The mystical teachings of trees are beautifully expressed in Ursula K. Le Guin's poem, Kinship, in which she explores our own primal origins.
Tag: being
The Courage of Our Mistakes – Joan Didion on Self-Respect and Moral Nerve
In this excerpt from a 1961 essay titled On Self-Respect, Didion argued for a morally robust state of being and looked back a generation to a value that was once called 'character'.
Guo Gu’s Guide to Silent Illumination
The core of Chan meditation is the concrete experience of being in the present moment, not holding on to any mental concept or idea about oneself or one's activity
Dogen’s Seal of the Ocean: How Meditation and Life Can Flow Like Water
Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen invokes an oceanic state of non-identification as something that expresses the true Dharma, or our true nature, according to the teachings of Buddha.
Out Of the Body and Into the Mountain: Nan Shepherd’s Journeys Among the Scottish Cairngorms
Published thirty years after it was written, Nan Shepherd's nature memoir describes a very physical intimacy that grew and developed through the author's exploration of the Cairngorm Mountains.
Anger Is Me and I Am Anger
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on how we can become intimate and compassionate with our own anger and even transform it into love.
Elizabeth Bishop – In the Waiting Room
A formidable description of epiphany: when the poet's world goes from a mundane waiting room to a radically altered sense of identity.
Hey, Mockingbird
BY ABIGAIL KING This is how it began: mornings, sitting outside on a stone bench, listening to the mockingbird. You exist. I exist.
“The Total Functioning is You, The Consciousness is You”
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj talks about identifying with the 'I Am' that is the universal consciousness and not the individual body.
Avoiding Extremes: Buddha’s Discourse on the Middle Way
Buddhist thinking about existence and non-existence is characterised by a re-framing of the parameters of the question, to be or not to be?