FAVORITE QUOTES AND POEMS

• “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly.
  ~Marcus Aurelius

• “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.”
  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

• Barn’s burned down; now I can see the moon.
  ~Mizuta Masahide

• “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostilities.”
  ~Longfellow

• “Whatever else you do today, find somebody to be nice to.”
  ~Ludlow Porch

• “Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are.”
  ~Nkosi Johnson

• “All thoughts vanish into emptiness, like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”
  ~Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

• “I’m a very old man.  I had lots of problems.  Most of them never happened.”
  ~Mark Twain

• Always try to stop talking before people stop listening. ~Abraham Lincoln

• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
  ~Abraham Lincoln

• Do not seek to walk in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
  ~Matsuo Basho

• It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, and an even bigger one to keep his mouth shut when he’s right.
  ~Jim Fiebig

• Zen pretty much comes down to three things: everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
  ~Jane Hirshfield

• The infinite is not merely a lot more of the finite.
  ~Alan Lightman

• Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
  ~Rumi

• Grant me the serenity to accept the ones I cannot change,
  The courage to change the one I can,
  And the wisdom to know it’s me.
  ~Variation on the Serenity Prayer

• Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of the Tao,
  Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe
  For this would only cause resistance.
  Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
  Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
  Just do what needs to be done.
  Never take advantage of power.
  ~Lao Tsu
  
  

FAVORITE POEMS

ALTHOUGH THE WIND

~Izumi Shikibu translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani
Printed with permission

TREE

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books –
already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

~Jane Hirshfield
Printed with permission

THE GUEST HOUSE

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.
He 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

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness
I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
In which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

~Mary Oliver

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maise and chicken
will stare out of the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravite of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
you must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow
you must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

~Naomi Shihab Nye
Printed with permission.
From Words Under the Words (1995, Far Corner Books) and Everything Comes Next (2020 Greenwillow)

THE PROMISE

Stay, I said to the cut flowers.
They bowed their heads lower.
Stay, I said to the spider, who fled.
Stay, leaf.
It reddened, embarrassed for me and itself.
Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does, obedient for a moment, soon starting to tremble.
Stay, to the earth of riverine valley meadows, of fossilized escarpments of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back with a changing expression, in silence.
Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answered, Always.

~Jane Hirshfield