ShivAllahSita sutra 104

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Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling,a

breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the wayof the best

happiness.

~Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

~~

Arriving and departing,with no point in timewhen one becomes the

other,I recline on Cold Mountainin a blanket of fallen maple

leaves,rustling in glee! ~Mazie & b

Stand Tall and ProudSink your roots deeply into the EarthReflect the

light of a greater sourceThink long termGo out on a limbRemember your

place among all living beingsEmbrace with joy the changing seasonsFor

each yields its own abundanceThe Energy and Birth of SpringThe Growth

and Contentment of SummerThe Wisdom to let go of leaves in the FallThe

Rest and Quiet Renewal of Winter

~Ilan Shamir, Advice From a Tree

~~

You lovers of leaving --if you want to hide from mankind,best to stay

and walk among them.If you want a good retreat,Cold Mountain's hard

to beat.Within Cold Mountain the world isstainless, and yet the

distance between Cold Mountain and the world does not exist.Beyond

purity or taint we can relax, perhaps compose love lyrics to a single

white lotus,and how the breeze tonight isjust what it seems, never to

be read.~Mazie & b

Winter is long in this climateand spring--a matter of a few

daysonly,--a flower or two pickedfrom mud or from among wet leavesor

at best against treacherousbitterness of wind, and sky

shiningteasingly, then closing in blackand sudden, with fierce jaws.

~William Carlos Williams, MarchPatterson, New Jersey

~~

Thinking the thought of the thoughtless, attention returns to its

source.With my knees wrapped in my armsI sit shivering, bent like a

pine bough in the gravity of Winter's final snow, patientlyawaiting

the first dawn ofSpring. ~Mazie & b

Flushed purpleredbud shrubs -creeks gushing.

~Michael Garofalo

~~

Standing still in the well of the fire pit,welcomed home by flame,

youwill be consumed.What remains isstanding still,moving not a

muscle.

~Mazie & b

A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there

is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life. The

reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same

moon: the mind must be full of light.

~Hung Tzu-ch'eng

~~

Face to space –staring at the cave wall –what's on the other side of

the wall, looking back at itself?The face, the wall, the looking all

appear in the space of Mind and get along just fine.This shining

vastness,empty and marvelous,empty even of emptiness –what a

wonder!Wherever you travel,your own empire welcomes youhome.Han Shan

calls out tohimself, Han Shananswers:"Yes!"~Mazie & b

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest

and mostinterminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter

as a sacred place,a Sanctum sanctorum.There is the strength, the

marrow, of Nature.

~Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1851

~~

Some pray and hope for the marriage of heavenand earth.

Miraculously,when they open their eyestheir prayer is instantly

granted!Why then are they not more inclinedto celebrate with the

bride and groom on such a wonderful occasion?The magnificent union of

heaven and earth is nearly asremarkable as the yellow buttercupfaces

dazzling the springtime hillsides,yet just as easily ignored by those

who would have gold coins drip off the tender petals of such beauties

and fall into their pockets.Who has the peace of mind to contemplate

the mutual penetration of the known andunknown within the sphere

ofordinary activity?Natural and spontaneous, it proceeds without

author or limitation,irregardless of hopes and fickle expectations.If

you want a name for it, just walk out your own front gate, turn about,

look back, andsay it.

~Mazie & b

A stranger hereStrange things doth meet, strange glories see;Strange

treasures lodged in this fair world appear,Strange all, and new to

me.But that they mine should be, who nothing was,That strangest is of

all, yet brought to pass.

~Thomas Traherne (1637-1674)The Salutation

~~

If you are seeking forgiveness for the past,find the place where the

past seems to exist and notice it is empty.If one looks and sees

nothing but vast space, forgiveness has already been granted, anddark

clouds of guilt evaporate in the sky of mercy.The mind that clings to

nothingresumes its natural disposition.Springtime -- behold

innumerable colorful blossoms miraculously sprouting on bare

branches.Autumn -- leaves wither and decay throughout the forest.

When the tree of the past is severed at the root, where can birth and

deathalternate?~Mazie & b

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

~~

That secret sound inside us is the murmur of an echooriginating in the

samelonging that birthsplanets, galaxies,luminosities.Plunging into

it,Host and Guest,knower and known,the wise and their wisdomvanish

without a ripple, as ifthey never existed.Try to follow that sound,

and you will do the same.

~Mazie & b

Of course the Dharma-body of the Buddha was the hedgeat the bottom of

the garden. At the same time, and no lessobviously, it was these

flowers, it was anything that I - or rather the blessed Not-I - cared

to look at.

~Aldous Huxley

~~

A night of wine talk with Shih Teh,yet neither of us touch a drop --it

is already dawn, yetwe still haven't spoken a word.Cold Mountain

listens in, quiet too.My friend is leaving this morningfor odd jobs

around the temple.Only the mountain remains.I may go and surprise him

while he sweeps!That old broom --Ha!With each swing in the

airinnumerable sentient beings are saved!~Mazie & b

People who take the time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve.

