to be enlightened by all things

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.



Eihei Dōgen, Genjōkōan (現成公案)

to guard their practice

Those who wish to guard their practice
Should very attentively guard their minds,
For those who do not guard their minds
Will be unable to guard their practice.


Shantideva


A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, Translated by Stephen Batchelor, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1979

the later returned

When a drop quit home and later returned

It found a shell and became a pearl.

Rumi



excerpt from Rumi's Divan of Shems of Tabriz - Selected Odes, a new interpretation by James Cowan, Element Boooks, 1997

what happens if I sit with that?

Only a self-centered self, a self that is attached to mind and body, can be hurt. That self is really a concept formed of thoughts we believe in. […] Suppose I feel I have no friends, and I’m very lonely. What happens if I sit with that? I begin to see that my feeling of loneliness are really just thoughts. As a matter of fact, I’m simply sitting here. Maybe I’m sitting alone in my room, without a date. Nobody has called me, and I fell lonely. In fact, however, I’m simply sitting. The loneliness and the misery are simply my thoughts, my judgments that things should be other than they are. I haven’t seen through them; I haven’t recognized that my misery is manufactured by me. The truth of the matter is, I’m simply sitting in my room. It takes time before we can see that just to sit is okay, just fine. I cling to the thought that if I don’t have pleasant and supportive company, I am miserable.

I’m not recommending a life in which we cut ourselves off in order to be free of attachment. Attachment concerns not what we have, but our opinions about what we have.



Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)


above, Morning Sun by Edward Hopper,1952; Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio -- to see more please refer to:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/

an art

If we learn to enjoy waiting,

we don't have to wait to enjoy.


Kazuaki Tanahashi



photo from Chronicles of a NYC Bench

nothing is real

nothing is real, by effusion