Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time. They say I’m active. But being active is still wasting one’s time, if in doing one loses oneself. Today is a resting time, and my heart goes off in search of itself. If an anguish still clutches me, it’s when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver. At the moment, my whole kingdom is of this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why wonder if something is dying or if men suffer, since everything is written on this window where the sun sheds its plenty as a greeting to my pity? I can say and in a moment I shall say that what counts is to be human and simple. No, what counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity. When am I truer than when I am the world? My cup brims over before I have time to desire. Eternity is there and I was hoping for it. What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness.

The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death. Besides, how can I define the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair? If I listen to the voice of irony, crouching underneath things, slowly it reveals itself. Winking its small, clear eye, it says: “Live as if …” In spite of much searching, this is all I know.   ~Albert Camus (brainpickings.org)

from here to there……may we remember to call for the Gods when we need them……where the inner well can rest, fully empty and receive…….

The first thing the tenzo had to do was pick the tiny stones out of the rice before it was cooked. In this respect there can be no doubt that food fit for human consumption lies at the point where the rice has been distinguished from the stones. So, in our daily lives, we have to discriminate, but what we must not forget is the fundamental attitude grounding this discrimination: everything we encounter is our life. This is the attitude of Big Mind.”

~Uchiyama

what to pray for

I pray this winter be gentle and kind –
a season of rest
from the wheel of the mind.
~ John Geddes