On Awakening

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth.
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep!

Rumi

Photographer:  Norman Koonoo, Nunavut

On Love

On Duality

Because suffering is impermanent, 

that is why we can transform it.
Because happiness is impermanent, 

that is why we have to nourish it. 

                                                            
                                                                  Thay, 10th June 2014

On Duality

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Do not try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire.
Do not wash a wound with blood.

No matter how fast you run, 
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front.

Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you.
What hurts you blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

Rumi

On Healing

 

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamed - blessed illusion -

That I had a beehive 

Here inside my Heart

And the Golden Bees

Were making

White combs and sweet honey

From my old failures.

Antonio Machado

On Courage

The bravery is believing in yourself.
 
And that nobody can teach you.

On Diversity

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things,

For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stiple on trout that swim;

Fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls; finches wings;

Landscape plotted and pierced - fold, fallow and plough;

And all trades, their gear, tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who know how?)

With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins