9.28.26

A book that was very popular during the 1970s was Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass. Ram Dass had been a well-known Harvard professor of psychology known as Dr. Richard Alpert. When he went to India to study in the Sixties, Ram Dass left behind a career as well as many possessions including a Mercedes, a motorcycle, an MG sportscar, and a Cessna airplane. I feel he knows something about what renunciation really means. 

He wrote: "You may think of renunciation in terms of some external act like a New Year's resolution, or leaving family and friends to go off to a cave. But renunciation is much more subtle than that- and much harder- and much more continuing. On the spiritual journey, renunciation means nonattachment.

To become free of attachment means to break the link identifying you with your desires. The desires continue: They are part of the dance of nature. But a renunciate no longer thinks that he is his desires."

― Lama Surya Das, Awakening to the Sacred

9.14.26

A piece of silk, while it is in the dyeing vat, does not think of being anything other than a piece of silk. It absorbs the dye, and nothing can hasten the process. To deepen the color, the silk must again be immersed in the vats. We who seek Tao are like silk being dyed.

We immerse ourselves in Tao, and we absorb Tao. But our essential nature will not change, just as the substance of the silk is not changed by dyeing. Nor is our essential nature in need of any change. Like the silk that is brought out and presented, we are who we are, and there is no reason to be ashamed of that. That is why we can be immediate in everyday life: we know who we are, and we trust in the process of Tao.

―Deng Ming-Dao, Every Day Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

9.7.26

Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you'll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows, all magnificent. Curated to your taste.

This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version of the beautiful, bringing all of ourself to every project, whatever its parameters and constraints. Consider it an offering, a devotional act. We do the best, as we see the best with our own taste. 

No one else's.

― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

8.31.26

The Buddha once said that the core message of all his teachings could be summed up in one sentence. On the off chance that it is so, it might not be a bad idea to commit that sentence to memory. You never know when it might come in handy, when it might make sense to you, even though it didn’t the moment before. That sentence is: “Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine.” In other words, no attachments – especially to fixed ideas of yourself and who you are.

–John Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at your Own Door

8.24.26

For a long time it has been clear to me that certain forms of Eastern "mysticism"-in particular Taoism and Zen Buddhism-do not presuppose a universe divided into the spiritual and the material, and do not culminate in a state of consciousness where the physical world vanishes into some undifferentiated and bodiless luminescence. Taoism and Zen are alike founded upon a philosophy of relativity, but this philosophy is not merely speculative. It is a discipline in awareness as a result of which the mutual interrelation of all things and all events becomes a constant sen-sation. This sensation underlies and supports our normal awareness of the world as a collection of separate and different things-an awareness which, by itself, is called avidya (ignorance) in Buddhist philosophy because, in paying exclusive attention to differences, it ignores relationships. It does not see, for example, that mind and form or shape and space are as inseparable as front and back, nor that the individual is so interwoven with the universe that he and it are one body. 

― Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology

8.17.26

The clear still water of a mountain lake reflects the mountain and the sky with pristine clarity. You can do the same. If you are calm and still enough, you can reflect the mountain, the blue sky, and the moon exactly as they are. You reflect whatever you see just as it is without distorting anything. 

― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to See

8.10.26

When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 

8.3.26

Do you want to be really happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got. Do you want to be really miserable? You can begin by being discontented. As Lao- tse wrote, "A tree as big around as you can reach starts with a small seed; a thousand-mile journey starts with one step." Wisdom Happiness and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they're part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They're not only the ending, but the beginning as well. The more it snows, the more it goes, the more it goes on snowing.

–Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh