most, feels free."

Maria, "Eleven Minutes"
by Paulo Coelho

Whole, heal and holy

German shows that the terms > whole, heal and holy < have the same word-origin:

whole: heil
heal: heilen
holy: heilig

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Every one is loved, sheltered and guided.

DI

'Taking the one seat

"Spiritual transformation is a profound process that doesn't happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. To mature on the spiritual path we need to commit ourselves in a systematic way. My teacher Achaan Chah described this committment as "taking the 1 seat." He said, "Just go into the room and put 1 chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptation and stories imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come."

Jack Kornfield

Save emptiness

"May my mind be clear,
May I live fearlessly
In the Mind of Readiness.
May I rely on nothing
Save Emptiness."

Ji Aoi Isshi

******

Questioner: And Who can face fear?
M.T. Ness: Courage and I

:-)


(etym.dic.: courage...c.1300, from O.Fr. corage, from V.L. *coraticum, from L. cor "heart," which remains a common metaphor for inner strength.)

Miracle

Meadows Islands Rivers Alps Canyons Lagoons Edges

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Myrtle Iris Ranunculus Angelica Currant Lilium Eremurus

Maitri

"If you said, "OK, I want to practice non-maitri." And I would say, "All right, I can tell you how to do that. Just hold an ideal in your mind of what a good person is, and then spend your whole life trying to live up to it."

Pema Chödrön

(Maitri: Love that never dies)

Hunger for love

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."

Mother Teresa


And yet, and yet, and yet ~Thank Life~ it´s possible.

View of life

"..the more I am disappointed the more I fixate on my unfulfilled needs and thus also on my view of life. The aggressiveness is based on the disappointment. It is frightening how much hate accumulates in the course of years between a couple. It climaxes in couple racism. I begin to scorn the world of the other which with its constant infringements on my life became so tiresome and yet remained so foreign. Racism always attempts the termination of the other."

"The blindness for the otherness of a person who is near to you is no extraordinary relation symptom - this is clear to me today - but an ordinary, typical human delusion. Only now I know that I know nothing about you."

"Each of us creates his own relationship but is tightly intertwined with another in a huge unconscious relation sphere. We do not want either to be true. If we recognize this, however, we have a chance to develop our relationship(s) in a livelier manner. The decisive way is the essential dialogue."

Michael Lukas Moeller

It already is

"Just watch. Remember, we are simply allowing anything and everything that we experience from moment to moment to be here, because it already is."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Moving with Presence

"Walking on the Earth is a miracle!"

~*~

"I have arrived. I am home.
In the here. In the now.
I am solid. I am free.
In the ultimate I dwell."

Thich Nhat Hanh

Beauty is

"Beauty is a heart
that generates love
and a mind that is open."

Thich Nhat Hanh

The door

"When the door needs to be celebrated, it ceases to be a door. When people grasp the finger pointing to the moon, they can no longer tell where it is pointing."

Paul Ferrini

Oh Love

Now I know By Heart

~*~*~*~

May All Beings Enjoy Joy
And The Root Of Joy.

Thank you Life

For helping us to be attentive.

Hungry monk

"Once there was a monk who was an expert on the Diamond Sutra, and as books were very valuable in his day, he carried the only copy in his part of the world on his back. He was widely sought after for his readings and insight into the Diamond Sutra, and very successful at propounding its profundities to not only monks and masters but to the lay people as well. Thus the people of that region came to know of the Diamond Sutra, and as the monk was traveling on a mountain road, he came upon an old woman selling tea and cakes. The hungry monk would have loved to refresh himself, but alas, he had no money. He told the old woman, "I have upon my back a treasure beyond knowing -- the Diamond Sutra. If you will give me some tea and cakes, I will tell you of this great treasure of knowledge."

The old woman knew something of the Diamond Sutra herself, and proposed her own bargain. She said, "Oh learned monk, if you will answer a simple question, I will give you tea and cakes." To this the monk readily agreed. The woman then said, "When you eat these cakes, are you eating with the mind of the past, the mind of the present or the mind of the future?"

