Time to Create

Mary Oliver

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

– Mary Oliver

To write to your heart’s content….paint till you drop…play music obsessively…whichever you even have the tiniest spark to do,  just start.  We can surprise ourselves and find out things about ourselves we never realized we could do, just because we started!  – JQ

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. […]
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

From “Wild Geese”;

Dream Work (1986)

Waters of Life

Utagawa Kuniyoshi スクナビコナ

“We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion…This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy.”

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama (via samsaranmusing)

Happy New Year 2013!…

Jan

Time

“…we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.”

Philip Larkin from “The Mower”

The Mystery

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.   -Ken Kesey

photo via Ensuite  Assai

Happy New Year…First Chapter

              © Leonard Freed, 1969, Grand Central at New Years Eve, NYC

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” (Edith Lovejoy Pierce)

Happy New Year!

The Invisible Red Thread

“An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, despite the time, the place, and despite the circumstances. The thread can be tightened or tangle, but will never be broken.”

– an ancient Chinese Proverb

tea is an act complete …

tea is an act complete in its simplicity.

when i drink tea, there is only me, and the tea.

the rest of the world dissolves.

there are no worries about the future.

no dwelling on past mistakes.

tea is simple: loose-leaf tea, hot pure water, a cup.

i inhale the scent, tiny delicate pieces of the tea floating above the cup.

i drink the tea, the essence of the leaves becoming a part of me.

i am informed by the tea, changed.

this is the act of life, in one pure moment, and in this act the truth of the world suddenly becomes revealed: all the complexity, pain, drama of life is a pretense, invented in our minds for no good purpose.

there is only the tea, and me, converging.

-thich nhat hanh: tea ceremony

Shoreline

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it is sent away.

– Sarah Kay

Warhol

STANLEY KUBRICK

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death…our existence can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.