The Lazy Faire

Awareness of desire reveals some uncomfortable truths.  Sappho called them sweetbitter, but the Buddha agreed only in a relative way.  Yes, desire always disappoints.  But if we can make this disappointment the object of our awareness, then desire can become enlightening.  As the young woman hanging over the cliff in the Zen story of the strawberry discovered, the gap can be sweet, even if we are at the end of our rope.

– Mark Epstein, “Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught
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Our hands imbibe like roots,

so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.

And I fold them in prayer, and they

draw from the heavens

light.

– St. Francis of Assisi interpreted by Daniel Ladinski, “Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West“

The mind is like a monkey swinging from branch to branch through the forest, says the Sutra.  In order not to lose sight of the monkey by some sudden movement, we must watch the monkey constantly and even be one with it. Mind contemplating mind is the object and its shadow — the object cannot shake the shadow off.  The two are one.  Wherever the mind goes, it still lies in the harness of the mind. The sutra sometimes uses the expression “Bind the monkey” to refer to taking hold of the mind.  But the monkey image is only a means of expression.  Once the mind is directly and continually aware of itself, it is no longer like a monkey.  There are not two minds, one which swings from branch to branch, and another which follows after to bind it with a piece of rope.

– Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Miracle of Mindfulness“

There’s no “should” or “should not” when it comes to having feelings.  They’re a part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control.  When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what we do with those feelings.

– Fred Rogers, “The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember“

It is impossible to overemphasize the paradox represented by every hierophany, even the most elementary.  By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu.  A sacreded stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from the profane point of view), nothing distinguishes it from all other stones.  But for those to whome a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality.  In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.  The cosmos in its entirety can become a hierophany.

– Mircea Eliade, “The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion
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