Heaven and Earth and Human

appear to be different,

but they are essentially one.

This essence has no size,

and the spirit of a human

and the infinite must be one.

~Toju Nakae

our ultimate marker of divine imagination is our capacity to hold gratitude as our touchstone……here we reconnect to beauty and begin to thread it back into our lives……..

When we offer flowers, we try to remember “emptiness,” that there is no self making the offering, no ego looking for praise or diminished by criticism, no buddha who receives the offering, no flowers existing in the solid way that they appear. Only the dreamscape, the illusory nature of our world appearing in its many forms, arising, receding, dissolving, arising. We try to remember that all of life is like a dream appearing to our waking mind, that appearances are deceptive, moments pass quickly, living things are fleeting. ~Joan Stamm

circle of belonging

Beauty makes presence shine. It brings out elegance and dignity and has a confidence, an effortlessness that is not labored or forced. This fluency and ease of presence is ultimately rooted below the surface in surer depths. In a sense, the question of beauty is about a way of looking at things. It is everywhere, and everything has beauty; it is merely a matter of discovering it. The most profound statement that can be made about something is the statement that “it is.” Beauty is. The word “is” is the most magical word. The word “is” is the greatest hymn to the “thereness” of things. The “isness” of things is miraculous: that there is something rather than nothing.  ~John O’Donohue