liveonearth | Entries tagged with quiet

SOMETIMES

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,

breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,

who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,

you come
to a place
whose only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests
to stop what
you are doing
right now,
and

to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,

questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.

~ David Whyte

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1429029.html

There is no need to run outside for better seeing...

Rather abide a the center of your being.

For the more you leave it the less you learn.

Search your heart and see...

The way to do is to be.

--Lao Tzu

Having a relaxed mind is very useful in meditation. Relaxation is the foundation of deep concentration. When the mind is relaxed, it becomes more calm and stable. These qualities in turn strengthen relaxation, thus forming a virtuous cycle. Paradoxically, deep concentration is built on relaxation.

A similar mechanism works in the practice of mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive, and nonjudgmental. These qualities deepen mindfulness, which in turn strengthens lightness and ease, thus forming a virtuous cycle of deepening mindfulness.

--Chade-Meng Tan in Search Inside Yourself; The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), (a 2012 book on meditation by an emotionally intelligent Google engineer), page 69.

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

Yoga is an internal practice,
the rest is just a circus.
---Guruji

There’s a big difference between riding a coal train through Kansas and Nebraska and trying to write. Writing is a suspension of life. I believe that so-called writer’s block is something that any writer is going to experience every day, but in a minor way. You break through some kind of membrane, and then you go into another world.
--McPhee

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-- T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". It appears in the second poem called "East Coker"

When the mind realizes
its absolute incapacity to know the unknown,
it becomes silent.

--restatement from Krishnamurti, exact quote not known

( braindump )

I only went out for a walk,
and finally concluded to stay out ‘til sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in.
~John Muir

( Don't run around this world looking for a hole to hide in. )

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
--Albert Einstein

I have enough money in the bank now to buy enough beans and rice for twenty-five years. To the end (sometimes longed for). Why not kidnap Suzy and sneak off to the life of a semi-hermit? A tempting, constantly tempting idea. ......Peace. Simplicity. Order, ceremony and ritual. Voluntary poverty. An end to clutter and this vulgar, stifling, crushing burden of things.
--Edward Abbey

"Your greatest protection is to know who you are."
--Deborah Frances

I would like to think that there is time for me in this life for one adult love, one conscious love, one blessed with great joy, and more truth than words. I've heard tales of such loves. My loves have been young ones. I am ready for the love of my life.

Current Music: Glory in the Meeting House, Dana and Susan Robertson, Asheville Music Sampler V1

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

In all things be a master
Of what you do and say and think.
Be free.
Are you quiet? Quieten your body.
Quieten your mind.
By your own efforts
Waken yourself, watch,
And live joyfully.
Follow the truth of the way.
Reflect upon it.
Make it your own.
Live it.
It will always sustain you.

- Buddha from the Dhammapada

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
--Kafka

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

INTERESTING TIMES

are better than no times at all.

Entries tagged with quiet

Poem OTD: Tiny Frightening Requests

QotD: Lao Tzu on Being

QotD: Relaxation-->Concentration-->Mindfulness

Poem: Ask Me by William Stafford

QotD: Yoga

QotD: A Suspension of Life

QotD: on Waiting

QotD: Absolute Incapacity

Noise

QotD: Going In

Rumi Poem: Tending Two Shops

QotD: Solitude

QotD: Voluntary Simplicity

QotD: Protection

One Great Love

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Little Bitta Buddha

in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet --- Kafka quote

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