No answer occurred to the monk, so he took the pack from his back and got out the text of the Diamond Sutra, hoping he could find the answer. As he studied and pondered, the day grew late and the old woman packed up her things to go home for the day."

"You are a foolish monk indeed," said the old woman as she left the hungry monk in his quandary. "You eat the tea and cakes with your mouth." :-)

To day

"If I doubt
I become a coward."

Teresa of Avila

Constantly

"When the water is still
it takes a clear reflection;
and when our atmosphere is still
then we hear that voice which is
constantly coming to the heart of every person."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Just is always now

What the present moments hold ready
Is more relevant than what one has in store.

Doris

Thank you Life

For helping us to be present.

Riddle for the day

"A . . . . is a lovely trick designed by nature
to stop speech when words become superfluous."

Ingrid B.

Gatha

"Words can travel thousands of miles.
May my words create mutual understanding and love."

Thich Nhat Hanh

You are the truth

"What would we want with an objective truth floating above us? I have only one answer: with it we want to distract ourselves, deceive ourselves."

Michael Lukas Moeller

Stepping into freedom

"When we can acknowledge and accept our own shadows, our negative self-judgment lightens. When our negative self-judgment lightens, our negative judgment of others lightens simultaneously, and compassion for the pain of others arises."

Joan Hoeberichts


"Great Beloved Mystery, lead me on the Path of the Heart."

Great hearts

great hearts are here,
close.

great hearts are here,
close and helpful.

will wash my human heart, daily..
and be and become
di

Become

still is the impartial witness.
peaceful is the smiling buddha.

peace comes from stillness,
all beings come from peace.

all the good attributes, god´s attributes
come from peace, truly, stem from peace,
are grounded in peace.

nothing but peace helps these beings grow,
become present, established within ourselves.

di

Something

everything - nothing - something

i am

sri nisargadatta said beautifully:
"love says everything, wisdom says nothing."
"i am both, neither, and beyond."

this sounds very true to me.

everything is everything and nothing else.
nothing is nothing and nothing else.
but has anyone ever seen everything or nothing?
or do these words rather point to something
i may experience and experience fearlessly,
because there is no real cause for fear?

just something says:
trust, beloved,
i love you

TYL

Pema

"..then you begin asking the question:
How can I begin to receive compassion and love?
And that's the right kind of question,
rather than: What's wrong with me?
Do you see?"

Pema Chödrön

Rise

"Do not fall in love but rise."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


(M)ay (I) (R)ise (A)nd (C)omplete (L)ive (E)verywhere

:-)

Sing

"Sing Ho! For the life of a Bear." Tao of Pooh

I dance, ik danse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRiHDXhjScU
(everyone can)

Catch

"They throw at each other their things, but don´t catch them. And these things remain between them...until they can´t see each other any more."

paraphr., R. M. Rilke

(not always so!)

Book of changes

"Danger arises when a man feels secure in his position. Destruction threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a man has put everything in order. Therefore the superior man (our one heart) does not forget danger in his security, nor ruin when he is well established, nor confusion when his affairs are in order. In this way he gains personal safety and is able to protect the empire. In the Book of Changes it is said: "What if it should fail, what if it should fail?" In this way he ties it to a cluster of mulberry shoots."

~*~*~*~

"The superior man sets his person at rest before he moves; he composes his mind before he speaks; he makes his relations firm before he asks for something."

I Ching or book of changes, Richard Wilhelm translation

Ever

"The Self is one. Ever still, the Self is
Swifter than thought, swifter than the senses."

Isha Upanishad

Answers in stillness

wisdom & strength are found in silence.
give yourself. time for silence daily.
time to relaxe, time to rest
& again from time to time
pray without words

doris

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Eva Cassidy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccCnL8hArW8

Being whole

i let them be my teachers.
i let them all be my teachers.
they are all good teachers,
because i am a good student.

i say no and they accept and trust me.
i say yes and they are happy.

but if my yes or no is not whole
it is as if i will always experience troubles.
but this again only teaches me
to be whole.

doris

Thank you Life

for today

oh this brightness in mr. s.` face.
i´m good in encouraging people to walk again.
got a teddy bear from his sister.

mrs. k. said come i must show you something
and led me into her garden where a bush of white roses
blooms at the end of november encircled by the hillland.

felt touched thinking of i don´t know who (or whom?)
but familiar and warm and big and great.

