It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Category: Spirituality
Salubrion
Charles Saiki, a retired architectural draftsman and lifelong artist, faithfully meditated over the past thirty years in Hawaii. He first developed the idea of a compact meditation chair because he continuously needed to adjust his cushion, never achieving complete comfort or concentration. He spent three years refining its form and function before he shared the product with the world as the Salubrion Meditation Chair, becoming one of the most popular meditation stools in the U.S..
The Alchemist
It was not easy to do; in earlier times, his heart had always been ready to tell its story, but lately that wasn’t true. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional over the desert sunrise that the boy had to hide his tears. His heart beat fastest when it spoke to the boy of treasure, and more slowly when the boy stared entranced at the endless horizons of the desert. But his heart was never quiet, even when the boy and the alchemist had fallen into silence.
“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.
“Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”
“But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.”
“Well that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.”
“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”
“That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”
“Well then, why should I listen to my heart?”
“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”
“You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?”
“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.”
“You will never be able to escape from you heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”
Water
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people’s greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.
Tao te Ching, Chapter 78
A Thousand Serious Moves
What is the difference
Between your Existence
And that of a Saint?
The Saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the Saint is now continually
Tripping over joy
And Bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
Hafiz
Happiness
For those I love and those who love me,
may this life be a blessing and a source of happiness to all beings.
Death is no cause for sorrow, but it would be sorrow
if one dies without having done something for oneself and for the world.
Ven. Dr K Sri Dhammananda Maha Nayaka Thera (1919-2006)
Earth
And forget not that the earth delights
to feel your bare feet and the winds long
to play with your hair.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what do you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Haunting tales
Straits Times, Sep 17, 2006
An ongoing court case has sparked an interest in exorcism, and Catholic theologian William Goh’s talk on this topic last week attracted quite a crowd
By Leong Su-Lin
FATHER William Goh has a suggestion for all Catholic travellers wary of haunted hotel rooms: Never travel without a supply of holy water.
That way, if you encounter strange noises, shifting tables or flickering lights, you can sprinkle the water and say a prayer to appease the spirits, says the theologian, who is a resource speaker for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore.
‘A hotel is probably haunted because a person was murdered there and his spirit cannot rest in peace,’ he says.
When he encounters ‘a strange presence’ in a room, he too will sprinkle holy water and bless the room, he adds. Any water blessed by a Catholic priest is considered holy water.
Continue reading “Haunting tales”
Practice to be like the earth
The Buddha said, “Suppose you have a cup of pure water; if you have a handful of salt, and you pour it into that water and stir it up, you cannot drink it anymore, because it’s too salty. But if you take the same amount of salt, and pour it into the river, then the river is so large that it is not affected, and all of us can continue to drink the water from the river. The river is enormous, that is why it has the capacity to receive, to embrace and to transform. If our hearts are big, we can do very much the same thing. We suffer because our hearts are small; it means that our understanding and compassion are too limited.”
“Rahula, practice to be like the earth. Why? No matter what people pour onto the earth, whether it’s milk, cream, flowers, perfume or urine, excrement, the earth will not discriminate. It will receive them all, and the earth will not suffer. Why? Because the earth is large, and in no time at all the earth can transform all these things into flowers and green leaves. So practice, Rahula, in order to be like the earth. You can accept, receive, and embrace everything, and you don’t have to suffer. Sometime later you can transform all this garbage into flowers again.
Practice like the air; no matter what you throw into it, the air can receive, embrace and transform it, and that is because the air is large.
Practice in order to be like water. Water has the same capacity of receiving, embracing and transforming. And practice to be like fire, because whatever you give to fire, whether it’s beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, the fire will burn them all, and reduce everything to ash. Because the fire is large, the fire has the capacity to transform.
That is why, Rahula, you should practice like the earth, like the water, like the air, like the fire, so that your heart becomes unlimited. Anything negative, any insult, any action that is unkind to you, you can embrace all, and you don’t have to suffer, because your heart is so large. That is why it is said in the sutra that if you suffer too much, that is because your heart is still not large. In order to make your heart large, the practice of looking deeply will help, because it will bring understanding. When understanding is there, compassion and forgiveness will be possible.”