On attunement
Not knowing, intimacy, mystery—all are words that convey a simple, yet profound, openness to the moment without any attempt to master, control, or understand it.
Barry Magid • Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide
To make yourself receptive to other ways of knowing, the first step is to shift your perceptual boundaries beyond the human scope into the animate landscape around and within you. All of nature lives in a kinship of mutuality; whether it’s the pairing of trees with fungi, flowers with pollinating animals, or seed dispersal relationships, mutualisti
... See moreToko-pa Turner • The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams
On looking — There’s an art and power to looking; when you can really see, and observe, and guide your attention to aesthetic specifics of something, it closes a thought loop. It’s centering, maybe even more than the breathe.
What if looking and breathe went together? For example; as I write this, I’m now focused on my peripherals, and I see my hand
... See moreIt offers an aesthetic ideal that uses the uncompromising touch of mortality to focus the mind on the exquisite transient beauty to be found in all things impermanent. It can be found in the arrangement of a single flower, the expression of profound emotion in three lines of poetry, or in the perception of a mountain landscape in a single rock.
Andrew Juniper • Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence
The art of contemplation teaches us to covet this precious but vital gift of lightness. Sometimes when the clouds gather and press in on us, or when our brows curl into furrows, the one thing we need above all is this sense of greater perspective.