by

Bruce Lee

“Every morning like a scholar at his first class I prepare a blank mind for the day to write upon.The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.The more aware you become, the more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh and uncontaminated by previous conditioning.Conditioning obstructs our view of reality. We do not see it in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted.A conditioned mind is never a free mind. Wipe away and dissolve all its experience and be “born afresh”.The unconditioned mind intuits truth.Truth comes when your mind and heart are purged of all sense of striving and you are no longer trying to become somebody; it is there when the mind is very quiet, listening timelessly to everything.”~ Bruce Lee

Ah yes, Bruce Lee. Another of those we love. Too soon gone from us. “Be like water,” he said. And so we should, flow around the rocks, the hurdles, the fallen in our way. Accept what is, and just flow on.

by

Letting Go

“Do everything with a mind that lets go. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end…” ~Ajahn Chah

TaoAndZenz

Posted by Tao & Zen

Yvonne Mancilla tsSpitoon1s0oredh · Raindrops on pine

Posted by Yvonne Mancilla—Raindrops on pine

So Beautiful

by

Cohen Again

Did you know that Leonard spent about ten years in a Buddhist Monastery? I likely mentioned that before. I do believe it informed so many of his words and so many of his attitudes. Or else those words and those attitudes informed his decision to go to the monastery.
Posted by Poetic Outlaws
Poetic Outlaws “How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings.” ― Leonard CohenPoetic Outlaws 1tSaphon6sohitred · “How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings.”Leonard Cohen
“How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings.”
There are many different ways of finding God.
“My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on.
I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.”  ~Leonard Cohen
by

The Light—The One

And for today, some enlightening topics. Or in the spirit of this, I guess we should say only One Topic. I have always found it fascinating or uplifting that all of the greats say the same thing.

And, as from another of our most beloved:
Nikola Tesla – Everything is the Light
(Excerpt from an incredible interview that the scientist gave to the magazine “Immortality” in 1899)
Journalist: “You said that I am, like every being, the light. This flatters me, but I confess, I do not quite understand.”
Tesla: “Why is it necessary to understand, Mr. Smith? Just believe. Everything is light. And remember, there is no one who has existed and who has died! They transformed into the light, and as such exist still. The secret lies in the fact that the light particles restore their original state.”
Journalist: “This is the resurrection!”
Tesla: “I’d rather call it: return to a previous energy. Christ and several others knew the secret. I am looking for a way to preserve human energy. I have not sought it for my own sake, but for the good of all. I believe that my discoveries make people’s lives easier and more bearable, and channel them to spirituality and morality.”

“Whether you worship Christ, Krishna, Kali or Allah, you actually worship the one Light that is also in you, since it pervades all things.”

~ Anandamayi Ma
by

Attachment

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”~Wendell Berry

Posted by Ravenous Butterflies

*****

On days like this my friend asks, what’s it all about? What is this life? Why is it such a struggle? She struggles with the decision she has to make. Wrestles with it, like the angel and Jacob, it’s that serious and that life-altering. I’m not much help. I tell her to just make a choice and move on. I try to gently urge her into the giving up of attachment without those words. She has no patience for Buddhism or Buddist beliefs. Still, the truth of it is that it’s the attachment to what could be lost or what the outcome of her choice and actions will be that is making her crazed.

But I’ve been there. I’ve wanted everything to be perfect. I’ve wanted us all to be happy. I’ve searched and struggled for the perfect answer to those things which cannot be without some sacrifice, by someone. And once done, no way to be undone.

Gunggex Durga Laksmi utSpg7onhsohred · Golden Evening

Gunggex Durga Laksmi· Golden Evening

And it suddenly occurs to me that that is what I’m doing. I’m trying to give her peace. I’m trying to make it OK for her. That is my attachment—the attachment to the right outcome for her. The one I cannot give her.