Category: On

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

Alice Walker, Living by the Word

A text by Pema Chödron

“So hard to find such ease and wealth
Whereby to render meaningful this human birth!
If now I fail to turn it to my profit,
How could such a chance be mine again?

–Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, 1.4

    From the Buddhist point of view, human birth is very precious. Shantideva assumes that we understand this preciousness, with its relative ease and wealth. He urges us to contemplate our good situation and not to miss this chance to do something meaningful with our lives.
    This life is, however, a brief and fading window of opportunity. None of us knows what will happen next. As I’ve grown older with my sangha brothers and sisters, I’ve seen many friends die or experience dramatic changes in their health or mental stability. Right now, even though our lives may seem far from perfect, we have excellent circumstances. We have intelligence, the availability of teachers and teachings, and at least some inclination to study and meditate. But some of us will die before the year is up; and in the next five years, some of us will be too ill or in too much pain to concentrate on a Buddhist text, let alone live by it.
    Moreover, many of us will become more distracted by worldly pursuits-for two, ten twenty years or the rest of our lives-and no longer have the leisure to free ourselves from the rigidity of self absorption.
    In the future, outer circumstances such as ware or violence might become so pervasive that we won’t have time for honest self-reflection. This could easily happen. Or, we might fall into the trap of too much comfort. When life feels so pleasurable, so luxurious and cozy, there is not enough pain to turn us away from worldly seductions. Lulled into complacency, we become indifferent to the suffering of our fellow beings.
    The Buddha assures us that our human birth is ideal, with just the right balance of pleasure and pain. The point is not to squander this good fortune.

Pema Chödron, Becoming Bodhisatvas: A Guidebook of compassionate Action

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

Aldous Huxley from The rest is silence

“I’ve long been obsessed with the hidden power of song. I’m not talking about how music entertains us, or even its higher artistic potentialities, but something bigger and grander. I look to music as a change agent in human life, even as a transformative force in human history.

It perhaps sounds simplistic, but this is the most important core value in my life’s work, the central tenet underpinning in my vocation. Song is a source of enchantment and a catalyst for change. Any philosophy of music—or even a journalistic approach to the subject—that doesn’t respect this remarkable capacity misses much of the point of human music-making.”

Ted Gioia, from The Man Who Put Out Fires with Music

“Songs are the possessions most likely to survive long journeys, remaining the property of the newcomer even when everything else has been taken away.”

Ted Gioia, Music: A subversive history

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off you like falling leaves.” – John Muir, The Mountains of California