Everything 

just as it is, 

as it is, as is.

Flowers in bloom. 

Nothing to add. 

~ Robert Aitken

Dance, when you're broken open. 

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. 

Dance in the middle of the fighting. 

Dance in your blood. 

Dance when you're perfectly free.

~ Rumi

The way is not in the sky.

The way is in the heart. 

~ Buddha

Be soulful, Be kind,

Be in love.

~ Rumi

 Standing alone beneath a solitary pine

Quickly the time passes. 

Overhead the endless sky 

 Who can I call to join me on this path? 

~ Ryokan

The most precious gift 

we can offer anyone 

is our attention. 

When mindfulness embraces 

those we love, 

they will bloom like flowers.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Rain, hail, snow and ice:

All are different,

But when they fall

They become the same water

As the valley stream.

~ Ikkyu

LT:

Esmingiausia – pats žmogus.

***

EN:

Man himself is quintessential.

~ Rimantas Viedrynaitis

There is nothing better

That you can give to a person

Than to be present with them.

When you are fully present

You become love

And you share that becoming with others.

~ Guanyin

Don’t sit and wait. 

Get out there, feel life. 

Touch the sun, and immerse in the sea.

~ Rumi

By learning you will teach; 

by teaching you will learn.

~ Latin proverb

The world is not in your books and maps, 

it’s out there

...

~ Gandalf

You will learn by reading

But you will understand with love. 

~ Shams Tabrizi

sunlight in the morning

kasutora matsuki | sunlight in the morning | 1929

By a green jade lake, 

What a wonderful sight: 

An old hermit fathoming Tao. 

Aren't they the lucky ones, 

Humble and still, 

Quietly humming the 

Melodies of heaven? 

~ Loy Ching-Yuen

Everything arises and passes away.

When you see this you are above sorrow.

This is the shining way.

~ Buddha: Dhammapada

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

~ Rumi

... I really don't know what I love you means.

I think it means Don't leave me here alone ...

~ Neil Gaiman

GP
music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

~ Anaïs Nin

Fill your bowl to the brim

and it will spill.

Keep sharpening your knife

and it will blunt.

Chase after money and security

and your heart will never unclench.

Care about people's approval

and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.

The only path to serenity.

~ Tao Te Ching

verse 9

Travel, wander, get lost. You never know what you might find.

 

~ unknown 

BE yourself!

Students of today can't get anywhere: what ails you? 

Lack of faith in yourself is what ails you. 

If you lack faith in yourself, 

you'll keep on tumbling along, 

bewilderedly following after all kinds of circumstances, 

be taken by these myriad circumstances through transformation after transformation, 

and never be yourself. 

~ Lin-chi Hui-chao

Knowledge is only rumour until it is in the muscle.

~  Huli

I like to wash,

the dust of this world

In the droplets of dew. 

~ Basho

A man should hear a little music, 

read a little poetry, 

and see a fine picture every day of his life, 

in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful 

which God has implanted in the human soul.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

The most excellent way

To be free from the passions

And to be calm, 

This is the most excellent Way. 

~ Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Vow to achieve the perfect

Understanding that the

Illusory body is like

Dew and lightning. 

~  Hsu Yun

Meaning of Life

Complete, tranquil, open, still. 

Such is the substance of the Way. 

Expanding, contracting, killing, giving life. 

Such is its subtle function. 

~ Yuanwu

No end, no beginning, just the infinite passion of/for life

There is no end. 

There is no beginning. 

There is only 

the infinite passion of life.

~ Federico Fellini

Glimmering Depth

flow thru
weary waves
passages
beneath

***

Saivon Kimallus / Siniset Runot

väsy vaivu

avo saivo

pinnan läpi

vie ovi

Just dance!

Dance, when you're broken open. 

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. 

Dance in the middle of the fighting. 

Dance in your blood. 

Dance when you're perfectly free.

~ Rumi

The vagaries of life

Though painful, 

Teach us

Not to cling
To this fleeting world.

~ Ikkyu

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

~ C.S. Lewis

This being human is a guest-house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture.

Still, treat each guest honorably.

Who may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

Walking along a little path,

I find a footprint on the moss, 

A white cloud low on the quiet lake, 

Grasses that sweeten an open door, 

A pine greener with the rain, 

A brook tumbling from a mountain source, 

And, mingling with Truth among flowers, 

I have forgotten what to say.

~ Liu Chang-ch'ing

Everywhere you look

The mountains are covered

With mist and blooming cherry trees.

 

~ Ryokan

***

If you look, 

if you are not absorbed in the screen of your mobile device...