Communicate

"Don´t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama."

Don Miguel Ruiz

Large enough

"I need remove no one to place another in my heart; my heart is large enough to accommodate each and all."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Simply & easily

when i know that i don´t know
my mind is in a constant flow.

and all i only need is still
what the present moments will.

di

Thin king

"No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions.
We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are."

Eric Hoffer

"You do not meditate to gain enlightenment,
you meditate because you are enlightened."

Shunryu Suzuki

Sound for today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bor44-RK44U

Breath

breath & feel
the peace
now.
you are innocent.

Moment by moment

need to learn, to evolve, to grow into love - need to become capable to see & hear - receive the gifts presented within each situation - and also embrace the lessons it offers me. there is growing and expanding and at the same time returning, coming back to myself - to the source. AUM

doris

Growth

"The process of growth is, it seems,
the art of falling down..
Growth is measured by the gentleness
and awareness
with which we once again pick ourselves up,
the lightness with which we dust ourselves off,
the openess with which we continue
and take the next unknown step,
beyond our edge, beyond our holding,
into the remarkable mystery of being."

Stephen Levine

Going far enough

"If you aren't pushing limits, you aren't going far enough."

Paulo Coelho

Peace

peace, peace by day & by night.
peace: center of the circle
& organ of sight.

doris

Heaven

"Heaven … more a verb than a noun,
more a condition than a place,
is all about leading with the heart
in whatever broken or ragged state it's in,
stumbling forward in faith until,
from time to time, we miraculously
find our way."

Alice Walker

Learning to distinguish

"When we look at a candle, we say that the candle is radiating light, heat, and fragrance. The light is one kind of energy it emits, the heat is another, and the fragrance is a third kind of energy it can offer us
in the here and the now."

"If we are truly alive, we can see that we aren't very different from the candle. We are offering our insight, our breath, our views right now. Every moment you have a view, whether about yourself, the world, or how to be happy, and you emit that view. You produce thought and your thought carries your views.
You are continued by your views and your thinking. Those are the children you give birth to every moment. And that is your true continuation."

Thich Nhat Hanh

La vita è bella

Noa - beautiful that way ´
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Wvwl9NQ5g

Offenbach-Barcarole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKtzy9LXULg&feature=related

Sidled up

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind, "Pooh!," he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

"Tao of Pooh"

Got to get it together

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are
all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing."

TS Eliot: The Four Quartets: East Coker

Only because

"All, everything that I understand,
I understand only because I love...."

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Gayatri mantra

Creator of the Universe;
Thou art luminous,
pure and adorable;
We meditate on Thee;.
May Thou inspire
and guide Our intellect
in the right direction.

excerpt from the the gayatri mantra

Beauty

"Your Beauty is revealed in all reality;
Nothing can hide it but Your Majesty."

Al-Shaybany

Breathing space

"Most of us are weak listeners.
Usually when someone is talking,
we are already planning our comeback.
And how many times do we start our response with, "Yeah, but" - which only negates everything they just told us."

Yehuda

Humor & patience

"Humour and patience are camels guiding through any desert."

Arabic Proverb

Attentiveness

"Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul."

Nicholas Malebranche

Fountain

"Love alone is the fountain
from which all virtues fall as drops of sparkling water."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Knowing, silent depth

"Silence is painful,
but in silence things take form,
and we must wait and watch, In us,
in our secret depth, lies the knowing element
which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear.
All our perceptions, all the things we have done,
all that we are today, dwelt once in that knowing,
silent depth, that treasure chamber in the soul.

And we are more than we think. We are more than we know.

That which is more than we think and know
is always seeking and adding to itself
while we are doing - or think we are doing nothing.
But to be conscious of what is going in our depth
is to help it along.
When subconsciousness becomes consciousness,
the seeds in our winter-clad selves turn to flowers,
and the silent life in us sings with all its might."

