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#1750 - Sunday, March 28, 2004 - Editor: Gloria Lee          

The slightest sound matters. The most momentary rhythm matters.
You can do as you please, yet everything matters.
 
- Wallace Stevens  
 

Before the eaves, slender bamboos,
A thousand stalks of jade,
Sing when the cool
Rains fall, with a rustling sound,
Their feathery green intruding at my desk;
They know there is no
Purer hidden spot than this.

- Isho Tokugan (1360–1437)


   


  Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit Inspiration
"A bird in a secluded grove sings like a flute.
Willows sway gracefully with their golden threads.
The mountain valley grows the quieter as the clouds return.
A breeze brings along the fragrance of apricot flowers.
For a whole day I have sat here encompassed by peace,
Till my mind is cleansed in and out of all cares and idle thoughts.
I wish to tell you how I feel, but words fail me.
If you come to this grove, we can compare notes."

From: 'The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the
T'ang Dynasty'  by John C. H. Wu


    Yoshida Chizuko (b. 1924), Jazz, 2003.192. view woodblock print:  http://www.shermanleeinstitute.org/images/exhibition/2003_192jazz_lg.jpg  

Imagine a whole lifetime of this struggle, movement after movement, symphony 
after symphony, sonata after quartet after concerto. Always probing and  rejecting
in his dedication to perfection, to the principle of inevitability. This  somehow is the
key to the mystery of a great artist: that for reasons unknown to  him or to anyone
else, he will give away his energies and his life just to make  sure that one note
follows another inevitably. It seems rather an odd way to  spend one's life; but it
isn't so odd when we think that the composer, by doing  this, leaves us at the finish
with the feeling that something is right in the world,  that something checks
throughout, something that follows its own laws  consistently, something we can
trust, that will never let us down. 
 

Leonard Bernstein, The joy of music, Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 1994   http://thedailymeditation.cjb.net
 


  Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.
- Landrum Bolling   
   


  Gill Eardley ~ Allspirit Inspiration  
The world is not something separate from you and me; the world,
society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish
between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the
world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to
understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world
is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are
the world's problems.
 

From: Krishnamurti's Book of Life Daily Meditations
 


  Daily Dharma    

"In the ocean there are many bright strands
And many dark strands like veins that are

Seen when a wing is lifted up.  Your hidden
Self is blood in those, those veins that are

Lute strings that make ocean music, not the
Sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.”
~~Rumi



  Daily Dharma
"When you are doing zazen, you are within the complete calmness of your mind; you do not feel anything.  You just sit.  But the calmness of your sitting will encourage you in your everyday life.  So actually you will find the value of Zen in your everyday life, rather than while you sit.  But this does not mean you should neglect zazen.  Even though you do not feel anything when you sit, if you do not have this zazen experience, you cannot find anything; you just find weeds, or trees, or clouds in your daily life; you do not see the moon.  That is why you are always complaining about something.  But for Zen students a weed, which for most people is worthless, is a treasure.  With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes an art.“
~ Shunryu Suzuki

From the book, "Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”, published by Weatherhill


 

All formal ways,
including martial arts,
calligraphy,
and flower arrangement,
seem at first glance to be
ways of getting things done.
They really are ways beyond
just getting things done.
In all formal ways, you are
given a task to do and then
asked to go beyond thought
to become the action itself.

- Maverick Sutras


  Along the Way          

A stupid or simple person is always ready to see
        the wrong in another and ready to form an opinion
        and to judge.  But you will find a wise person
        expressing his opinion of others quite differently,
        always trying to tolerate and always trying to forgive
        still more.  The present is the reflection of the past,
        and the future will be the echo of the present; this
        saying will always prove true.
        

                 
       - Hazrat Inayat Khan
 


  Joyce, Know_Mystery

from "To Trust"
I have so much faith in you.
I believe I could wait for your voice
silently, through centuries of darkness.
 

~  Antonin Pozzi ~  



All things are connected to each other.
None holds dominion over the other for all are equal.
There is no beginning. No ending to strive towards. 
Everything is in a circle that moves only in the Now.

- Native American 

 

art by Dusan Pajin   view mandala: http://dekart.f.bg.ac.yu/~dpajin/mandala.jpg


  Peaceful be heaven, peaceful the earth, peaceful the broad space between. Peaceful for us be the running waters, peaceful the plants and herbs! Peaceful to us be the signs of the future, peaceful what is done and undone, peaceful to us be what is and what will be. May all to us be gracious!

- Atharva Veda 19.9

From "Teachings of the Hindu Mystics," © 2001 by Andrew Harvey. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

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