Every stretch of time, whether an inch or a foot, is priceless. Life is made of these units, and each is an opportunity for mindfulness.
Not twice this day
Inch time, foot gem.
This day will not come again.
Each minute is worth a priceless gem.
Response of Takuan, 1573 – 1645, Zen teacher, when asked by a lord who asked how should we “pass the time.”
Summer Solstice
The person sees the morning as the beginning of a new day; takes germination as the start in the life of a plant, and withering as its end.
But this is nothing more than biased judgment on his part.
Nature is one.
There is no starting point or destination, only an unending flux, a continuous metamorphosis of all things.
Masanobu Fukuoka, 1913 – 2008, Japanese farmer and philosopher
If you put down the stories you tell yourself about your life for one minute, what remains?
Let go of a hundred years;
Rest from the ten thousand concerns.
Let go with both hands and walk on,
Free from judgment and division
Shitou Xiqian, Chan Master and hermit, 700–790 Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage
Silence is fruitful only when it leads to interior peace and stillness.
Contemplation is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
You do not find it by travelling, but by standing still.
Thomas Merton
What is unaccepted internally is projected externally. We also see this strongly on a collective level in todays world. Fears around change, or identity dilution become personified in external “intruders.”
If you are brought up on ideals but know you have human failings and unacceptable qualities, you have to forgive yourself for being human, and it is through this forgiveness that you forgive others.
But that is so difficult to do in our society, because we are not being loved for ourselves so we hide our worst faults.
We cannot love what we have not accepted in ourselves. And what we cannot love, we will fear – and what we fear, we will project onto others.
Marion Woodman, 1928 – 2018, Jungian analyst, Worshipping Illusions
We tend to focus on, and speak about the soul life of an individual in terms of spiritual comfort and deep nourishment, qualities which are a central, and abiding dynamic of its presence,
but the equally unsettling and disturbing quality about this strange, often wild and courageous faculty of belonging inside us we have come to name ‘the soul’ is its ruthless, and almost tidal wish to find its own way to a full union with the world.
The soul is a planner’s nightmare, the career counsellor’s central surprise, the biographer’s conundrum, an internal abiding spring that is both a source and a continual unstoppable flow, an internal stranger at the door of our outer life about to break everything apart and leave;
a pilgrim suddenly more in love with the horizon than its home; and most disturbingly, someone who is willing to fail, often spectacularly, at their own life rather than succeed drably, at someone else’s
David Whyte
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