"When you go into woods & look at trees. You see all these different trees.
And some of them are bent & some of them are straight. And you look at the tree & you allow it.
You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light & so it turned that way.
And you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.
And you are constantly saying, 'You're too this' or 'I'm too that'. That judging mind comes in.
And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just as they are."
Ram Dass
Family
"If you want to find Dhamma, it has nothing to do with the forest or the mountains or the caves. It has its own language of experience.
There is a great difference between concepts & direct experience.
With a glass of hot water, whoever puts his or her finger into it will have the same experience hot, which can be called by many words in different languages.
Similarly, whoever looks deeply into the heart will have the same experience, no matter what his or her nationality, culture, or language may be.
If in your heart you come to that taste of truth of Dhamma, then you become like one big family like mother and father, sisters and brothers- Because you've tasted that essence of the heart which is the same for all."
Ajahn Chah
Like Roots
Our hands imbibe like roots,
So I place them on what is beautiful in this world.
And I fold them in prayer, and they
Draw from the heavens
Light.
St Francis of Assisi (trans.D.Landinsky)
Wring out my clothes
Such love does the sky now pour,
That whenever I stand in a field,
I have to wring out my clothes when I get home.
St Francis of Assisi ( trans. D.Landinsky)
Our Beauty
Live with dignity, women, live with dignity, men.
Few things will enhance our beauty as much.
Rabia ( trans. D.Landinsky)
Fertilizer
Our defilements are like fertilizer for our practice.
It's the same as taking filthy stuff like chicken manure & buffalo dung to fertilize our fruit trees, so that the fruit will be sweet & abundant.
In suffering, there is happiness; in confusion, there is calm
Ajahn Chah
