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”
You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
~ Toni Morrison
The sea is a mirror, not only to the clouds, the sun, the moon, and the stars, but to all one’s dreams, to all one’s speculations… . The sea tells us that everything is changing and that nothing ever changes, that tides go out and return, that all existence is a rhythm.
~ Arthur Symons, In a Northern Bay, 1918
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
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
Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your heart.
~ Dogen
morning attitude 