Kahlil Gibran

A Walk

Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I've only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—

and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it,
we already are;
a sign appears, echoing our own sign . . .
But what we sense is the falling winds.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Muzot, beginning of March, 1924)

.."the falling winds"..."not always so! not always so!"

Indeed

"Fools tell people how they should behave."

Paulo Coelho

Life-alienating communication

"Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgements rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing."

"I believe life-alienating communication is rooted in views of human nature that have exerted their influence for several centuries. These views stress humans´innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature. Such education often leaves us questioning wether there is something wrong with whatever feelings and needs we may be experiencing. We learn early to cut ourselves off from what´s going on within ourselves."

Marshall B. Rosenberg, nonviolent communication,
a language of life

Awareness is,

"..what is always accessible to us in any moment as our birthright is actually the completely open and vast nature of our mind."

Pema Chödrön

**************

Mindfulness is, Awareness.

Awareness is, before thought.

Awareness is:
* "That which knows."
* "That which cares."

Mindfulness is:
* 'Awareness of what is in the body, heart and mind.'
* 'Caring for what is in the body, heart and mind.'

Mindfulness is, a state of present awareness.

Mindfulness is, a state of present moment awareness.

Mindfulness is, Noticing and Allowing

Mindfulness is, Noticing and Appreciating

Mindfulness is, Noticing, Allowing and Caring

Mindfulness is, Noticing what arises inside without judgment.

Mindfulness is, developing Awareness and Caring for our inner experiences of life.

Mindfulness is, a complete process of deepening our attention and offering a wise-caring the intention.

Mindfulness is, defined as “open or receptive attention to and awareness of ongoing events and experience”

Mindfulness is, "remembering to pay attention in a certain way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally"

Mindfulness is, Awareness.

Awareness is, before thought.

from:
http://www.mbsrtraining.com/Articles/Mindfulness_is.html

Many possibilities

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities;
in the expert's mind there are few."

Shunryu Suzuki

Beginner´s mind

"..beginner's mind, a mind that is willing to see
everything as if for the first time."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

On True Joy

"True joy...rests on firmness and strength within..."

"Truth and strength must dwell in the heart,
while gentleness reveals itself in social intercourse.
In this way one assumes the right attitude
toward God and man and achieves something."

Richard Wilhelm, I Ching or book of changes

Context: labour and capital

"Mankind had to horribly mutilate itself to create its identical, functional, male self, and some of it has to be redone in everybody's childhood."

Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno


Concerned by politics I suggest to read the manifesto from the group krisis. It´s interesting. I´m not a member of the group. I´m FOR peace and not against anyone. I don´t share all the statements.

DI

http://www.lettersjournal.org/manifestoagainstlabour.html
(written 1998 or 99)

Saw Thee

"I saw Thee in the sacred Kaba and
in the temple of the idol also Thee I saw."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Great gift

"If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly,    the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own transformation."

Lao Tzu

Habits

"Men acquire a particular quality by
constantly acting a particular way ...
you become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions."

Mahatma Ghandi

To see and know is enough

"Without awareness of anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state that can take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks within the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle
ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all.
(...)
But, and this is a huge "but," there is simultaneously a potential opening available here as well, a chance not to fall into the contraction -- or to recover more quickly from it -- if we can bring awareness to it.
(...)
Every time we are able to know a desire as desire, anger as anger, a habit as habit, an opinion as an opinion, a thought as a thought, a mind-spasm as a mind-spasm, or an intense sensation in the body as an intense sensation, we are correspondingly liberated. Nothing else has to happen. We don't even have to give up the desire or whatever it is. To see it and know it as desire, as whatever it is, is enough. In any given moment, we are either practicing mindfulness or, de facto, we are practicing mindlessness. When framed this way, we might want to take more responsibility for how we meet the world, inwardly and outwardly in any and every moment -- especially given that there just aren't any "in-between moments"
in our lives."

from Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Increase & Decrease

"Increase and decrease come in their own time. What matters here is to understand the time
and not to try to cover up poverty with empty pretense. If a time of scanty resources brings out an inner truth, one must not feel ashamed of simplicity. For simplicity is then the very thing needed to provide inner strength for further undertakings."

