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
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”
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
Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your heart.
~ Dogen
There is no more liberating feeling, or better way of deciding one’s priorities in life, than to acknowledge one’s objective insignificance within the immensity of the universe. Change is the nature of nature. Things come and go: species, ideologies, regimes, geographies, planets, and galaxies. Do what you can with what you can but never lose track of the gifts available to you within the blink of conscious existence you get. You cannot save a life; you cannot save a country; you cannot save a place; and you cannot save a planet. You can make life better, more satisfying, and more meaningful for yourself and others. Take a deep breath; appreciate what you have; help those you can; and trust that on the scale of nature, things unfold as they should.
~ Guy Tal, More Than a Rock
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.—Li-Young Lee
Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Soul is that unconditioned, mysterious, untamed, undomesticated, unique individual wild core of ourselves which is inextricably connected to the mysteries of wild nature.
– Claire Dunn
morning attitude 