zen

autumn remains

Seeing our finger,

hearing a frog jump into the water,

experiencing the sunrise,

washing one’s face in the early morning –

anything will serve as a medium of realization if the mind is serene ~ Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave

autumn remains

If you stay at a place where a feeling of loneliness

[or sadness, detachment, voidness] comes,

the contemplative absorption arises in us ~Paltrul Rimpoche

toddler shoe laces

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toddler shoes in an antique store

Touching the present moment, we come to know the past created the present and together the future is being created. ~ Unknown

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shoe lace I

Just as you unreel the thread from a spool,

I want the past to become present.

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shoe lace II

The wife of Yoshitsune, a famous warrior in medieval Japan, wrote this farewell poem shortly after her spouse was deployed to the northern provinces where he later died.  She offers to us our creative ability to mentally bring the past alive and into the present.

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shoe lace III

… “Time goes from present to past.”  This is not true in our logical mind, but it is in the actual experience of making past time present.  There we have poetry, and there we have human life.

~ cited in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki

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shoe lace IV