Posts Tagged → wisdom

knowing what is enough is freedom

bud dad max

bud walker, 17 april 1925 ~ 27 january 2017

 

Which

is more precious,

fame or health? Which is more

valuable, health or wealth?

Which is more harmful,

winning or

losing?

 

The more

excessive your love,

the greater your suffering.

The longer you hoard,

the heavier your

losses.

 

Knowing

what is enough is freedom.

Knowing when to stop is safety.

Practice these, and

you’ll endure.

 

from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 44

 

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the result is freedom

hard candy

 

Buddhism

advises you not to implant

feelings that you don’t really have or avoid

feelings that you do have. If you are miserable you

are miserable; that is the reality, that is what is happening,

so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching.

When you are having a bad time, examine that experience,

observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn

its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the

trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by

taking the thing apart piece by piece.

The trap can’t trap you if it has

been taken to pieces.

The result is

freedom.

 

Henepola Gunaratana

the shock of unsettling events

 

the work now is to become pure light

victor sillue

 

Darkness

has been given as

a nightshirt to sleep in.

Remember how human beings

were composed from water and dust

for blood and flesh with oily resins heated

in fire to make a skeleton. Then the soul, the divine

light, was breathed into human shapes. The work now is

to help our bodies become pure light. It may look like

this is not happening. But in a cocoon every bit

of worm-dissolving slime becomes silk.

As we take in light, each part

of us turns to

silk.

 

We

made the night

a darkness, but we bring

shining dawnlight out of that.

In the same way the mound of your

grave will bloom with resurrection. Sufis

and those on the path of the heart use darkness

to go within. During the night vigil the universe

is theirs. With all the kings and sultans and

their learned counselors asleep, everyone

is unemployed, except those wakeful

few and the divine

presence.

 

Bahauddin, father of Rumi

the drowned book

 

sing in the dark and try to forgive


 

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.

—Bertolt Brecht

 

There will be prayer, too,
but to a different god,

and dread will lurk
in the songs we sing.

Doom in the timpani
no matter what the tune,

the tune a variation
on the theme of doom.

We will sing in the dark
and try to forgive

and try not to dwell
on the lives we lived.

The music we play
will be a funeral song,

the poetry we speak,
that ancient tool

we used to believe
was the vital spark,

or if not the spark,
will be the match we strike

again and again
in the darkest dark.

 

Andrea Hollander