Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all these waking hours, let him establish mindfulness of good will, which is called the highest state!

…the delicacy, the impermanence, the emptiness of mind states. Just like the weather, they blow in and out. Good mood. Bad mood. Tranquil mood. Frazzled mood.

Such stillness
the cries of the cicadas
sink into the rocks

The dharma, it seems, is big enough not just to endure us, but to embrace us, in all of our muck and glory.

In trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. It’s easy to forget that life and death are part of the natural scheme of things, intrinsic to our lives in an eternally shifting universe.

The path from transaction to trust goes through relationships. So if we cultivate such a field of deep relationships, trust will naturally arise. Then the question is: How do we cultivate such a field? I think it starts with small acts of service. Its the small acts of service that create an affinity between us, and that connection over time creates deeper bonds. That’s the home for virtue to grow.

Our hearts and minds change from moment to moment, just as the clouds shift in the evening sky as the sun goes down. Who are we to think we have grasped the true nature of our souls?

Equanimity is said to be an anchor. It protects you against the “worldly winds”—pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, and fame and disrepute—by keeping you anchored so you’re not tossed about by those winds.

The self persists lie a dying star.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. 

I would patch them, but I have not a half-sheet of paper.
Ah well—at least torn windows don’t need to be pushed open.
The blowing wind puts out my lamp,
Rain falling from the eaves wets my inkstand.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. 

There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were. 

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sunlit pasture with cattle and horses feeding,
And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.

There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.

The hermit doesn’t sleep at night;
in love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
that rustles the trees
rustles him too.

Look past your thoughts so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.

The mind is an elusive thing. Don’t think for a minute you know who you are. 

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. 

Such coolness—
the sound of the bell
echoing out from
the bell!