The Journey
Buen Camino
(greeting to fellow travelers on the Camino de Santiago)
You don't always need a plan.
Sometimes you just need to
breathe, trust, let go,
and see what happens.
A monk asked, “What is the Way?”
The master replied, “Stop standing
at the crossroads
gazing into the distance.”
— Zen Master Dogen,
The Record of Transmitting the Light
Wanderer, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.
— Antonio Machado
​No matter what route you take,
if you complete the journey
you will reach the same destination. — Rick Rubin
Blessing for the longest night
​
...This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go,
you will be walking toward the dawn.
​
-- Jan RIchardson
Come, even if
you have broken your vows
a hundred times,
a thousand times.
Come, come again, come.
-- Rumi
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper,
Lover of leaving -- it doesn't matter.
​
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Blessing for a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge...
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
​
... Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
-- John O'Donohue
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet,
and the winds long to play with your hair. — Kahlil Gibran
Free Spirit in an Urban Landscape
Filmmaker Russell Houghten wondered what it would be like to skateboard in a Los Angeles devoid of cars. He filmed skaters on highways and city streets, then removed all vehicles with editing software.
​The way we do anything is the way we do everything. -- Rick Rubin
Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is an harmonious relationship with time. — Rick Rubin
About mountains it is useless to argue,
You have either been up or you haven’t.
The view from half-way is nobody’s view.
The best flowers are mostly at the top
Under a ledge, nourished by wind...
-- R.S. Thomas
Avoid getting stuck with a decision you made five minutes ago. -- Rick Rubin
​
Failure is the information you need to get where you're going. -- Rick Rubin
Try to love the questions themselves,
like books that are written in a very foreign tongue…
Live the questions now.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
If you understand --
things are just as they are.
​
If you do NOT understand --
things are just as they are.
— Zen verse
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
This Irish ballad Stór mo Chroí (Pulse of my Heart) (1929) expresses the pain of leaving both for those who go and those who stay (written during the great Irish migration).
If you set out looking
for something,
whatever that might be,
you won’t find it.
​
What’s worse,
you’ll miss finding
everything else
that was always there for you.
-- Meister Eckhart
(trans. Sweeney/Burrows)
“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”
― Margaret Atwood
​Don’t waste your time on jealousy.
Sometimes you’re ahead,
sometimes you’re behind.
The race is long, and in the end,
it’s only with yourself.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
I saw that I could not get anywhere
by following the straight path,
and that the crooked path
led more directly to the goal.
-- Gogol
METANOIA
is the gradual stripping away
of the unconscious,
habituated,
out of tune,
off the mark
ways of being and doing.
— Avis Clendenen
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
-- Tao te Ching 48 (Stephen Mitchell)
We must find our way by seeing the hand of God at work in the weaving of the fabric of daily life.
-- clarence e. pickett
All the way to Heaven is Heaven
-- Catherine of Sienna
If you do not travel with the One
you seek, you will not find the One
at the end of the journey.
-- Jim Forest
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Spring passes, and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes, and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes, and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes, and one remembers one’s perseverance.
— Yoko Ono
The price of anything is
the amount of your life
you exchange for it.
— Henry David Thoreau
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day's work.
-- Tao te Ching 50 (Stepehen Mitchell)
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather ...
to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride! '”
~ Hunter S. Thompson
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes
and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
... I want to step through the door
full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like,
that cottage of darkness?
... When it's over, I want to say
all my life I was a bride
married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom,
taking the world into my arms...
I don't want to end up
simply having visited this world.
-- Mary Oliver (died Jan 17, 2019)
You are anxious about whether
you will rise from the dead or not,
but
you rose from the dead
when you were born
and you didn't notice it.
-- Boris Pasternak
I'll dance into the darkness, as new life dances in...
And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. -- Rabindranath Tagore