Changing Places

Grace brings beauty.
Grace simply means the aura that surrounds total relaxation.

If you move spontaneously, each moment itself decides how it will be. This moment is not going to decide for the next, so you simply remain open-ended. The next moment will decide its own being; you have no plan, no pattern, no expectation.

Today is enough; don’t plan for tomorrow, or even for the next moment. Today ends, and then tomorrow comes fresh and innocent, with no manipulator. It opens of its own accord, and without the past. This is grace. Watch a flower opening in the morning. Just go on watching… this is grace. There is no effort at all -– the flower just moves according to nature. Or watch a cat awakening, effortlessly, with tremendous grace surrounding it. The whole of nature is full of grace, but we have lost the capacity to be graceful because of the divisions within.

So just move, and let the moment decide – don’t try to manage it. This is what I call let-go – and everything happens out of this. Give it a chance!

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

We need to seek our center, find our peace, know ourselves and those around us as well as we can. We need to take time for ourselves, for each other. We need to open gently, to unfold, to bloom. We need to see the beauty not just in that bloom, but in those buds, in the faded petals, in the withered center, and then in the fruit of our efforts. Then we will fully understand our lives, and appreciate them, and those of others as well. Look at the beautiful blooms and admire them, yes, but admire also the form and grace of all the phases of life. Then, your life will be rich and full.

The Tao cannot be avoided.
By attuning to its way, we seem to move less and less with a disturbing wilfullness;
We move with rather than against the nature of things.
Self interest gets in the way of the Tao.
When we move selflessly, we move with grace,
ease and harmony amid apparent confusion.
– Ray Grigg

We can live in the light with the same ease with which we live in our darkness. We are surrounded by mentors, by men and women who have chosen to live life on a higher plane, for a higher purpose. The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read — all abound with references to the sweetness of “amazing grace”. This final moment in the eight limbs of yoga is about allowing grace to happen. Not hoping for it to happen, not trying hard to let it happen, not believing that one day it will happen — this final moment is about letting it happen. It is about shining, and who are we not to shine? — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” — Wendell Berry

“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.” — Jalal ad-Din Rumi

“Literature builds literate people who take inspiration from what they read and echo back strains of other authors’ beauty in their own writing. In this way, we have an ongoing song woven of books and thoughts and ideas that resonate with chords of insights, like a great opus of language rising to crescendos, subsiding into harmonies, and pulsing onward with the bright sound of synergy.” — Richard R. Powell, Wabi Sabi for Writers

Those who can read the patterns of life are the truly cultured.

Every person who has followed Tao has been a person of culture and refinement. Not only does Tao require study and intelligence, but it also demands the subtle mind of a sensitive person. You will not find that type of mind in the unthinking brute or the insensitive lout.

The wen person is someone who can read not just human language, but the languages of nature as well. There are patterns and secrets throughout the world — the rings of trees, and tracks of animals, and the traces of water down the sides of a valley are as clear as any scripture. The person who follows Tao does not blindly go through life, but is able to read it on every level. Those who follow Tao are those who know the many languages of life.

A person who can read literature in this extended sense cannot help but develop great character. After all, to follow Tao requires patience in adversity, great compassion, and understanding of the balance between action and stillness. We all need to experience more and more, strive to know life on deeper and deeper levels, and give consideration to all that happens to us. Such understanding must be ongoing, and those who revel in wen never tire of exploring what is around them. They always read the patterns of life.

Deng Ming Dao, Everyday Tao

You are young in proportion to your flexibility. Watch a small child – so soft, tender, and flexible. As you grow old everything becomes tight, hard, inflexible. But you can remain absolutely young to the very moment of your death if you remain flexible.

When you are happy you expand. When you are afraid you shrink, you hide in your shell, because if you go out there may be some danger. You shrink in every way – in love, in relationships, in meditation, in every way. You become a turtle and you shrink inside.

If you remain in fear continuously, as many people live, by and by the elasticity of your energy is lost. You become a stagnant pool, you are no longer flowing, no longer a river. Then you feel more and more dead every day.

