Category Archives: Reflections

…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Seven)

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[Photo Credit: NIRVANA DHAMMA]

“In your investigation of the world, never allow the mind to desert the body. Examine its nature, see the elements that comprise it. When its true nature is seen fully and lucidly by the heart, the wonders of the world will become clear.” ~ Ajahn Mun

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…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Six)

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…suffering -considered mental unlike pain that is physical- is a result of the act of “clinging”, I had once read outside of Bodhidharma, an act of ‘resisting’ in the sense of our ability or lack of readiness ‘to flow with life’…I, for one, am yet to experience a ‘transformation’ of “everything” as I haven’t stopped “clinging” – for the fear that I may forget those most momentous memories, sad and happy alike…that I will have to to face head-on all over again the loss of the loved ones to death and to life…as if to cease to live…

“Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything.” ~ Bodhidharma

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Of dreams and nightmares…

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“Love sometimes comes like a dream and leaves like a nightmare.”

…reminiscing the day when you called your self selfish and a coward

at last i know my self as well

~ From a notoriously selfless one to “her” dearest selfish coward

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…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Five)

…playing the devil’s advocate (or, not being wise) yet once again…by failing to see how anything that “happens in a very idiotic fashion” can constitute “[s]implicity”…

“The acts of life have neither beginning nor end. Everything happens in a very idiotic fashion. That’s why everything is the same. Simplicity is called dada.” ~ Tristan Tzara

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[Photo Credit]

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…on a dark Friday…

…inaction is an action at its ultimate articulation…avoid suffering (an emotional reaction) by listening to it with full attention, for the insight to a question thought to have been left unanswered is hidden in it. ~ hny (10.14.2015) [As posted on my Facebook timeline]

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The art of saying goodbye

Of course I am being sarcastic. If there is no “love divine” or any form of “love” to begin with, for that matter, how then can there be a “kiss” of it at the event of a separation? What I am not in the least bit exaggerating is my conviction that there is an art of saying goodbye, when there has been intimacy between those who are parting. Whether that intimacy has been on an emotional, intellectual, mental, spiritual or physical level should not matter. For even a miniscule amount of respect in ending “things” has the potential to become the only untainted memory within the individuals involved, regardless of the extent or length of their engagement with one another – something to take for the road we all have only one of.

Now, I leave the stage yet once again to my all-time favorite singing sensation, Dean Martin who succeeds in calming my slumber-craving nights like no other man has ever been capable of. Not because he never leaves my side but rather that he does so with a soul-soothing caress: “take my kiss to sleep with you, this kiss of love divine”…

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…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Four)

Ironic. I have learned about David Whyte from the one who has privileged me with my thus far most destructive heartbreak.

The following article excerpt is taken from Whyte’s Facebook page.

HEARTBREAK

is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control, of holding in our affections those who inevitably move beyond our line of sight.

Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete’s quick but abstract ability to let go. Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going.

Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. Heartbreak, we hope, is something we hope we can avoid; something to guard against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

…If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, it might be asking us to look for it and make friends with it, to see it as our constant and instructive companion, and even perhaps, in the depth of its impact as well as in its hindsight, to see it as its own reward. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is a deeper introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something or someone who has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the last letting go.

‘HEARTBREAK’ Excerpted From CONSOLATIONS:
The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2015
Now Available http://davidwhyte.stores.yahoo.net/newbook.html

Morning Sky
Photo © David Whyte
Barga, Province of Lucca, Italy
October 2015

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…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Three)

…I admit: I see great value in the statement below. Am I capable of living within the wisdom behind it? Do I have the courage? To a dramatic disadvantage of my physical and emotional well-being: no. Perhaps, you do. If so, then I wish more inner strength to you.

“When you realize the fact that everything changes and find your composure in it, there you find yourself in nirvana.” ~ Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki

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[Photo Credit: SWEEPING ZEN]

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“Man in the Dark” or, when we die of a broken heart

“Betty died of a broken heart. Some people laugh when they hear that phrase, but that’s because they don’t know anything about the world. People die of broken hearts. It happens every day, and it will go on happening to the end of time.” ~ Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

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…a note to self: if not wise, seek advice…(Week Two)

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[Image Credit: Prof. William R. LaFleur]

…I know I am the one who selected the quote below for today but I am not at all sure how to understand it…is it possible that the inability to attribute an immediate meaning to what we believe we see becomes a most vital part of our understanding in the end?

“A difficult thing it is to be born as a human and every man who floats lazily through this world must sink to the depths again.” ~ Saigyo/Sato Norikiyo

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