"He knows that you can't force an understanding. You have to let it happen. It has to coalesce, not unlike love or
pudding, he supposes. You stir and stir and watch the bubbles break the surface, you wait and keep the perfect heat underneath it and if you are very patient it finally, suddenly thickens up, silky shiny smooth as if to say, 'This is what I always meant to be. Thank you for waiting. You may now lick the spoon'."
-Unkown
"A verse from the Veda says,
May the turning of the Earth save us.
May the turning of the seasons & the turning of the leaves save us.
May we be saved by the worms, the beetles & the microbes turning the soil.
May we be saved by the turning of vegetation into compost
& the turning of compost into rich soil.
May the turning of seeds into plants & the turning of flowers
into fruits save us.
May the grasses & weeds, the vines & mosses all conspire to save us.
May we be saved by the turning of sprouts into saplings, of saplings into trees,
& the trees into forests.
May the scurrying, foraging, pouncing & lumbering of the animals save us.
May the breath of heaven in the breezes & the stormy winds save us.
May the dance of the butterflies, & the musical flight & return
of the birds save us.
May we be saved by vapors turning into clouds & by the turning of
the ever-changing clouds into rain.
May the waters flowing from springs into the lakes save us.
May the streams flowing into rivers, the rivers into seas,
& the great heaving of the oceans save us.
May we be saved by the patient turning of the rocks, the hills,
the mountains, & the volcanoes.
May the metabolism of the climates of the Earth save us.
May the turnings of all Beings great & small move us to find wisdom in our own turnings.
May we be saved by our waking & sleeping, by the rhythms of our blood
& our appetites, by the cycles of birthing & nurturing, injury & healing,
mating & nesting, loss & discovery, joy & mourning.
May we find in time the grace to turn to one another, & may this turning
also become our salvation.
May we learn to benefit the life of Earth with peace, humble in our needs,
& generous in our giving.
May we learn to celebrate the abundance of life with gratitude, & to embrace
the Earth with our bodies in return.
Marko up to bat
Mark pitching....Marko made it to third
Marko being coached by Coach Tom
Marko running for home
The thinker.
Velvet Elvis!!!!!!
I love this Brad Warner quote and I hope you do too:
Every single human being in the world at some time thinks that "if only" this or that one of our conditions could be met then we'd be happy. "If only I had a girlfriend/boyfriend/million bucks, then I'd be happy." Or in the case of the more spiritually minded: "If only I were enlightened, then that would settle everything once and for all." Think again.
An old Chinese Zen Master once said, "From birth to death it's just like this!"
Wherever you go in the world of human beings is pretty much the same. Only the details are different. All of my gaijin teacher friends who wanted to get out of Japan and back to the "real world" have discovered that the "real world" is hardly any different than the place they were leaving.
We always want to believe that somewhere there's a perfect situation, if only we weren't barred from it. But that's not the reality.
We always imagine that there's got to be somewhere else better than where we are right now, the great "Somewhere Else" we all carry around in our heads. We believe Somewhere Else is out there for us if only we could find it. But there's no Somewhere Else. Everything is right here.
I loved this. This is a body piercing place on High St. at Ohio State University.
Let's leave behind,
the things that do not matter.
And we'll turn our lives,
to a more important chapter.
Let's take the time and try to find,
what real life has to offer.
And maybe then we'll find again,
what we had long forgotten.
Like a friend, true 'til the end,
it will help us onward.
The sun is high, the road is wide,
and it starts where we are standing.
No one knows how far it goes,
for the road is never-ending.
It goes away,
beyond what we have thought of.
It flows away,
Away like flowing water.
I said, 'No, I don't know him. I've heard about him.'
He said, 'Well, you learn how to be like Gandhi.'
And I couldn't quite gather what he meant, so the next day I went into town and I bought those little glasses Gandhi used to wear. But that didn't make any difference in my life. Then I got a mouse pad for my computer and there was a picture of Gandhi and it said, 'My life is my message.' That must have been what Maharajji meant."
Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.
-Sheri Hostetler, from the anthology A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry
my friend Nikki and her daughter, Izzy
my new friend, Doug from Cincinnati that we met in the parking lot last night.Lineup: Phil Lesh, Jackie Green, Larry Campbell, John Molo and Steve Molitz
Source: Tucker, Sabrina and Loon
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
-JK Rowling
In honor of going to see Phil Lesh tomorrrow, here is a sticker on the back of my van.