But fear has a natural use. When the house is on fire you have to escape. Don’t try being unafraid there or you will be a fool! One should also remain capable of shrinking, because there are moments when one needs to stop the flow. One should be able to go out, to come in, to go out, to come in. this is flexibility: expansion, shrinking, expansion, shrinking. It is just like breathing. People who are very afraid don’t breathe deeply, because even that expansion brings fear. Their chest will shrink; they will have a sunken chest.

So try to find out ways to make your energy move. Sometimes even anger is good. At least it moves your energy. If you have to choose between fear and anger, chose anger. But don’t go to the other extreme. Expansion is good, but you should not become addicted to it. The real thing to remember is flexibility: the capacity to move from one end to another.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

That which is old grows stiff and then decays. That which is young is pliant and soft. Therefore, those who follow Tao follow the way of softness in order to avoid death.

There are many ways to apply this ideal. You could interpret it literally and so try to maintain whatever limberness you have. Or you might understand it to mean that to harden your position toward others inevitably leads to your downfall: the dogmatic — the stiff — are often the first to be undermined. — Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao

When young, things are soft.
When old, things are brittle.

Stretching — both literally and metaphorically — is a necessary part of life.

Physically, a good program of stretching emphasizes all parts of the body. You loosen the joints and tendons first, so that the subsequent movements will not hurt. Then methodically stretch the body, beginning with the larger muscle groups such as the legs, and back, and proceed to finder and smaller parts like the fingers. Coordinate stretching with breathing, use long and gentle stretches rather than bouncing ones. When you stretch in one direction, always be sure to stretch in the opposite direction as well. If you follow this procedure, your flexibility will undoubtedly increase.

Metaphorical stretching leads to expansion and flexibility in personal growth. A young plant is tender and pliant. An older one is stiff, woody, and vulnerable to breaking. Softness is thus equated with life, hardness with death. The more flexible you are, the greater your mental and physical health.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it. — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.
Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.
Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.
The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

Tao Te Ching, 76

All things happen together.

When you feel less guilty, immediately you start feeling happier. When you feel more happy, you feel less in conflict, more harmonious -– together. When you feel together, more harmonious, suddenly you feel a certain grace surrounding you. These things function like a chain reaction: one starts the other, the other starts another, and they go on spreading.

Feeling less guilty is very important. The whole of humanity has been made to feel guilty -– centuries of conditioning, of being told to do this and not to do that. Not only that, but forcing people by saying that if they do something that is not allowed by the society or by the church, then they are sinners. If they do something that is appreciated by the society and the church, then they are saints. So everybody has been fooled into doing things that society wants them to do, and not to do things that society does not want them to do. Nobody has bothered about whether this is your thing or not. Nobody has bothered about the individual.

Move into a new light, into a new consciousness, where you can unguilt yourself. And then many more things will follow.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” — Victor Hugo

“Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology…. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff…. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” — Charlotte Bronte

All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. — Cathy Ladman

Some people think feeling guilty is a sure sign that you must have done something wrong. Others believe that guilt is a completely useless and even harmful emotion for truly enlightened minds. Then, of course, there is every degree or shade of opinion in between those two most extreme positions.

What is your opinion? Mine is that guilt is a sign that something might be wrong, but not necessarily anything you did. The point of the feeling is to stop and examine the event in question more closely and determine to your own satisfaction, perhaps by checking with the other persons involved, when applicable, whether you are truly at fault or to blame for something you did. If yes, then take appropriate action to fix the problem, for example with a sincere apology or restitution. If no, then let it go. — Shanel Yang

For me the key thing about guilt is that if you feel guilty about something you did, it shows that you were lacking awareness. If you were aware of the possible consequences of your actions, and took those actions considering those consequences, then why feel guilty about it? Knowing there might be negative consequences to an action is no reason not to act, if that is truly how you feel about something. To feel guilty after taking an action means either you didn’t consider all the possible consequences, or else you were ignoring your awareness that the action might cause harm, and not dealing with that before taking action.

