We wear the dust of where we’ve been and everybody knows. We were awake and dreaming while the world slept. And silence kept us company.

Yoshitaka Amano: King of the Moon (1992)

Guru: nothing is

Me: oh that explains it

“Your own life, while it’s happening to you, never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory.”

You’re gonna get where you’re going no matter what path you take.

We Are on Track

The Tibetan word chyoshe is often translated as “disillusionment with the world” or “sadness about samsara.” Resting with our direct experience with a sense of curiosity and nonjudgment is the practice of meditation. It expresses the longing to accept things as they are rather than how we would like them to be. Often this provokes a feeling of sadness where the mind feels lonely and tender and supple all at once. This tenderness connects us to others and their pain. A deep passion to look at what once provoked fear begins to emerge. Once we have stopped trying to push things away, we can let them affect us in this tender sort of way, and that brings us to life. This is the experience of chyoshe. It is an indication that we are on track—engaged in the genuine path of Dharma. We have reached some clarity as to what we can and cannot rely on. In this way we move away from confusion and toward enlightenment.

Dzigar Kongtrul

Rupert Spira moon jar with poem embossed

𝚁𝚊𝚋𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚑 𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚎 [𝟷𝟾𝟼𝟷-𝟷𝟿𝟺𝟷] 

sometimes the right path for you is the one no one will applaud or envy sometimes its getting to know yourself intimately without outside observation in mind 

Oh just let go already.

Voice of the Nightingale, 1923, Wladyslaw Starewicz

Georgian dancers performing like warriors

Your enemies always get strong on what you left behind.

There’s no rush in becoming the You that can one day offer something great to this world. Give yourself permission to hang out on the tree of life with no agenda. Smile into the sunlight of time. However much time that is… you’ll know. Live simply, quietly, and deliberately for a while. Work in a tea house, a garden nursery, somewhere peaceful. Read 70 or 80 books in a year. Swim. Hike. Learn the names of plants. Learn how to meditate. Make art for arts sake! For no other purpose than to feel creation flowing through you. BE. Just be. There’s no virtue in productivity without soul behind it, without meaning. And it takes time to understand life and its meaning relative to each of us. It takes time to have the experiences that will build character and direct passion. The heights of awareness can only reach in proportion to the depths of experience. In the self lies the real education. In the awakened Self lies the gift we offer the world.

Naohiro Ninomiya

“Hisetu-no-Taki”, 2010

Gelatin Silver Print, Selenium toning

Lori Hersberger