Be quiet

in your mind,

quiet in your senses,

and also quiet in your body.

Then, when all these are quiet,

don’t do anything. In that

state truth will reveal

itself to you.

Kabir

What lies

outside my mind

is of no concern to it.

If you could learn this lesson,

you’d be standing straight.

You can come back

to life.

Marcus Aurelius

the annotated marcus

hevrin khalaf, unifier, hero

Anything could happen,

and whether we act or not has everything

to do with it. Though there is no lottery ticket for the lazy

and the detached, for the engaged there is a tremendous gamble

for the highest stakes right now. I say this to you not because I haven’t

noticed that this country has strayed close to destroying itself and everything

it once stood for, in pursuit of empire in the world and the eradication of democracy

at home, that our civilization is close to destroying the very nature on which we

depend—the oceans, the atmosphere, the uncounted species of plant and

insect and bird. I say it because I have noticed: wars will break out,

the planet will heat up, species will die out, but how many,

how hot, and what survives depends on whether

we act. The future is dark, with a

darkness as much of

the womb as the

grave.
 
 
Rebecca Solnit

Flowers,

sesame seed, bowls of

fresh water, a tuft of kusa-grass,

all this altar paraphernalia is not needed

by someone who takes the teacher’s

words in and honestly

lives them.

Full of longing

in meditation, one sinks into

a joy that is free of any impulse to act

and will not enter a human

birth again.

Lalla