Guilt is an ego trip, it is your ego trying to bring you back in line with its morals. But personal morality should not be a consideration of your ego, which is influenced by society, but of your spirit, which is the real core of your being. You shouldn’t care what others might think of you, what society might think of you, but what you feel within yourself. You are the only person you actually have to answer to in the end. How you feel about yourself is really what matters most — no matter what society tells you. This doesn’t mean you should go around doing whatever you want regardless of how others feel, it means that your own personal moral compass has to be what guides you through your life, not the imposed standards of others.

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” — Laura Ingalls Wilder

“We understand that though the world will never be simple, a life that honors the soul seems to have a kind of radical simplicity at the center of it.” — David Whyte

“The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice — for your soul is alive.” — Eleanora Duse

“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” — Charles Mingus

“My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.” — Cary Grant

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” — Tom Peters

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” — Lucy Maud Montgomery

“That was simple. That was sweet. That was stunning,” — Sass Jordan

There is nothing to fear, because we don’t have anything to lose. All that can be robbed from you is not worthwhile, so why fear, why suspect, why doubt?

These are the real robbers: doubt, suspicion, fear. They destroy your very possibility of celebration. So while on earth, celebrate the earth. While this moment last, enjoy it to the very core. Because of fear we miss many things. Because of fear we cannot love, or even if we love it is always half-hearted, it is always so-so. It is always up to a certain extent and not beyond that. We always come to a point beyond which we are afraid, so we get stuck there. We cannot move deeply in friendship because of fear. We cannot pray deeply because of fear.

Be conscious but never cautious. The distinction is very subtle. Consciousness is not rooted in fear. Caution is rooted in fear. One is cautious so that one might never go wrong, but then one cannot go very far. The very fear will not allow you to investigate new lifestyles, new channels for your energy, new directions, new lands. You will always tread the same path again and again and again, shuttling backward and forward – like a freight train!

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

What does this mean:
“What we value and what we fear are within our Self?”
We have fears because we have a self.
When we do not regard that self as self,
What have we to fear?

– Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

“I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

— Frank Herbert, Dune – Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart

Between birth and death,
Three in time are following life,
Three in ten are following death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers can find no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so? Because he has no place for death to enter.

– Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu – chapter 50

There is very little that I still fear in my life. Most of my fears concern harming others inadvertently, or harm coming to others. For myself I really don’t fear much at all. We all fear loss to some extent, as much as we might think losing material things or even our lives would be unimportant. I think fear is a key to letting us know what we need to learn more about, and then we can decide if that fear is legitimate or not. I think we can be conscious of our fears, acknowledge them, and then work in awareness of them rather than hiding behind the fears or allowing them to control our actions. It’s important to fear jumping off cliffs — unless you know the water is deep below and you know how to dive, unless you have a parachute or glider, unless you know the way to fall and not be injured, unless you know the net or the airbag is there, etc. I think some caution is a good way to handle fear, precautions are better, and trusting yourself and being prepared to handle whatever happens is the best.

If I break down the walls,
I will be surrounded by the garden.
If I break the levee, water will inundate me.
Meditation is not to be separated from life.

The task of following Tao is to cease all distinctions between the self and the outside world. It is only a matter of convenience that we label things inside and outside, subjective and objective. Indeed, it is only at elementary stages that we should talk of a Tao to follow. For true enlightenment is the realization not that there is a Tao to follow but that we ourselves are Tao.

That understanding comes after a simple breaking down of a wall, a shattering of the mistaken notion that there is something inherent in this life that divides us from Tao. Once the wall is broken, we are inundated by Tao. We are Tao.

