Cancel the Noise

Three Indian Princes Yudhisthira, Bheema, and Arjun with theirs bows and arrows in position ready to shoot at the target are being first tested by their teacher Drona.

DRONA

Yudhisthira, what do you see?

YUDHISTHIRA

I see 10 mango trees, 3 banyan trees and a 

fig tree. On the third branch from the top of the 

fig tree is perched a Kokila (in Sanskrit) bird.

DRONA

(angrily)

Get away!

Drona then walks over to Bheema.

DRONA

Bheem...

BHEEMA

I see only the bird, that's all.

DRONA

Really?

BHEEMA

Yes. Just look at him sit there 

enjoying the smell of the fruits ... 

while I'm dying of hunger here.

DRONA

(very brusquely)

You too, get away from here!

The teacher then walks over to Arjun.

DRONA

Arjun?

ARJUN 

Eye...only an eye.

DRONA

And?

ARJUN

Nothing else.

DRONA

Aren't you able to see what your brothers see? 

The birds, trees, branches, fruits ... Are you blind?

ARJUN

(firmly)

My eye only sees the eye of the bird, teacher.

Drona looks at Arjun contentedly.

 

 DRONA

(orders)

Release the arrow!

Source: Dialogues in the movie Arjun: The Warrior Prince

Distance

The sun is filling up the room, and I can hear you dreaming.
Do you feel the way I do? Right now. 

...

Consciously engaging in life makes simple experiences like brewing a cup of tea, or warming a glass of milk, or ordering a latte feel profoundly extraordinary. It is a matter of life or death after all. When I stand in line at the coffee shop on a busy day, am I able to tune into the preciousness of the moment and fully be there? When it is my turn to order the cup of coffee, am I able to look into the eyes of the barista and feel the tenderness of our human experience? Can I hear her dreams, can I see his aspirations, can I let myself be vulnerable enough to dissolve in them? Am I able to wipe away the boundaries I limit myself within and allow our worlds to merge?

Loving Nature

...

Thoreau referred to the “wild and dusky knowledge” that is ours when we communicate with the whole earth intimately: “this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society… The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge, gramatica parda, ‘tawny grammar,’ a kind of mother-wit…” The knowing of wild dusk, the hearing of the intimate language accessible in the recesses of our hearts — this is the mother-wit of the fool, our wit, and perhaps the only path of honest practice.

...

Source: Excerpted from the article Song of Fools featured in the Mountain Record Journal, Spring 2001

The family of the future

Check

Listen to the music of the moment...♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮

...

Before the cool done run out I'll be giving it my bestest
And nothing's gonna stop me but divine intervention
I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some

...

I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror
And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer
But my breath fogged up the glass
And so I drew a new face and I laughed

I guess what I be saying is there ain't no better reason
To rid yourself of vanities and just go with the seasons
It's what we aim to do, our name is our virtue

...

Me likes this

Raw & Fresh

TodayLand

 

...

Let your clarity define you
In the end
We will only just remember how it feels

Our lives are made
In these small hours
These little wonders,
These twists & turns of fate
Time falls away,
But these small hours,
These small hours still remain

Stay open, who knows? Lightning could strike.

  

This feeling of impermanence is really something. My teacher had said in the past, "Change happens in two ways: 1) Maybe you like ice cream and one day you happen to gorge on too much of it. Then you realize that it has lost its magic on you. That's the slight, subtle changes we commonly go through in our lives. 2) Then there are the big ones which cause us to have a fresh perspective on life. It's like looking in the mirror and not being able to recognize oneself or identify with the big ideas one has about their identity. We can think ourselves really lucky when presented a chance of experiencing the second kind of change." Hmm...

The Fire

Listen, I've light
in my eyes
and on my skin
the warmth of a star, so strange
is this
that I
can barely comprehend it:
I think
I'll lift my face to it, and then
I lift my face,
and don't even know how
this is done.  And
everything alive
(and everything's
alive) is turning
into something else
as at the heart
of some annihilating
or is it creating
fire
that's burning, unseeably, always
burning at such speeds
as eyes cannot
detect, just try
to observe your own face
growing old
in the mirror, or
is it beginning
to be born?

~ Franz Wright ~

START THE WAY ... Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river

 

• Tao
  "the way", "the path". it is often represented by water because water always seeks the path of least resistance, yet is strong enough to demolish even stone when no other recourse is available. everything below flows from this.

Here are 10 guides to the Way.

1. Make your goal effortless action
   avoid unnecessary action or action that is not spontaneous.
   
2. Treasure simplicity
   eliminate whatever is unnecessary and artificial and appreciate the simple and the apparently ordinary.
   
3. Cultivate stillness
   only stillness will clear muddy waters and enable you to see the truth.
   
4. Be patient
   can you remain unmoving until the right action arises?
   
5. Be gentle
   love peace and restraint and avoid all unnecessary violence. "do not regard weapons as lovely things. for to think them lovely means to delight in them, and to delight in them means to delight in the slaughter of men."
   
