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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 StevensBefore 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.
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.