~John Miller

~~

Metaphors are bountiful –perhaps this one will do:We seem born into a

prison.Everyone opens their eyes in a cell.Each cell is different,

but they all share a certain something –for one thingthey're all

cells.Some will try to beautify their cells,some will pound their

heads against the walls,some will maybe carve wise markings abouthow

the cell is not a cell, or evensuspect the Jailer is none otherthan

themselves.Who knows how or when or why,but a Key may slide

betweenthe bars one day or nightthat works just right.Locks tumble,

the door swings open –Free!At this point most such lucky inmatesbeat

a path right out of there, but now and thenan odd one stays to share

that Key –it just seems fair.One after another jailbird flies into

fresh air. All the while the prison guardscontinue guarding,

unaware.Once outside, it may occur to some thatthey were never really

bound, that it was just a bad nightmare from which they've finally

been spared.In the prison yard a rumor spreads about some fellow with

a key, but for most this prison lifecontinues onward, endlessly.Will

you be one who, tastingFreedom, turns their back andflees that hell,

or perhaps theodd one then who liberates thisone last cell?And what

is this "last cell" I speak of -- who or what's to liberate?Ah, Dear

Friends –if it could be said, I surely wouldn't hesitate!~Mazie & b

There are sacred moments in life when we experiencein rational and

very direct ways that separation, theboundary between ourselves and

other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness

isreality. We can experience that stasis is illusory andthat reality

is continual flux and change on very subtleand also on gross levels

of perception . . .

~Charlene Spretnak

~~

The eels in these Cold Mountain streams are slippery.Even if I imagine

I've finally got my hands around one,it will always slip away.Like me,

they like to play.Light likes to playHide & Seek with itself. Don't

ask me why.I don't know.Believing so is another eel.Let the eels

play.Relax and rest backagainst a tree.Any tree here on Cold

Mountainwill do just fine.Light has its own way with each.Each grows

its own waytowards the light,never for an instant cleft from its

source,the same sourceeels and I frolic intoday.~Mazie & b

The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.

~Michel Montaigne

~~

When the yearning can no longer invest itself in anything less than

truth a seed mysteriously begins to sprout. As the seed is nurtured

through the release of all constructs of resistance to truth, truth

breaks ground with a diamond-pointed stem, piercing the heart as it

blooms into the sky, raining petals of vanishing light into

light,magnifying itselfto itself.

~Mazie & b

The man who radiates good cheer, who makes life happier wherever he

meets it, is always a man of vision and faith.

~Ella Wilcox

~~

The one who will kindly kill my last cowhas been playing with me all

along. The milk from that cow is rich indeed, yet I'll happily share

it with all who have heardtheir own death's familiar whisper.It's

only milk, you see, and yetit's sweetness fills canyons with rivers

of light, snow white emptying into white, snow melt gone to the

ocean.

~Mazie & b

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it

is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

~Marcus Aurelius

~~

Today I found a cache of herbs and leaves for some tealeft by a

vaguely familiar character some time ago. Remembering who it was that

planned ahead,knowing he would be well gone but not yettotally bereft

of memory, a cave poem was left to point to the place in this space

memory tends to linger, weaving around a simple campfire ring,

gradually going to ashes, the finest taste in tea. That sound of

clapping you may hear issimply the sound of swelling gratitude for a

pot of tea, brewing over anash pit.Won't you have a cup?~Mazie & b

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

~Rabbi Abraham Heschel

~~

The ghost of Maitreya stands still in a stand of gnarled

pines,gesturing in all directions, whispering:"Hear the song of the

pine needles growing from the branches?You can enter fine right here

–if you but stop and listen!"~Mazie & b

Seeing is different than being told.

~Proverb from Kenya

~~

Before the approaching blizzard,snow white clouds are ranging

excitedly overbrilliant blue sky along the ridgeabove my mountain

hut, and my heart is racing right along with them.Surrounded by snow,

withmore snow coming, yetnot a flake refused --this heart is running

through the sky,side by side white clouds. ~Mazie & b

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.

~Hanna Rion

~~

After a nap of a thousand years,I awoke to the footsteps of

treesquirrels, scurrying amidst crisp fallen maple leaves.Boiling

myself some tea fromthose leaves, their perfumereminded me of what I

had missed, and why the squirrels romp through it.

~Mazie & b

Like a beautiful flower that is colorful but has no fragrance, even

well spoken words bear no fruit in one who does not put them into

practice.

~The Buddha

~~

This old abandoned ruin of a fortress now hosts the ghosts of

bewilderedancient animals who may have paused here one night, long

after the humans had dropped to dust. Dazzled by the interplay of

cloudsand light through the crumblingbattlements, they must

surelyhave been startled when thesudden shaft of moonlightpierced

their skins andburied itself betweentheir eyes,

silentlyexploding.They gather so expectantly around me now,purring

softly and waiting in serene anticipation for the same shock oflight

to strike me, perhaps so I might join with them in their

bedazzlement, unaware I have already been speared at the heart, nor

did I survive its devastation. Nobody here gets out alive.

~Mazie & b

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