Do we continue to meditate once we come to this understanding? We still do, but it is no longer a solitary and isolated activity. It is a part of life, as natural as breathing. When you can bring yourself to the understanding that there is no difference between you and Tao and that there is no difference between meditation and “ordinary” activities, then you are well on your way to being one with Tao.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.” — Stephen R. Covey

“A miracle is nothing more or less than this. Anyone who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading wisdom and power, this makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him.” — Ralph Waldo Trine

“And in the solitary state of oneness, man can meet himself.”
– William Harper

“Seeing the oneness of life, and experiencing this with no Self in the way to distort it, is so very different to how the mind tries to project it. The mind literally has no idea how it truly is from an experiential perspective. It is always so much more simple and down-to-earth than the mind could ever imagine or comprehend.” — Julie Sarah Powell

“Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.” — Woody Allen

“How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Oneness is a concept thought of by new agers as becoming “One with the Universe” or by religious people as “Becoming One with God”. The simple reality is that so many of us feel disconnected in our lives, or like we are incomplete and there is a void needing to be filled, by someone or something else. Oneness is more the feeling of being complete with yourself and connected with the outside world as well.

Psychologically, it’s kind of the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Most people manage to fulfill their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing (at least in our society – in other places it is very different). So survival needs are filled. Then people look for love – usually from others. Then people look for self-fulfillment, or “self-actualization” as Maslow calls it. Once you’ve gotten there, you can consider others needs and help them learn to fulfill them, becoming inter-connected with and interdependent with others, rather than dependent or independent.

You see it again in Joseph Campbell wonderful “Hero with a Thousand Faces” — the difficult part of the hero’s journey seems to be conquering whatever evil he faces, inner or outer demons. But the real, true difficulty is in coming back to the world — completing the journey and knowing there is nothing separating you from yourself, or from anything else. You care for others because you are no longer afraid there is anything to lose, anything they can take away from you. What blocks us from others is the fear of losing a part of ourselves, or a fear of trusting others only to be abandoned by them. But once you overcome those fears, through the process of rebuilding after you have lost something to someone else or been abandoned, then there is no longer anything to fear. You faced your worst fears and survived them. You are complete in yourself, so you don’t look for anything from someone else, and you don’t fear that they will take something from you.

It is a wonderful feeling to feel you are one with yourself, that you are connected to the larger world as well and understand the linkages and inter-dependencies. Yes, you learn to meditate even when life is busy and there’s no time to sit by yourself. You meditate while doing other things, what the yogis refer to as “moving meditation”. The point of meditation and of yoga is to bring you to a place where you can be calm and in control no matter what is going on around you — you simply don’t allow the chaos of daily life to affect your mental state. It is a very healing place to be.

So how do you get there? Mostly by practicing meditation and yoga. And spending as much time as possible doing whatever makes you feel connected — whether that is gardening, walking in the world, talking to others, being with animals or pets, or whatever works for you. There is no single path, no secrets. The paths others present are merely ways that are helpful for them. There is no ultimate goal other than to constantly become more yourself and help others ot expand their own awareness. That’s it!

“Why wait for reasons to laugh? Life as it is should be reason enough to laugh. It is so absurd, it is so ridiculous. It is so beautiful, so wonderful! It is all sorts of things together. It is a great cosmic joke.”

“Laughter is the easiest thing in the world if you allow it, but it has become hard. People laugh very raarely, and even when they laugh it is not true. People laugh as if they are obliging somebody, as if they are fulfilling a certain duty. Laughter is fun. You are not obliging anybody!

You should not laugh to make somebody else happy, because if you are not happy of your own accord, you cannot make anybody else happy. You should simply laugh of your own accord, without waiting for reasons to laugh. If you start looking into things, you will not be able to stop laughing. Everything is simply perfect for laughter – nothing is lacking – but we won’t allow it. We are very miserly … miserly about laughter, about love, about life. Once you know that miserliness can be dropped, you move into a different dimension. Laughter is the real religion. Everything else is just metaphysics.”

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

“Now” he thought, “that all these transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing….” He had to smile again. Yes, his destiny was strange! He was going backwards, and now he stood empty and naked and ignorant in the world. But he did not grieve about it; no, he even felt a great desire to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this strange, foolish world. — Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“In my own life, I felt just as Siddhartha did –- amazed at all I had lost, and at the same time just as amazed that I no longer valued what I had lost: my old self, the old world, the old friends… When two people who have experienced this aspect of tapas discuss it, it is invariably an occasion for much laughter — the laughter of relief at no longer needing to be our false self, and the laughter of joy at such good fortune .”— Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”  — Jean Houston

“So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter. ” — Gordon W. Allport

“A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.” — Hugh Sidey

“I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.” — Linda Ellerbee

DSC00164_1

“Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.” — Henry Ward Beecher

The other is never responsible. Just watch. If you become wise in the moment, there will be no problem. But everybody becomes wise when the moment is gone. Retrospective wisdom is worthless.

