Time
Inter-be.
May 29, 2021We’re not in a race to check off as many boxes as we possibly can before we are out of time. Instead, we have the chance to use the time to create moments that matter. Because they connect us, because they open doors, because the moments, added up, create a life.
-Seth Godin
“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. . . . Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.” –Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh
What do you see?
‘I bring a sun-shift to others when I shift my light. Darkness does not exist in the light.’ [A Course in Miracles.]
Shift.
If you feel uncomfortable with anything, you should re-consider your situation.
Cut your losses.
Far better to admit a mistake than to persist in it and allow it to develop into a nightmare.
-A. Stoddard
Are we learning?
January 24, 2021
‘Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library…’
-Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux
Are we allowing the whispers to be heard…
Are we shifting…
How much longer will the loudest most divisive voices continue to disrupt…
What can we do as a collective to gently encourage the shift, for our planet…
For each other…
We’ve been given a narrow space to breath, to decide, to listen, to learn.
We don’t have much time.
Chief Seattle:
‘There is no death, only a change of worlds.’
‘…at one with the earth.’
November 4, 2016
Once for each thing. Just once; no more.
And we too, just once. And never again.
But to have been this once, completely,
even if only once: to have been
at one with the earth,
seems beyond undoing.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I enter every meeting with another being saying to myself, ‘If I only have this time on Earth with this person, if I may never see them again, what is it I want or need to ask, to know? What is it I want or need to say?’ Honoring others in this way has opened me to wisdoms that would otherwise run silent beneath my time on Earth.
-Mark Nepo
Suffering…
May 13, 2015UPAYA CENTER:
“Life begins with love, is maintained with love, and ends with love. Right now, while we’re alive, is the time to practice and express love. So please take care of your love. Love is capable of reaching so many people.”
—Tsoknyi Rinpoche
https://www.upaya.org/2015/05/the-mysterious-junction-of-suffering-and-love-sharon-salzberg/