I am because we are

Ubuntu

An anthropologist proposed a game 

to children in an African tribe. 

He put a basket full of fruit near a tree 

and told the children that whoever got there first won the sweet fruits. 

When he told them to run, 

they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats.

When he asked them why they had run like that when one could have had all the fruits for himself, 

they said, "UBUNTU, 

how can one of us be happy 

if all the other ones are sad?" 

("UBUNTU" in the Xhosa culture means: "I am because we are.")

Follow your dreams

Follow your dream(s).

The true person is

Not anyone in particular;

But, like the deep blue color

Of the limitless sky,

It is everyone, everywhere

In the world. 

~ Dogen

***
The true person is the limitless sky.

Stand still

The wind cannot shake a mountain.

Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man.

He is like a lake,

Pure and tranquil.

~ Buddha

In memoriam Nuno Guimarães

... And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all,

but for the things he did.

I cried because he would never do them again,

he would never carve another piece of wood

or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard

or play the violin the way he did,

or tell us jokes the way he did.

He was part of us and when he died,

all the actions stopped dead

and there was no one to do them the way he did.

He was individual. 

He was an important man.

 I’ve never gotten over his death.

Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died.

How many jokes are missing from the world,

and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands?

He shaped the world. 

He did things to the world. 

The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

~ Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451
***
In loving memory of Nuno Guimarães who passed away totally unexpected,
left us alone and empty
without his poetry, humane simplicity, frankness, kindness, friendliness.
Nuno was a personality like no other.
You touched so many souls and you will be missed very much.
Rest in peaceful sleep, Nuno.

Many paths lead

From the foot of the mountain,

But at the peak

We all gaze at the

Single bright moon.

~ Ikkyu

The highest function of love is 

that it makes 

the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.

~ Tom Robbins

Jitterbug Perfume

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

~ Alan Watts 

Humans of NY are saying

"She's compassionate."

"Tell me about a time she was compassionate."

He took a couple minutes, then said, haltingly:

– "It's not about a time. She's compassionate toward who I am. Every time."

The Conclusion of Walden

Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find

a thousand regions in your mind

Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be

expert in home-cosmography.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Instructions for living a life: 

Pay attention. Be astonished. 

Tell about it.

~ Mary Oliver

Where should one use perfume?

– a young woman asked. 

Wherever one wants to be kissed.

~ Coco Chanel

Swim out of your little pond.

~ Rumi

Falling in love each and single day

Look at the cherry blossoms!

Their color and scent fall with them

Are gone forever;

Yet mindless

The spring comes again.

~ Ikkyu

Perfect happiness is 

the absence of striving for happiness.

~ Chuang Tzu

When I reach the place of my dreams

I will thank my failures and tears; 

They too, kept me going.

~ Dodinsky

Now love breathes

Just act

The worthies of old all had

means of emancipating people. 

What I teach people just requires 

you not to take on the confusion of others. 

If you need to act, then act, 

without any further hesitation or doubt.

~ Linji 

in the real world

the pure world

no separation exists

why wait

for another time

and another meeting

the teaching

on Vulture Peak

is here today

who else

are you looking for

to preserve the Way?

~ Musō Soseki (1275-1351)

My life seems like a hallucination

My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. 

A strong wind would make me think 

that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth,  to some land i had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. 

Hold tight, I would tell myself, 

but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

~ Murakami

The REAL You

Our fundamental self is not something just inside the skin,

It's everything around us with which we connect.

~ Alan Watts

GTalk text by KP

just a short time on earth to have fun

and fulfill your dreams

fuck every oppinion out there

fuck anyhow we feel obligated to

we are going to fulfill these obligations anyway

we are fucked

we are so deeply socialized beings, you and I, 

that even if we go to cave for 10 years we would still act like our mom told us

so fuck them

I get it, there is no way out of this social fabric of empathy

so fuck everybody

and lets just enjoy stuff and be active

Things tell less and less

Untitled

Things tell less and less:

The news impersonal

And from afar; no book

Worth wrenching off the shelf.

Liquor brings dizziness

And food discomfort; all

Music sounds thin and tired,

And what picture could earn a look?

The self drowses in the self

Beyond hope of a visitor.

Desire and those desired

Fade, and no matter:

Memories in decay

Annihilate the day.

There once was an answer:

Up at the stroke of seven,

A turn round the garden

(Breathing deep and slow),

Then work, never mind what,

How small, provided that

It serves another’s good

But once is long ago

And, tell me, how could

Such an answer be less than wrong,

Be right all along?

