Querulous Squirrel did a riff on the Rumi one liner that I posted here yesterday. QS is one of my favorite bloggers, and her explorations and insights are rich, expansive and inspiring. Here’s some worthy reading (and so much more if you go directly to her site): Reality exists. There is no doubt about it. […]
Wisdom
Rumi, On Reality
The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden. –Rumi
Journey to India
I leave today for India. We’ll be in the southern region for a week before heading up to Ladakh. After a trek through the Himalayas, we will visit the Ajanta Buddhist temple caves in Maharashtra. I have been trekking with this group of friends for over 15 years, but this is the first time I […]
The Self, Undivided
Meditation garden, Osmosis Enzyme Bath If we fall into hell, we go through hell; this is the most important attitude to have. Just sit in the Reality of Life seeing hell and paradise, misery and joy, life and death, all with the same eye. No matter what the situation, we live the life of the […]
Moving in the Landscape as One of Its Details
This was a weekend with a disruptive sense of time. It made me think of an essay by the poet Wendell Berry, “An Entrance to the Woods” in which he describes making a trip to a forest in Kentucky. He leaves work, drives hard over the interstate highways for over an hour, then finally arrives […]
Travelling, Or Being Travelled?
Whatever you may be, you are being ‘lived’. You are not travelling, as you think: you are being ‘travelled’. Remember: you are in a train. Stop trying to carry your baggage yourself! It will come along with you anyhow. – Wei Wu Wei, from Open Secret One of the best things about being online IMHO […]
Glorious Impersonality
For several years now my Sunday mornings have begun with the anticipation of reading the weekly email from Andrew that arrives in my inbox around 7am. I have saved every one he has sent to me, and for good reason. Both he and his wife Kathryn, in addition to being two of the wisest and […]
Humility, with Humor
Something happens when we face the truth about ourselves. For one thing, there is no room for pomposity, arrogance, or self-absorption. More than one person has pointed out how closely conjoined “humility” is with “humor.” A sense of humor, like a true sense of humility, involves ruthless honesty about who we are, without disguise or […]
Interior Space Deep in the Human Heart
Early on in my art education, a professor told me a parable I have never forgotten. Long ago, an emperor in China loved ducks. Inordinately. His passion was so overwhelming that he called forth the greatest artist and calligrapher in his kingdom and made his request: I want you to create the ultimate image of […]
- Transcendence
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Translucent Awareness
The most profound shift I have had in weeks: Reading the weekly email message from my friend Andrew. Fresh from a journey to Peru under the tutelage of his shaman Don Diego, his message to me this morning transmutated some part of his “beyond language” experience into a form I could breathe into and recognize […]