10-15-2006 Quote for today

Learning to interpret and use what you receive is something most us need to learn how to do. ~Kiachu

Quote for today - 9-21-2006

TO PENETRATE THE MYSTERIES, to bless with a good conscious, to be great and yet empty, to return to stillness and be forgiving, to be compassionate and to deliver all people, to do good deeds and help people reach the other shore - these are the great benefits of our Path of cultivation. To calm people in stormy times, to help them understand the nature of things, to maintain purity, to nourish all things, to respect all life, and to answer the needs of those whose beliefs come from the heart - these are the services the Order can offer.
- from a Chinese Stelae, 781 A.D.

Quote for today - September 12, 2006

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
~Peter De Vries

The Man and the Sandpiper

Once there was a man who wished to find the way to attain his goals. So he prayed to the Almighty for help.
That night the man had a dream in which he was a little sandpiper on a wave-swept shore. As he stepped nimbly in and out with the wave tips, his sandpiper heart beat with a happy wisdom that his human mind had never known.
When the man awoke, he sought out the seashore to study the sandpiper. Returning to his life, he experienced increasing happiness and success.
On occasion the man would return to the seashore to study under the inspiration of the long-legged little sandpiper. Eventually his quest touched upon inner aspects of being.
Gradually the man was imbued with spiritual presence. Compassion flowed from him. Things he touched flourished. And when he laid himself down for his final earthly sleep, his spirit, resembling a little, long-legged bird of purest light, rose in glory into the heavenly shining.

The obstacle is the path

Obstacles do not obstruct the path.
To cross them is to advance on the path.

Meditation

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom.
By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind.

Meditation

He who treads the Path in earnest
Sees not the mistakes of the world;
If we find fault with others
We ourselves are also in the wrong.

-Dhammapada, 188-192

They go to many a refuge,
to mountains, forests,
parks, trees, and shrines:

people threatened with danger.
That's not the secure refuge,
that's not the highest refuge,
that's not the refuge,

having gone to which,
you gain release
from all suffering and stress.

But when, having gone for refuge
to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha,
you see with right discernment
the four Noble Truths —

stress,
the cause of stress,
the transcending of stress,
and the Noble Eightfold Path,

the way to the stilling of stress:
That's the secure refuge,
that, the highest refuge,
that is the refuge,

having gone to which,
you gain release
from all suffering and stress.

Poem - Mind

Mind is the master planner that molds and makes
And man is mind and forever more he takes,

The tools of thought and shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills

He thinks in secret and it comes to pass
His environment is but his looking glass!!!

James Allen

The Genesis of Butterflies

Victor Hugo

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide!
Ah, Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April, and before the May time
Shredded and flown, play things for the wind's play-time,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to Butterflies.

5-17-2006 Quote for today

Is a man's real possession his memory or his dreams?
Both can make him rich, both can make him poor.
-Kiachu Shen Ku

Poem - Letting Go

Author Unknown

To let go doesn't mean to stop caring;
It means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off...
It's the realization that I can't control another...
To let go is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try and change or blame another,
I can only change myself.
To let go is not to care for, but to care about.
To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own outcomes.
To let go is not to be protective,
It is to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny, but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish the moment.
To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more.

5-2-2006 Quote for today

A pebble tossed into the pond of life, provides ripples that come and go. Tossing in a pebble occasionally will provide a shimmer or two of enlightenment that may otherwise have been overlooked. As the ripples move outward, the influences of that pebble and our reaction and interpretations to them can expand our experiences and move energy to other areas of our experience.

Just as with the pond, each of us affect and can be affected by the energies of those around us, both those on the earth plane, and those in other dimensions.

Peace,
Kiachu Shen Ku

Poem

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves
of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

There is a symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds,
the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature, the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.

-Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Even Trees Awake to a Breakfast of Light

Even trees awake to a breakfast of light.
In hungry excitement they elevate their leaves,
Great green choirs with ten thousand open mouths,
Hosanna-ing the sun from silent boughs.
Trees know glory with neither sound nor sight,
Yet spread their limbs with phototropic ease.

No one knows the inwardness of trees;
Imagination, though, rapport allows:
Nor sickness, fire, drought, nor age, nor blight
Erodes their silent worship of delight.

4-19-2006 Quote for today

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
-E. E. Cummings

Poem

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you,
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill,
Don’t go back to sleep.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi

4-4-2006 Quote for today

If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
-Hal Borland

4-2-2006 Quote for today

Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.
-Gerard De Nerval

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.