When you have done everything — fought and nagged and bitched and then you become wise and see that there was no point in it — it is too late. It is meaningless -– you have already done the harm. This wisdom is just pseudo-wisdom. It gives you a feeling “as if” you have understood. That is a trick of the ego. This wisdom is not going to help. When you are doing the thing, at that very moment, simultaneously, the awareness should arise, and you should see that what you are doing is useless.

If you can see it when it is there, then you cannot do it. One can never go against one’s awareness, and if one goes against it, that awareness is not awareness. Something else is being mistaken for it.

So remember, the other is never responsible for anything. The problem is something boiling within you. And of course the one you love is closest. You cannot throw it on some stranger passing on the road, so the closest person becomes the place where you go on throwing and pouring your nonsense. But that has to be avoided, because love is very fragile. If you do it too much, if you overdo it, love can disappear.

The other is never responsible. Try to make this such a permanent state of awareness in you that whenever you start finding soothing wrong with the other, remember it. Catch yourself red-handed, and drop it then and there. And ask to be forgiven.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.

No fight: No blame.

Tao Te Ching, 8

Most of us tend to divide the world into self and other. Tao encourages us to think of everything as self and nothing as other. That way we are simply flowing with what exists, rather than trying to justify our self against the otherness of the world. If you accept that you are a part of the world, that everything is equal to you, then you have no fight against it. Then what other people do is not your problem.

Of course, others are still going to be fighting for themselves. But you have to realize, that is not your problem, either. Their anger even becomes less important to you, and you simply strive for as much harmony as possible. You’re not going to get along with everyone, however, no matter how much awareness you maintain.

But that’s their problem. Not something to blame them for, however. Just something to recognize and feel compassion for, and deal with as best you can. Lack of awareness is not a crime, just a lack of a useful ability.

“The world is an echoing place. If we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back.

Love shouldn’t be demanding; otherwise it loses wings; it cannot fly. It becomes rooted in the earth becomes very earthly; then it is lust and it brings great misery and great suffering. Love should not be conditional, one should not expect anything out of it. It should be for its own sake –  not for any reward, not for any result. If there is some motive in it, again, your love can’t become the sky. It is confined to the motive; the motive becomes its definition, its boundary. Unmotivated love has no boundary: it is pure elation, exuberance, it is the fragrance of the heart.

And just because there is no desire for any result, it does not mean that results don’t happen; they do, they happen a thousandfold, because whatever we give to the world comes back, it rebounds. The world is an echoing place. If we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back . But that is a natural phenomenon; one need not think about it. One can trust: It happens on its own. This is the law of karma: Whatever you sow, you reap; Whatever you give, you receive. There is no need to think about it, it is automatic. Hate, and you will be hated. Love, and you will be loved.”

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

Halcyon Days and Oblivion

“As life wanes,” he taught, “and all the turbulent passions calm,
as gorgeous vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
as softness, fullness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air,
as the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
on the tree, finish’d and indolent-ripe.
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!”

After the dazzle of day is gone,
only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;
silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
The soft voluptuous opiate shades,
the sun just gone, the eager light dispell’d –
(I too will soon be gone, dispell’d,)
a haze — nirvana — rest and night — oblivion,
as life wanes, idly drifting down the ebb,
such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore. — Walt Whitman

Echoes — Pink Floyd

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine.

And no-one called us to the land
And no-one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can

And no-one calls us to move on
And no-one forces down our eyes
And no-one speaks and no-one tries
And no-one flies around the sun

Cloudless everyday you fall upon my waking eyes
inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no-one sings me lullabies
And no-one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky….

