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
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
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
so wildflowers will come up
where you are.You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different. Surrender.~ Rumi
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
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
morning attitude 