From whiskey river:
[Image: “please remain calm, everything is fine,” by Robert Couse-Baker. Found it on Flicker, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you very much!).]
The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.
(Bertrand Russell [source])
…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book:
9th century Zen master, Tozan Ryokai, attained enlightenment many times. Once when he was crossing a river he saw himself reflected in the water and composed a verse, “Don’t try to figure out who you are. If you figure out who you are, what you understand will be far away from you. You will have just an image of yourself.” Actually, you are in the river. You may say that is just a shadow or a reflection of yourself, but if you look carefully with warm-hearted feeling, that is you.
You may think you are very warm-hearted, but when you try to understand how warm, you cannot actually measure. Yet when you see yourself with a warm feeling in the mirror or the water, that is actually you. And whatever you do, you are there.
(Shunryu Suzuki [source])
…and:
The Three Goals
The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.
(David Budbill [source])
…and:
If you are a person of gain and loss, you’ve already lost. It’s a matter of remembering that our business here is to learn to love all the way through to letting go. There’s nothing much else we can actually do with the overwhelming opportunity of a human life, which is shaped exactly like completely accepting the offer of a lifetime, and shaped exactly like finally letting go.
(Susan Murphy [source: nothing canonical, but found it here])
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