"..then the power of the content makes up for the simplicity of form. There is no need of presenting false appearances to God. Even with slender means, the sentiment of the heart can be expressed."

I Ching, or book of changes, Richard Wilhelm translation

Only Love embodied transformational

"Teachings and thought systems have not the capacity to embody Love, and only Love embodied is transformational."

Rajpur

Gently guides

"All you need to do is just be willing,
All you need to do is just relax,
Where the peace that passes understanding,
Gently guides you on your chosen path."

Star

Dip Into..Inhabit the Timeless

"It is difficult to speak of the timeless beauty and richness of the present moment when things are moving so fast. But the faster things move, the more important it is for us to dip into or even inhabit the timeless.
Otherwise, we can lose touch with dimensions of our humanity that make all the difference.."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Courageous

"Keep alert, stand firm in your faith,
be courageous, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love."

1 Corinthians 16:13-14

See

"See how nature ~ trees, flowers, grass ~ grows in silence; See the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls."

Mother Teresa

Life is continuation

"Life is a continuation. Instead of singing "Happy Birthday," we can sing "Happy Continuation." Even the day of our mother's death is a day of continuation; she continues in many other forms … If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be there with you. If you touch your hand, your face, or your hair, and look very deeply, you can see that she is there in you, smiling."

Thich Nhat Hanh

Always present

"Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present."

T.S. Eliot

Tiny acorn - great purpose

"The tiny acorn serves a greater purpose than the great oak, for without it, there would be no tree."

Glenn

Your awareness - a friend, a sanctuary, a refuge

"Your awareness is a very big space within which to reside. It is never not an ally, a friend, a sanctuary, a refuge. And it is never not here, only sometimes veiled. But knowing it is subtle."

"The realm of awareness requires visiting many times, if every so briefly. Aiming, sustaining, aiming, sustaining, aiming, sustaining. If you appeal to awareness in your doubt, in your unhappiness, in your confusion, in your anxiety, in your pain, these mind states are no longer "yours." They are just weather patterns in the mind and body. That dimension of "you" that already knows that you are doubting, unhappy, confused, anxious, in pain, resentful, is not any of those things, and is already okay, already whole. It will never not be what and who you actually are at the most fundamental level."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Practice of Love

"The practice of meditation
- mindfullness - is for me a practice of love.
Unconscious love is an oxymoron, an impossibility.
To be fully present with oneself and others,
I believe, is the truest love there is.
Our courage to enter the darkest recesses of our hearts
and minds births a deliverance from all that has kept us tight, disconnected and loveless for so long.
We forget and we remember."

Gavin Harrison

Dependent

"Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and end of our lives we are so dependent on other´s kindness, how can it be in the middle that we would neglect kindness towards others?"

HH Dalai Lama

Nothing to worry about

"Nothing to worry about.
It's just a fish
swimming in my mouth."

Grace,
age 6, showing a blue bubblegum
bubble in her mouth

No knowledge

"I am not you and
I have no knowledge of you."

Interpretation of the legend
"The Happiness of the Fish" by Tschuang-tse,
Chinese poet and tao philosopher, about 300 AD

One Gatha

"Feelings come and go
like clouds in a windy sky.
Conscious breathing
is my anchor."

Thich Nhat Hanh


(The Greek word "Pneuma", from pnoe to breath,
means wind, spirit, vitality and air.)

Two Gathas

"Turning on the computer,
my mind gets in touch with the store.
I vow to transform habit energies
to help love and understanding grow."

"Words can travel thousands of miles.
May my words create mutual understanding and love.
May they be as beautiful as gems,
as lovely as flowers."

Thich Nhat Hanh


(wikipedia: Gatha is a type of metered and often rhythmic poetic verse or a phrase in the ancient Indian languages of Prakrit and Sanskrit.[1] The word is originally derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit root gai , which means, to speak, sing, recite or extol. [2] Hence gatha can mean either speech, verse or a song.)

