In the body is the sacred mountain {the vertebral column}, surrounded by seven islands {the chakras}. There are rivers, seas, mountains, fields and lords of the fields too. In the body are seers and sages, all the stars and planets, sacred pilgrimage sites, shrines and presiding deities. The sun and moon, the agents of creation and destruction also move in this place. Space, air, fire, water and earth are there also.
~ Śiva Saṃhitā, Ch 2
And our inexplicable love for this world, our delight and grief — what is that but the Cosmos loving itself, delighting in itself, grieving for itself?
– David Hinton
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
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.”)
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”
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
You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.
~ Denise Levertov
Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your heart.
~ Dogen
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
Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
morning attitude 