I have returned to the root and effort is over. From the first there has been no one to see or hear anything. There is nothing outside of my true home. Rivers quietly flow and red flowers bloom.
Kuo-An Shih-Yuan
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Unfettered like a wafting mist I give myself up to where the wind wants me to be.
Ryokan
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A student once asked master Bassui, ‘Are you saying that someone who sees his own nature and is free from delusion is innocent of error, even if he does something which breaks the Buddhist precepts?’ He replied, ‘If someone’s actions come from their essential nature, how could they be breaking the precepts?’
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Don’t live by your own rules, but in harmony with Nature.
Epictetus
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The sun is new each day.
-Heraclitus
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There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.
-Bernard WIlliams
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The Tables Turned – William Wordsworth
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?The sun above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
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We can’t escape pain; we can’t escape the essential nature of our lives. But we do have a choice. We can give in and relent, or we can fight, persevere, and create a life worth living, a noble life. Pain is a fact; our evaluation of it is a choice.
-Jacob Held
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When the blood in your veins returns to the sea and the earth in your bones returns to the ground, perhaps then you will remember that this land does not belong to you, it is you who belongs to this land.
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As in everything, nature is the best instructor.
Adolf Hitler
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I do not see why man should not be as cruel as nature.
Adolf Hitler
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“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
Chief Seattle
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“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced? It’s only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”
Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia
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