What is there left for me?

... you cannot hold out for a second by the clock but lament: ‘time is a constant dripping by of moments which fall behind one another and go up in smoke; above, the future hangs unchanged, and below, the past grows eternally and becomes bigger and bigger the further it flees backward; what is there left for me?’ ‘The present,’ I reply. However much time may fly before you, the present is your eternity and will never forsake you.

Jean Paul Richter

Look carefully

Every stick has two ends ...

G.I. Gurdjieff

In my garden

Spring blossoms

If only I could
divide myself,
not miss a single tree,
see the blossoms at their best
on all ten thousand mountains!

From the Spring section of Saigyo. Poems of a Mountain Home, translated by Burton Watson (New York, 1991)

Believed as truth

Professional jealousy, can bring down a nation
And personal invasion, can ruin a man
Not even his family, will understand what’s happening
The price that he’s paying, or even the pain

Professional jealousy, started a rumour
And then it extended, to be more abuse
What started out as just, black propaganda
Was one day seen to be, believed as truth

From Van Morrison Hymns to the Silence (1991)

Can you feel the silence?

On Hyndford Street where you could feel the silence
At half past eleven on long summer nights
As the wireless played Radio Luxembourg and the voices                                                                whispered across Beechie River
And in the quietness we sank into restful slumber in silence
And carried on dreaming in God

From Van Morrison Hymns to the Silence (1991)

A retreat hut

If the meditator is able to use whatever occurs in his life as the path, his body becomes a retreat hut.

Jigme Lingpa