Serve to explain all the phenomena

"That aspect of it which cannot be fathomed
in terms of the light and the dark is called spirit.

"In their alternation and reciprocal effect,
the two fundamental forces serve
to explain all the phenomena in the world.
Nonetheless, there remains something
that cannot be explained in terms
of the interaction of these forces,
a final why. This ultimate meaning
of tao is the spirit, the divine,
the unfathomable in it, that
which must be revered in silence."

I Ching or Book of Changes, Richard Wilhelm translation

Sound for today

Mishaela by Noa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbPztdl7jLo&translated=1

On words

"Words are twice removed from reality."

A Course In Miracles


Comment by Doris:
1. By the word itself which is made up of characters only.
2. By an "I" associating the word with a mental formation.

Be the change

"We need to be the change that we wish to see in the world."

Mahatma Gandhi

Empty only of a seperate self - Interbeing

"For instance, looking into a flower, you can see that the flower is made of many elements that we can call non-flower elements. When you touch the flower, you touch the cloud. You cannot remove the cloud from the flower, because if you could remove the cloud from the flower, the flower would collapse right away. You don’t have to be a poet in order to see a cloud floating in the flower, but you know very well that without the clouds there would be no rain and no water for the flower to grow. So cloud is part of flower, and if you send the element cloud back to the sky, there will be no flower. Cloud is a non-flower element. And the sunshine…you can touch the sunshine here. If you send back the element sunshine, the flower will vanish. And sunshine is another non-flower element. And earth, and gardener…if you continue, you will see a multitude of non-flower elements in the flower. In fact, a flower is made only with non-flower elements. It does not have a separate self.

A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to "inter-be" with everything else that is called non-flower. That is what we call inter-being. You cannot be, you can only inter-be. The word inter-be can reveal more of the reality than the word "to be". You cannot be by yourself alone, you have to inter-be with everything else. So the true nature of the flower is the nature of inter-being, the nature of no self. The flower is there, beautiful, fragrant, yes, but the flower is empty of a separate self. To be empty is not a negative note. Nagarjuna, of the second century, said that because of emptiness, everything becomes possible.

So a flower is described as empty. But I like to say it differently. A flower is empty only of a separate self, but a flower is full of everything else. The whole cosmos can be seen, can be identified, can be touched, in one flower. So to say that the flower is empty of a separate self also means that the flower is full of the cosmos. It’s the same thing. So you are of the same nature as a flower: you are empty of a separate self, but you are full of the cosmos. You are as wonderful as the cosmos, you are a manifestation of the cosmos."

Impermanence, No-Self, Inter-being:
By Thich Nhat Hanh

Compassionate action

"Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live."

Pema Chödrön

Awakened ones longing for us

"It is said in the Buddhist teachings that all the Buddhas, or Awakened Ones, are always right here with us just longing for us to open our hearts and minds so we can move beyond our limited way of perceiving: our limited way of hearing, tasting, smelling, and seeing."

Pema Chödrön

Becoming Human

"You are God slowly but surely evolving into a human being, with help and encouragement from your divine friends."

Fred

Very important

"We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light."

Hildegard of Bingen, 11th C.

Infinite mercy all over the world

"Emphasize: infinite mercy is found all over the world."

Heinz von Foerster

Dive deep into peace

"Don´t get bored with peace, dive deep into it.."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Listen

"If you do not express your own original ideas,
if you do not listen to your own being,
you will have betrayed yourself."

Rollo May in The Courage to Create

Look

"If you want to make a change, a difference, it means looking at the world with real honesty, unflinchingly and directly. Then, look at yourself and see that this sorrow is not just out there, but it's also in ourselves. It's our own fear and prejudice and hatred and desire and wanting and and neurosis and anxiety. It's our own sorrow. We have to look at it and not run away."

Jack Kornfield

Peace is the walk

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.

Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.


Thich Nhat Hanh,
Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems

Try mind

"Zen Master Seung Sahn says that try mind is already enlightened mind. So only sit, only try, only go straight, don't know. These days I think try mind is the most important thing there is, the only thing we have that's substantial. What else have you got to hold on to? This life? This feeling? This attainment, no attainment? How can you hold that? How can you hold clear eyes? Maybe you got enlightenment, how do you hold that? Nothing's guaranteed. Everything's always changing. You cannot hold your life. 'Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed, that is human.' That means we cannot hold anything."