Vain echoes, desist

~ Kingsley Amis

How should be

isabel muñoz | 1989

Burn yourself to become new

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; 

How could you become new if you haven’t first become ashes?

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I love you – I love myself

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself...I love you.
I love you...I love myself.

~ Rumi

Wisdom is better

Being as pretty as possible every single day

I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without
fixing herself up a little – if only out of politeness.
And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny.
And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny. 

~  Coco Chanel 

We are verbs

If you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment,
but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that.
We are not nouns, we are verbs.
I am not a thing – an actor, a writer –
I am a person who does things – I write, I act –
and I never know what I am going to do next.
I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

~ Stephen Fry

A poem by KP

oh thou passionate and fragile being

thou who succumbs to the arrows and stones of thy harsh world

thou tortured soul and center of the world

thy ego shall be ignored forever in thy screamless frenzy

a narcotic escape into chaos

a pointless endeviour to find inner peace

until the ruptures swollow you or you take on new roles in some stiff and fixed order

a new found happiness in your mania

~ KP

Not being too busy

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world

 we lose connection with one another and ourselves. 

~ Jack Kornfield

This kind of fire

sometimes I think the gods

deliberately keep pushing me

into the fire

just to hear me

yelp 

a few good

lines.

they just aren’t going to

let me retire

silk scarf about neck

giving lectures at 

Yale.

the gods need me to

entertain them.

they must be terribly

bored with all

the others

and I am too.

and now my cigarette lighter

has gone dry.

I sit here

hopelessly

flicking it.

this kind of fire

they can’t give

me.

~ Charles Bukowski 

Going together

Wake, butterfly –

It's late, we've miles

To go together.

~ Matsuo Basho

Life is only important, if...

Clearer and cleaner mirror

As you live deeper in the heart,

the mirror gets clearer and cleaner.

~ Rumi

I have nothing to teach

Searching for words,

Hunting for phrases,

When will it end?

Esteeming knowledge

And gathering information

Only maddens the spirit.

Just entrust yourself

To your own nature,

Empty and illuminating

Beyond this,

I have nothing to teach.

~ Bankei Yotaku

Being dew

Like vanishing dew,

a passing apparition

or sudden flash

of lightning – already gone –

thus should one regard one's self.

~ Ikkyu

The woman who walks alone

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd.
The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

~ Albert Einstein

Napoleon to Josephine

Spring 1797

To Josephine,

I love you no longer; on the contrary, I detest you. you are a wretch, truly perverse, truly stupid, a real Cinderella. You never write to me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters give him yet you cannot even manage to write him half a dozen lines, dashed off in a moment! What then do you do all day, Madame? What business is so vital that it robs you of the time to write to your faithful lover? What attachment can be stifling and pushing aside the love, the tender and constant love which you promised him? Who can this wonderful new lover be who takes up your every moment, rules your days and prevents you from devoting your attention to your husband?

Beware, Josephine; one fine night the doors will be broken down and there I shall be. In truth, I am worried, my love, to have no news from you; write me a four page letter instantly made up from those delightful words which fill my heart with emotion and joy. I hope to hold you in my arms before long, when I shall lavish upon you a million kisses, burning as the equatorial sun.

Within the waters

Is the entire world;

There is nothing in its depths

But reflections of mountains and rivers.

A fish breaks the surface

And then disappear again.

What need is there to borrow

The wind and thunder? 

~ Ingen

Being grateful for life

Be grateful for your life, every detail of it,

and your face will come to shine like a sun,

and everyone who sees it will

be made glad and peaceful. 

~ Rumi

Further or closer

At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

You do not need many things

My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest

Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.

Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,

Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.

While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes

And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.

Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.

To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.

~ Ryokan

tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa

Justina:  ... just a caring soul around.

Too lazy to be ambitious

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

~ Ryokan

Good medicine

A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, 

or all three together, 

is good medicine.

~ Ray Bradbury

unfinished poem, or maybe not (XVII) by NG

they were fleetingly meeting

for meager five minutes 

on the station of Vievis

they were like people saying nonsense 

and after, they whistled for farewell

as true trains, completely in love

one day they derailed

just to embrace 

each other

every passengers were saved 

some of them,

with some small wounds

of love

~ Nuno Guimarães

unfinished poem, or maybe not (XV) by NG

I glue my body to you

and we are flowing rain

gliding till the window sill

it is opened

so the winter may freely enter

~ Nuno Guimarães

unfinished poem, or maybe not (II) by NG

the lack that you make on me

is directly proportional

to the hole that is opening in my soul

where you will fit entire

when you arrive

 

~ Nuno Guimarães