It's as if we were poor, homeless, hungry, and cold, and although we didn't know it, right under the ground where we always slept was a pot of gold. That gold is bodhichitta. Our confusion and misery come from not knowing that the gold is right here and from always looking for it somewhere else. When we talk about joy, enlightenment, waking up, or awakening bodhichitta, all that means is that we know the gold is right here, and we realize that it's been here all along. - Pema Chodron from Start Where You Are, p.7

We can begin anything we do- start our day, eat a meal, or walk into a meeting- with the intention to be open, flexible, and kind. Then we can proceed with an inquisitive attitude. As my teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, "Live your life as an experiment."

At the end of the activity, whether we feel we have succeeded or failed in our intention, we seal the act by thinking of others, of those who are succeeding and failing all over the world. We wish that anything we learned in our experiment could also benefit them.

- Pema Chodrom

from The Places That Scare You, p. 1-2

To reach someone through the heart is other than reaching them through words. Besides words, illusions, and arguments, the heart knows 10,000 ways to speak.

-Rumi

Internal busyness comes from the feeling of not having enough time. When you act with inner focus, it shifts you out of your time bind by anchoring you in the place where time is always enough.

As you make your effort, as you go about your daily tasks, the yoga lies in your intention to keep turning to the one who is not busy and to feel her steadiness, her detachment, and her freedom.

- Sally Kempton

from Yoga Journal, 11/2009

"Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

from the collection House of Light

"Turning"

Going too fast for myself I missed

more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes

and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood

where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog

still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

- W.S. Merwin

from The New Yorker, 05/16/11

Still, what I want in my life

is to be willing

to be dazzled--

to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing--

that the light is everything-- that it is more than the sum

of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

- Mary Oliver

excerpt from The Ponds

from the collection House of Light