Zen Master Su Bong

The Creative & The Receptive

"Heaven, The Creative is decided
and therefore shows to men the easy.
Earth, The Receptive is yielding
and therefore shows to men the simple."

"The two fundamental principles move according to the requirements of the time, so that they are continuously undergoing change. But the nature of their movement is uniform and consistent. The Creative is always strong, decided, real, hence it meets with no difficulties. It always remains true to itself; hence its effortlessness. Difficulties always indicate vacillation and lack of clarity. In the same way it is the nature of the Receptive to be consistently yielding, to follow the line of least resistance, and therefore to be simple.
Complications arise only from an inner conflict of motives."

"Only through the divine can one hurry without haste and reach the goal without walking."

"Space, as the principle of diversity and confusion, is overcome by the deep, the simple. Time, as the principle of uncertainty, is overcome by the easy, the germinal."

I Ching or book of changes, Richard Wilhelm translation

Being born of not being

"Returning is the motion of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
The ten thousand things are born of being.
Being is born of not being."


Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu
Translation by Gia Fu Feng
and Jane English

That no one can dam up

"God is a great underground river
that no one can dam up
and no one can stop."

Meister Eckhart

Zen saying

"Weeds only grow when we dislike them".

Zen saying

Being Peace

If we are peaceful.

If we are happy.

We can smile and blossom

Like a flower.

And everyone

In our family,

Our entire society

Will benefit

From our peace.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Shhh

"Master Rabbit I saw."

Walter de la Mare

Let it settle itself

"No thought, no reflection, no analysis,
no cultivation, no intention;
let it settle itself."

Tilopa

One after one

"Peacefully
The quiet stars came out, one after one;
The holy twilight fell upon the sea,
The summer day was done."

Celia Thaxter

Want Compassion

"What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart."

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Learn about the Loving Heart

"Many people do not understand that life, with its burdens, is a treasure. The weight of disappointment makes us close our eyes to the gift of being in the world to learn about the loving heart."

Harold Klemp

Resistance to Change

"Suffering is our resistance to change."

Maharshi Mahesh Yogi

Song from Brett

If I clearly understand
you intend no demand,
I´ll usually respond when you call.
But if you come across
like a high and mighty boss,
you´ll feel like you ran into a wall.
And when you remind me
so piously
about all those things you´ve done for me,
you´d better get ready:
Here comes another bout!
Then you can shout,
you can spit,
moan, groan, and throw a fit;
I still won´t take the garbage out.
Now even if you should change your style,
It´s going to take me a little while
before I can forgive and forget.
Because it seems to me that you
didn´t see me as human too
until all your standards were met.

"Song from Brett" by Marshall B. Rosenberg
from the book ´Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life´

Hearth flames fill the sky

Old Buddha said:

"When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep.

The hearth flames will fill the sky."

"When hungry" means the lives

of those who have eaten rice.

Those who have not yet eaten rice

are the people who are not hungry yet.

However, you should understand

that we whose hunger is our daily life

must affirm that it is ourselves who have eaten rice.

"Tired" means tiredness within tiredness.

It is tiredness that includes the totality of tiredness.

For this reason,

it is this present moment

when the life of the whole body (and mind) is

completely unified with the whole body.

Sleep" means sleeping with the eyes of the Buddha,

the eyes of the Dharma, the eyes of insight,

the eyes of the ancestors,

and the eyes of round pillars and lanterns.

from:

How to raise an ox

 Zen master Dogen's Shobogenzo

Given To

I never feel more given to
than when you take from me -
when you understand the joy I feel
giving to you.
And you know my giving isn´t done
to put you in my debt,
but because I want to live the love
I feel for you.
To receive with grace
may be the greatest giving.
There´s no way I can separate
the two.
When you give to me,
I give you my receiving.
When you take from me, I feel so
given to.

"Given To" by Ruth Bebermeyer