Healing does not mean going back
to the way things were before,
but rather allowing what is now
to move us closer to God.
Ram Dass
Photo by Woodland Gnome 2014
May the sun
bring you new energy by day.
May the moon
softly restore you by night.
May the rain
wash away your worries.
May the breeze
blow new strength into your being.
May you walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life.
An Apache Prayer
Photo by Woodland Gnome 2013
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…
Welcome and entertain them all.
Treat each guest honorably.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Rumi
Photo by Woodland Gnome 2013
Usually when people look at the Buddhist precepts, they understand them in terms of human relationships
Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not lie.
Of course these are about human relationships, but what do they mean in terms of the environment?
There is a particular kind of stealing that we do when we clear-cut forests, when topsoil is washed into rivers.
There is a particular kind of killing that we do when we wipe out whole species.
These precepts are taught not only as they relate to humans but also how they relate to the environment, to the ten thousand things.
Not only the sentient, ‘feeling’ beings, deer, muskrat, beaver, but to the rocks, trees and river. All of it.
John Daido Loori Roshi
“Zen’s Radical Conservative,” Shambhala Sun, July 2001
Photo by Woodland Gnome 2013
To you the Earth yields her fruit,
and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands.
It is in exchanging the gifts of the Earth
that you shall find abundance and be satisfied,
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice,
it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.
Khalil Gibran
Photo by Woodland Gnome 2013
You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.”
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights,
is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life
deserves to fill his cup from your little stream
Khalil Gibran
Photo by Woodland Gnome
As our fixed ideas about experience change, we see that up to now we have scarcely appreciated our immediate experience.
This lack of attention has reinforced our tendencies to live in the past or to seek new experiences in the future.
We can change this around, through practice…
As our experience opens to wider perspectives, our senses, our body, and our consciousness become vibrantly alive.
Patterns of craving and frustration give way to the flowing interaction with the process of living.
All imbalances drop away, and whatever satisfaction or healing we need is provided naturally.
This protection, this balance, this genuine self-sufficiency allow us to open to the endless possibility of each moment and to discover the richness and depth of all experience.
Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche
Photo by Woodland Gnome