6. See beauty
   in the mundane and the normal. Apreciate the beauty around you and in yourself.
   
7. Be true
   dedicate your life only to that which you find beautiful or fascinating, and thus be true to yourself.
   
8. Live in the moment
   feel the hand of time sweeping past second by second.
   
9. Be happy
   to conduct one's life according to the Tao, is to conduct one's life without regrets.
   
10. Be compassionate and honor life
    only those who are compassionate and treasure life in all its forms can show true bravery and acquire true wisdom. 

 Source: from the blog Positive Thoughts

In Company of Great Minds

...

Alcott also benefited from her parent's close friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of whom were her informal educators, and she spent many hours perusing the shelves of Emerson's library. She also went on nature excursions with Thoreau, something that undoubtedly appealed to her tomboy nature. And living among so many transcendentalists, Alcott learned from a young age the virtue of working tirelessly toward self-improvement and perfection.

...

Source: Excerpted from the article Building Castles in the Air on Little Women fame author Louisa May Alcott, in SUCCESS Magazine's September issue.

On Love

1 Corinthians 13

New International Version (NIV)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

 

...

Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work

The Sound of Music

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like the chime that flies from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook as it trips and falls over stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to prey
I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more.

Present

My teacher says it so well when he says, "A gift is a creator of worlds between the giver and receiver. If offered and received in the most sincere way, it completely transcends our ideas of commerce. And when that happens, we are in turn presented with a life experience to cherish."

Incredible!

Can't help but feel so inspired by these people. All along I was of the impression that only full-time athletes participated in such demanding challenges. While this is true in some cases, in most cases it isn't. Reading the book You Are An Ironman has revealed to me the common realities -- years of training along-side working at regular jobs, sacrifices in relationships and financial compromises -- most of these participants face in just making it to the challenge. All this inspite of being aware of the possibility of not finishing at the competition, owing to the unpredictability of the human body's ability to sustain in extremes. It's what makes it even more inspiring -- the guts, the resolve, the perseverance, the dedication...

Incredible!

Ironman

An Ironman triathlete may not be fast but she can endure.

- from You Are An Ironman by Jacques Steinberg

Let's sing our heart-song...:)

Who knows? Only time

...

Who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows, only time
And who can say if your love grows
As your heart chose, only time

...

Sustain

The feeling towards the means by which we earn our bread, the feeling towards the person we fall in love with, the feeling towards the way we wish to shape ourselves in this life -- all these feelings that initially arise naturally, eventually require consistent sustenance for further development of the action motivated by them. How we sustain then becomes an excellent creativity test.

If Tomorrow Never Comes

  - from the blog Positive Thoughts

 

For surely there's always tomorrow to make up for an oversight, and we always get a second chance to make everything right.

There will always be another day to say our "I love you's." And certainly there's another chance to say our "Anything I can do's?"

But just in case I might be wrong, and today is all I get, I'd like to say how much you are appreciated and I hope we never forget, tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike. And today may be the last chance you get to hold your loved one tight.

So if you're waiting for tomorrow, why not do it today?

For if tomorrow never comes, you'll surely regret the day, that you didn't take that extra time for a smile, a hug, or a kiss and you were too busy to grant someone, what turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today, whisper in their ear. Tell them how much you love them and that you'll always hold them dear. Take time to say "I'm sorry," "please forgive me," "thank you" or "it's okay".

And if tomorrow never comes, you'll have no regrets about today.  

Details

Padmasambhava, the great Indian master said, “Although my view is higher than the sky, my attention to actions and their effects is finer than flour.” In other words, as his wisdom into the emptiness of all things became more and more clear, his attention to details, to his words, thoughts, and deeds became more and more meticulous.

Source: Excerpt from the article Practicing Virtue, by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, in the publication Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner's Journal [Volume 30, No. 4 - Summer 2012]

Being a Person

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next thing to happen. How you breathe.

Source: From Even in Quiet Places by William Stafford

Wide Gaze

Jenny Curran: Were you scared in Vietnam?
Forrest Gump: Yes. Well, I-I don't know. Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out... and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water... like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It's so beautiful. 

Source: Quote from the movie Forrest Gump

Life opens with a "Yes"

Here are some uplifting words my mom left me as a parting gift:

"Each day has a gift to give, small joys and great ones, too...

Beauty to see and songs to hear and wonderful things to do...

Enjoy each to the fullest for they add up to nothing less than a lifetime of lovely moments and a heart full of happiness."

It was great having her here. You know the experience has been good when you can look back, revisit each memory, then face ahead and walk (maybe run) on, with a smile on your face and these words in your heart -- "No regrets!" 

And generally speaking, I truly believe that every day of our lives is an open invitation -- to live fully, to live with no regrets, to live within the "Yes!"