Tea, Ponderings & Poems
“Open yourself to nature, then trust your responses, everything will fall into place." Lao Zi, Daoist mystic
“The perfect man has no self." Chuang Zi, Daoist mystic
“Don’t find fault, find a remedy." Henry Ford, inventor, entrepreneur
“I am at a juncture now where I never have to be serious again. If I act that way – sober and concerned about something…it is just a charade. For people who are serious, well, let’s face it…they seem to have a lot of problems. And who wants those?" Hafiz, Sufi poet
“Wise men count their blessings, fools count their problems.” Michael Franti, musician
“Nothing is neither right nor wrong, only thinking makes it so." William Shakespeare, playwright
“The ordinary person deals with the ego of others, the sage deals with his own." Hazrat Inayat Khan, Sufi mystic
“When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness." Sengstan, 3rd patriarch of Zen, China, from the Xin Xin Ming (Verses of the Heart Mind)
“You must be present to win." sign in Las Vegas casino
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll met you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, just doesn’t make any sense." Rumi, Sufi poet
“Into a soul absolutely free from thoughts and emotion, even the tiger finds no room to insert its fierce claws.
One and the same breeze passes over the pines on the mountain and the oak trees in the valley; and why do they give different notes?
No thinking, no reflecting, perfect emptiness; yet therein something moves following its own course.
The eye sees it, but no hands can take hold of it – the moon in the stream.
Clouds and mists, they are midair transformations; above them eternally shine the sun and the moon.
Victory is for the one, even before combat, who has no thought of himself, abiding in the no-mind-ness of the Great Origin.” Bruce Lee, martial artist, from the Tao of Jeet Kune Do
“The barn burnt down, now I can see the moon.” Basho, Zen practitioner, poet
“Never, under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night before bed.” unknown
“The idea is not to be in the know, the idea is to be in the mystery.” Fred Allen Wolfe, UCLA professor
“Mind creates both samsara and nirvana. Yet there is nothing much to it. It is just thoughts. Once we recognize that thoughts are empty the mind will no longer have the power to deceive us.” Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche, Tibetan Buddhist
“Most people fritter away their lives in details. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.” Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, author
“One precept, one practice. Love as much as you can, watch your breath" Zen saying
“To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.” Sengstan, 3rd patriarch of Zen, China, from the Xin Xin Ming (Verses of the Heart Mind)
“I used to want buyers for my words, now I wish someone would buy me away from my words….
Look for someone else to tend the shop, I’m out of the image-making business…
Only love, the holder the flag fits into, and the wind.” Rumi, Sufi poet
“The man who can watch his mind without distraction does not need to gabble or chat.” Milarepa, Tibetan mystic
“We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love.
Run my dear from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings.
Run like hell my dear from anyone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred, tender vision of your beautiful heart.
We have a duty to befriend those aspects of obedience that stand outside of our house and shout to our reason,
‘O please, O please, come out and play’.
For we have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits, but to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light.” Hafiz, Sufi poet
“No self, no problem." Buddhist teaching