“She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood: that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.” ―Alice Munro
too much happiness (a quote from Alice Munro)
09 Friday Jun 2017
09 Friday Jun 2017
10 Wednesday May 2017
Posted quotation
in20 Monday Jun 2016
Posted twitter tweets
inTags
acceptance, crazy, happiness, love, randomness, serenity, tweet, zen
30 Monday May 2016
Tags
apophenia, comfort, creativity, grace, happiness, meditation, memory, serendipity, serenity, surrender, thinking out loud, writing, zen
30 Friday Jan 2015
Posted recommendation
inMusic to melt to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_06O8XnJQo … Martin Tallstrom plays the Twin Peaks theme on baritone guitar. (Composer: Angelo Badalamenti)
(painting by Susan Seddon Boulet)
14 Sunday Dec 2014
Posted twitter tweets
in09 Tuesday Dec 2014
Posted twitter tweets
in09 Tuesday Dec 2014
Posted poem, Uncategorized
inTags
acceptance, balance, compassion, dust, genesis, george segal, grace, illusion, imkertje, loss, love, poetry, robert pinsky, serenity, surrender, time, transience, truth, zen
Above: “Street Crossing” (1992) by the American artist George Segal (1924-2000)
Robert Pinsky’s “Genesis According to George Segal”
The Spirit brooded on the water and made
The earth, and molded us out of earth. And then
The Spirit breathed Itself into our nostrils—
And rested. What was the Spirit waiting for?
An image of Its nature, a looking glass?
Glass also made of dust, of sand and fire.
Ordinary, enigmatic, we people waiting
In the terminal. A survivor at a wire fence,
Also waiting. Behind him, a tangle of bodies
Made out of plaster, which plasterers call mud.
The apprentice hurries with a hod of mud.
Particulate sand for glass. Milled flour for bread.
What are we waiting for? The hour glass
That measures all our time in trickling dust
Is also of dust and will return to dust—
So an old poem says. Men in a bread line
Out in the dusty street are silent, waiting
At the apportioning-place of daily bread.
At an old-fashioned radio’s wooden case
A man sits listening in a wooden chair.
A woman at a butcher block waits to cut.
What are we waiting for, in clouds of dust?
Or waiting for the past, particles of being
Settled and moist with life, then brittle again.
————————————————-
Extra cool thing: Robert Pinsky reads this poem aloud here:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/genesis-according-george-segal?mbid=social_twitter
01 Monday Dec 2014
Posted quotation
in17 Monday Nov 2014
Posted quotation
inTags
ambition, balance, dzongsar jamyang khyentse, letting go, meditation, paradox, quotation, serenity, surrender, zen
If we have ambitions—even if our aim is enlightenment— then there is no meditation, because we are thinking about it, craving it, fantasizing, imagining things. That is not meditation. This is why an important characteristic of shamatha meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter if we get enlightenment or not. It doesn’t matter if our friends get enlightened faster. Who cares? We are just breathing. We just sit straight and watch the breath in and out. Nothing else. We let go of our ambitions. This includes trying to do a perfect shamatha meditation. We should get rid of even that. Just sit.
—Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
14 Friday Nov 2014
Posted quotation
in17 Friday Oct 2014
Posted poem
inTags
both, illusion, paradox, serenity, slice of life, thinking out loud, time, yin yang, zen
08 Wednesday Oct 2014
Posted quotation
inTags
comfort, compassion, friendship, grace, love, quotation, ram dass, serenity, surrender, transience, zen
30 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted quotation
inTags
alan watts, grace, happiness, illusion, play, quotation, serenity, simplicity, transience, truth, wisdom, zen
25 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted twitter tweets
in12 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted quotation
inTags
acceptance, friendship, love, marriage, patience, quotation, serenity, surrender, zen
10 Thursday Apr 2014
Posted quotation
in18 Tuesday Mar 2014
Posted quotation
in16 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted review
inTags
acceptance, habit, patience, serenity, slice of life, surrender, transience, zen