Doobie Brothers Echoes Of Love

I hear your voice everywhere
It’s echoes of love
Making me look back over my shoulder
Echoes of love are started all over
Echoes of love
Keeps on haunting
I’m out of control
Keeps on burning
Echoes of love are out of control
Bringing back love I used to hold….

Love’s End

Though many years have passed since last we met,
Thoughts of thee can make me smile most gladly;
While parting left us echoes of regret,
Golden haze lights love that ended badly.
Time cannot change true feelings of the past,
Nor distance dim the brightest fire’s glow;
Yet love doth change and is not meant to last,
And lovers minds cannot the future know.
There lives a part of me inside of thee,
And part of thee resides within my breast;
The better part of us remains most free,
To love another, better-suited guest.
I would not change what passed between our hearts,
But love is ended when the lover parts.

– Donna Woodka

“Wherever you find that society is in conflict with nature, choose nature—whatever the cost. You will never be a loser.

The thinking up to now has been that the individual exists for the society, that the individual has to follow what the society dictates. The individual has to fit with the society. That has become the definition of the normal human being—one who fits with the society. Even if the society is insane, you have to fit with it; then you are normal.

Now the problem for the individual is that nature demands one thing, and society demands something contrary. If the society were demanding the same as nature demands, there would be no conflict. We would have remained in the Garden of Eden. The problem arises because society has its own interests, which are not necessarily in tune with the interests of the individual. Society has its own investments, and the individual has to be sacrificed. This is a very topsy-turvy world. It should be just the other way round. The individual does not exist for the society, the society exists for the individual. Because society is just an institution, it has no soul. The individual has the soul, is the conscious center.”

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

I find American society to be pretty crazy-making. We are given so many conflicting messages, and made to feel like we must strive to be more, do more, have more. The message is never to simply enjoy what you have, to love what is already in your life, it is to achieve something else and become something else. I think we are happiest when we are simply following our own nature, doing what we enjoy and pursuing the things that interest us, rather than the things that make money for someone else.

We want to control nature rather than be guided by it. Tao turns this around and asks us to observe nature and emulate it, to follow the course of water and natural terrain and our own inner nature, to remember our souls.

Once you think of society as something that exists for you, it becomes a comfortable thing rather than a demanding one. I find it far easier to get along with other people now that I think of them as fellow souls rather than thinking of them in their societal roles. When you treat others as souls, valuing their unique spirit, rather than as the sales clerk, the voice on the phone, the coworker, you tend to develop real relationships rather than merely functional transactions. It’s far more human.

All great discoveries are made by amateurs.

It always happens that when you start new work, you are very creative, you are deeply involved, your whole being is in it. Then by and by, as you become acquainted with the territory, rather than being inventive and creative you start being repetitive. This is natural, because the more skilled you become in any work, the more repetitive you become. Skill is repetitive.

So all great discoveries are made by amateurs, because a skilled person has too much at stake. If something new happens, what will happen to the old skill? The person has learned for years and now has become an expert. So experts never discover anything; they never go beyond the limit of their expertise. On the one hand, they become more and more skillful, and on the other hand they become more and more dull and the work seems to be a drag, now there is nothing new that can be a thrill to them –- they already know what is going to happen, they know what they are going to do; there is no surprise in it.

So here is the lesson: It is good to attain to skill, but it is not good to settle with it forever. Whenever the feeling arises in you that now the thing is looking stale, change it. Invent something, add something new, delete something old. Again be free from the pattern -– that means be free from the skill –- again become an amateur it needs courage and guts, to become an amateur again, but that’s how life becomes beautiful.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

A great painting, drawing, photograph, sculpture, or tapestry, can profoundly stir our emotions, heighten our perceptions, and stimulate our imagination—often inspiring us to create our own works of art. Contemplating works of art, then, is an excellent way for writers to pique their aesthetic perceptions. Images powerfully rendered—think of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, “God and Adam,” or Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”—seize our attention, heighten our fascination with the subject that so fascinated the artist. For Michelangelo it was God’s paradoxical nature as both transcendent power and a compassionate parent, not just to Adam but to all humankind: the mortal hand almost touches the Almighty one; actual contact would have constituted idolatry. For Munch, the distinction between subjective and objective reality collapses in this moment of primal, nightmarish fear: reality is what our minds—awake or asleep or somewhere in-between, make of it.

