p

Magnolia Basin

On branch tips the hibiscus bloom.
The mountains sho off red calices.
Nobody. a silent cottage in the valley.
One by one flowers open, then fall.

Wang Wei (trans. by Tony and Willis Barnstone and Xu Haixin)

q

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and

he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

q

The worst thing we can do to our children is to convince them that
ugliness is normal.
Rene Dubois

p

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine

rooms nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding

around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but

vegetables.

When you really look for me you will see me

instantly—

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

Kabir: version by Robert Bly (The Kabir Book)

q

Wherever you are is the entry point.
Kabir

q

The true ideal is not opposed to the real, but lies in it; and blessed
are the eyes that find it.
James Russell Lowell

p

It is the destruction of the world

in our own lives that drives us

half insane and more than half.

To destroy that which we were given

in trust: how will we bear it?

It is our own bodies that we give

to be broken, our bodies

existing before and after us

in clod and cloud, worm and tree,

that we, driving or driven, despise

in our greed to live, our haste

to die. To have lost wantonly

the ancient forests, the vast grasslands

is our madness, the presence

in our very bodies of our grief.

Wendell Berry