The realm of the sacred

The realm of the sacred and the realm of wisdom is the big realm. And that’s where the oneness happens, but it happens in the heart. It’s not something out there; it happens in the heart.

~ Matthew Fox, Bowing to the Heart Over Authority

The wisdom of love

Wisdom tells me I am nothing.  Love tells me I am everything.  And between the two my life flows.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

(Full quote from the book, I Am That:  “I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.”)

The deep blue sky

What is the true self? It’s brilliantly transparent like the deep blue sky, and there’s no gap between it and all living beings.

~ Kodo Sawaki Roshi, “The True Self”

Soft eyes

Sunrise through the raindrops resting on the window.

To perceive the world through others senses is to find splendor in familiarity, wilderness in one’s backyard, the sacred in the mundane.

~ Ed Yong

Paddling in.

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

~ Denise Levertov

Abide

Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your heart.

~ Dogen

The secret heart of time

On the trail.

The secret heart of time is change and growth. Each new experience that awakens in you adds to your soul and deepens your memory.

The person is always a nomad, journeying from threshold to threshold, into ever different experiences. In each new experience, another dimension of the soul unfolds.

It is no wonder that from ancient times the human has been understood as a wanderer.

O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Observers

River rocks

Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stories

Grasses at sunrise.

There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.

~ Terry Pratchett

Being a person

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.

~ William Stafford, Text as published in Even in Quiet Places: Poems (Confluence Press, 2010).