In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable — which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.
–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Category Archives: Humanities
Words Which Harmonize
There are all sorts of books which describe how to meditate and what formulas to pronounce during these meditations. I do not deny that they are beautiful, useful, and effective. But there are two words which are never mentioned, words which for me are the most powerful of all, words which clarify, which harmonize, and which heal, and these words are “thank you”.
–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
Invite the Divine
Home altars can be a space for prayer, meditation, reflection, intention; to me its presence seems like a source of protection and blessing. Home altars connect us to ancient traditions of worship, acknowledging our ancestors and their connection to the divine. In creating an altar in your home you invite the divine into your daily life, I think.
–Frances Pullara, Sacred Ordinary
I’ve had a home altar since 1998. It has always contained items of great personal and spiritual meaning. Now I have two. One is in my bedroom; it is a version of the one from 1998, with mostly family photos and tokens — an altar for my ancestry. The altar in this photo is in the living room; I use it more. There are various Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Pagan elements to it, and there are items from family and friends that have been given in blessing over the years.
Nothing More Astonishing
There is nothing more astonishing than a human face. It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face has a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest in the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.
–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
If There is Love
If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
–His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Little Book of Buddhism
[via Whiskey River]
Tedious Gentlemen
But I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.
–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
A Practice I Could Stand to Implement
Materialism and the acquistion of stuff infects so much of our lives, and goes way beyond simply acquiring material goods. We accumulate all kinds of other things too: practices, tools, ideas, paths, teachings. Sometimes, when we are most lost in this downward spiral, we think if I just had one more theory, one more facilitation tool, one more spiritual practice, I would be complete.
And the truth is, we rarely utilize all that we do have to its fullest potential. We confuse span with depth, as Ken WIlber would put it: we think “more” equals “better.”
You could for example acquire a whole range of meditation practices, or you could simply sit for twenty minutes a day for the rest of your life and be mindful of breathing. I would be surprised if anyone could truly plumb the depths of breath practice completly, but how many people simply make the decision to “make do” with one practice and devote the rest of their life to it?
“Making do” means stopping the act of skimming surfaces and settle down into deep appreciation of what we have around us. It is subtly different from “good enough” becasue it is not about accepting mediocrity. It is rather about deepening the uses and possibilities of what we have — finding the aristocracy in the clover.
–Chris Corrigan, Parking Lot
A Silent Sorrow
A miscarriage is a particularly silent sorrow since others often fail to recognize the agonizing emptiness it leaves behind. When you lose a baby early in the pregnancy, you may have to deal with a lack of concrete memories about your baby and the absence of established rituals to mark this sad event in your life.
You may take some comfort in learning that you are not alone since most pregnancy losses occur in the first three months, or trimester, of pregnancy. Miscarriages account for almost 95 percent of all early losses up to 20 weeks gestation, after which they are considered to be live births or stillbirths.
A miscarriage ends the pregnancy just as it was beginning, sometimes only weeks or days after you and your partner realized you were going to become parents. Your joyous expectations were suddenly turned to grief, and the pregnancy may now seem unreal, even to you.
–Perry-Lynn Moffitt
See her recommended reading list here.
Made Primarily For Blessing
There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know what they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.
–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
The Illiterate
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
–Alvin Toffler
Teeter-Totter
This is especially applicable to me personally at the moment. It’s also from a blog that is new to me. Take a peek.
We walk a teeter-totter each day between all that we have known and experienced in our past and all that we hope and dream for our future. The tension between these two poles forms our awareness of who we are. If I am to grow and become the very best version of me possible, I cannot lean too heavily toward what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow. However, neither can I totally disassociate myself from them. I must strive to learn from those things that I have experienced in the past without lingering or wallowing there. Similarly, I must look to my hopes for the future to guide me without escaping into a daydream that prevents me from savoring the experiences that are being offered today.
–Nan, Dancing the Tide
The Light From The Darkness
A rabbi asked his students, “When is it at dawn that one can tell the light from the darkness?”
One student replied, “When I can tell a goat from a donkey.”
“No,” answered the rabbi.
Another said, “When I can tell a palm tree from a fig.”
“No,” answered the rabbi again.
“Well, then what is the answer?” his students pressed him.
“Only when you look into the face of every man and every woman and see your brother and your sister,” said the rabbi. “Only then have you seen the light. All else is still darkness.”
Manufactured Suspense
The grocer begged customers to return the books, but if they refused, Canadian publisher Raincoast Book Distribution sought an unprecedented injunction from a provincial court to keep the storyline a secret.
…Justice Kristi Gill ordered the 14 customers not to talk about the book, copy it, sell it or read it until after midnight on this upcoming Saturday.
When I worked at Borders, it was absolutely critical that books never went on the shelves prior to the release date. Bookstores and publishers take this very, very, very seriously. I do wonder, however, where the hell our priorities are, when we treat the release of a popular writer’s work as though it contains potent secrets that must be carefully managed. I mean, a judge got involved, fercryinoutloud!
Do Not Be Daunted
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
–The Talmud
The Point of Origin Does Matter
Being against violence doesn’t engage me in the same way as being for peace. Being for peace calls for a different part of my brain and heart and eyes. In the tradition of my dominant learning, Buddhism, peace is about caring and caring follows knowing. How we get to know each other is an essential ingredient in the bread we call peace.
–Jack Ricchiuto, Jack/Zen
As the Sun Shines
As the Sun shines upon my heart, so may my heart shine upon others!
–The Upanishads
An Addition
Recently I alluded to the fact that my blog (a particular post) had been used as a negative example in someone’s essay on mindfulness and Buddhism. This disturbed me. I decided not to engage, and I remain committed to this. However, I thought that it might be helpful for readers to have access to an explanation of what I mean by “a mindful life.” I simply need to insert the link in an obvious place so it will catch readers’ attention. Here it is.
Spiritual Isolation
It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us – or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.
–Anne Morrow Lindbergh
That Courage
Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt.
–St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier
In the Name of Love
Love is never the poorer for being accompanied by wisdom. It is not harmed by being denied a crown. The agonies we endure and inflict in the name of love come from making love bear too heavy a weight, from recklessly heaping our ambitions, fears, desires, and loneliness on top of another person — another who is as changeable as we. It is natural to form attachments to other people, but the pain produced from these attachments will vary according to our wisdom and maturity. If we see nothing higher at all and plunge thoughtlessly into the conflict of gaining and losing, we will surely suffer, but if we keep the ideals of the Dhamma before us, peacefully contemplating the transcience of things, we will ride more securely over the waves of fortune.
–Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano, Landscapes of Wonder