A work of art presents a vision of nature or a statement of the human condition. A painter or sculptor uses images to embody ideas and experiences much as a writer uses words for the same purpose. Art—whether it employs paint or clay, sounds or words—transforms the abstractions of human experience into shapes that can be readily apprehended by the senses. The Daily Writer by Fred White

An interesting contrast here between the thought of being an amateur and also contemplating the work of experts (great works of art).

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay. An amateur receives little or irregular income from their activities, and differs from a professional who makes a living from the pursuit and typically has some formal training and certifications in the domain. Translated from its French origin to the English “lover”, the term “amateur” reflects a voluntary motivation to work as a result of personal interest in the activity.

What strikes me the most is that amateur derives from the word love, so the real trick here is loving your work. Even experts can find new things in their work if they truly love what they are doing. Osho’s point of looking for something new within the work, looking at it with an amateur’s eyes, a lover’s eyes, keeps the familiar from becoming stale. A lot of times when I feel stuck, I start looking around to see where there there is something I love, be it a nearby object, person, or project, and I find a new source of inspiration. And if I find I’m no longer loving something, an outfit I’ve tired of, a possession I don’t care for so much any longer, then it is time to let that thing go.

I think this is also the attraction of a new love — we are looking at the world with different eyes, with our lover’s eyes, and seeing the world, and ourselves, in a new way through their eyes. This becomes tremendously exciting, and then we are swept away into a new world full of possibilities we hadn’t considered before. Our existing life begins to seem stale, but then we find we can incorporate those new things into the existing patterns, change them up until they feel new again and fresh.

I hope you can look at your world with an amateur’s eyes today, a lover’s eyes, and see it as the masterpiece it truly is. And if you don’t like what you see, that you can have the courage to change it up and make it what you want.

The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

There are a thousand and one fallacies about meditation prevalent all around the world. Meditation is very simple: It is nothing but consciousness. It is not chanting, it is not using mantra or a rosary. These are hypnotic methods. They can give you a certain kind of rest — nothing is wrong with that rest; if one is just trying to relax, it is perfectly good. Any hypnotic method can be helpful, but if one wants to know the truth, then it is not enough.

Meditation simply means transforming your unconsciousness into consciousness. Normally only one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and nine-tenths is unconscious. Just a small part of our mind, a thin layer, has light; otherwise the whole house is in darkness. And the challenge is to grow that small light so much that the whole house is flooded with light, so that not even a nook or corner is left in the darkness.

When the whole house is full of light, then life is a miracle; it has the quality of magic. Then it is no longer ordinary– everything becomes extraordinary. The mundane is transformed into the sacred, and the small things of life start having such tremendous significance that one could not have ever imagined it. Ordinary stones look as beautiful as diamonds; the whole of existence becomes illuminated. The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

Writing can be a deeply fulfilling spiritual experience, as well as an intellectual and artistic one. Consider: You are using words to convey your deepest thoughts and feelings, either to yourself by way of a diary, to your loved ones through letters, or to the whole world through poems, stories, essays, reportage, plays. Regardless of genre, you are wielding that most powerful, mind- and spirit-enhancing tool that civilization has ever invented, the tool of language, and you are doing so in ways that illuminate people’s lives, sometimes improving their lives in practical ways, while at the same time aesthetically delighting them.

The Daily Writer, Fred White

These are the two books I’ll be meditating on and blogging about this year. If you’ve read the blog for long, you’ve seen the 365 Tao series I wrote in 2005. Writing that series of posts changed my life into a deeply spiritual Tao-based way of existence. I’m sure these books will make their own changes in my life as well, and I hope in yours as you read my posts here.

May 2010 be the beginning of a new decade that is brighter and more illuminating for us all.