A Saturday stroll

Sunset light coloring the pond.

You’ve been walking in circles,
Searching. Don’t drink by
the water’s edge. Throw
yourself in. Become the water.
Only then will your thirst end.

~ Jeanette Berson

18. Integration

Morning sky.

Integration arises from intimacy with our emotions and our bodies, as well as with our thoughts.

~ Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

14. In the morning light

Morning shimmers and shines.

Mind is very cunning; it is never simple.  The heart is never cunning; it is always simple.  To be simple means shifting from the head to the heart.

We live through the head.  That’s why our life becomes more and more complicated, more and more like a jigsaw puzzle.  Nothing seems to fit.  And the more we try to be clever, the more in a mess we are.  That has been our history: We have gone more and more insane.  Now the whole earth is almost like a madhouse.  The time has come, if humanity is to survive at all, for a great shift to happen: We have to move from the head to the heart.  Otherwise, the head is ready to commit suicide.  It has created so much misery and so much boredom and so many problems that suicide seems the only way out.  The whole earth is preparing for suicide.  It is going to be a global suicide, unless a miracle happens.

And this is going to be the miracle — if it happens, this is the miracle — there will be a great shift, a radical change, in our very outlook: We will start living from the heart.  We will drop the whole universe of the mind, and we will start afresh like small children.

Live from the heart.  Feel more, think less, be more sensitive and less logical.  Be more and more heartful, and your life will become sheer joy.

~ Osho, Everyday Osho, Day 92

11. The wind is in a hurry today

When night and day greet each other.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

10. A sunrise walk in the woods

Morning on the dock.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

~ Wendell Berry, Excerpted from his poem “Given” 

9. Inhale, exhale

Maria’s clouds moved out near sunset yesterday and took some of the sunset colors with her.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

8. Rising, falling

It was a dark and misty morning.

The loving mind can observe peace and joy in one moment, and then grief in the next moment, and it will not be shattered by the change. A mind filled with love can be likened to the sky with a variety of clouds moving through it–some light and fluffy, others ominous and threatening. No matter what the situation, the sky is not threatened by the clouds. It is free.

~Sharon Salzberg