belief
in being
understood

And so forth

objects are
compensatory
substitutes

Just relax.

If there is a secret to Tai Chi and to life then this is it. A relaxed state is one unconstrained by the strictures of habit.

take care

practice
looking
deeply

Photo: Hettie Moore

create silence

no
matter
what

human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love

Plato

As I learn to relax, the fundamental fact of my being is no longer identity (objectness) but energy; and not just the energy that gathers and flows through me but the energy all around that influences me. Gradually I become a servant to energy by falling in love with the principles of energy – the first and foremost being Central Equilibrium: for energy to move I remain still.

on a path
to something
painful

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

rock bottom

outside
impinging
inside

I think that the artists of the twentieth century who resist our understanding are the ones to whom we shall continue to be grateful.

John Cage

Tension is defensive – aggressively so.

ocean
mast
attention

If we don't know how to preserve our freshness, then we suffer

Thich Nhat Hanh

pure & simple

touching
magical
beauty

Separateness, then, is the fall – the fall into division, the original lie.

Norman O Brown

The courage to be happy

The wrong sort of strength is a bigger problem than weakness. Correct strength is intrinsic – supports energy. Incorrect strength is extrinsic – supports the illusory – edifices built on fear.

there is
always
the risk

When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. My life is a movement between these two.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

utter simplicity

Spirit whips up an extending spine and flares in the eyes.

tangible
feeling
a garden

freshness of feeling

Spirit activates and animates. Without it things are at best correct but never alive.

inroads of the irrational

hands
reflect 
the flower

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Barnett Newman

properly staffed & equipped

always with awareness

experiment
and make 
mistakes

With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep.

Shelley

Thinking plugs the extending spine – both ends.

Sangha : side by side

two
gather
together

Patience waits, perseverance continues.

Patience: the calm abiding of the issue of time
Persevere: to continue staunch or constant   OED

My desire was not to "compose," but to project sounds into time, free from a compositional rhetoric that had no place here.

Morton Feldman

Mind is pure expansive extension which I shape not with thinking but with body. My bodily presence is a positive interference in the field – a meaning. And its movements, when internally still, dance with spirit and flow endlessly. No beginning and no end, just a soul becoming free as it sheds all ballast – external and internal.

mountains
or forest
stable heart

Become the process

We go now to the once-called primitive – to the bush man, the child, or the ape – not to read what we were but what we are.

Robert Duncan

Face up to it

reasons
need
mothering

Growth is the security of organic life. The security of the imagination lies in calling, all our lives, for more liberty, more rebellion, more belief.

Muriel Rukeyser

Health & equanimity

The thinking mind muddies the waters : the non-thinking mind clears the way.

recover
the lost
memory

Man distinguished himself as a thinking being and removed himself from the perfection of God's creation. Having left the non-thinking state, he strives by means of his perfected objects, to be again embodied in the perfection of absolute, non-thinking life.

Kazimir Malevich

Little by little erode the stubborn stone in the heart.

no reasons
no
hitches

Suffering is not being able, for whatever reason, to fight.

But, on the whole, I think pupils prefer to feel that teachers do not have this urgent need to teach . . . to keep at arm's length their own personal difficulties.

DW Winnicott

a gradual return

simple acts
taken for 
granted

between the extremes

a strong sense of swing and a penchant for the snare

a chance
to practice
together

what looks like a mirror is meant in fact to be passed through: transparency marks a divide

Peter Cole

transition
moments
sembling

to have or to be

Flow like a flower : flourish like flowers.

make a vow
before turning 
the mind

Let go and sing, and the walls will crumble.

Dismantle the mental

sooner 
or later 
the zest

earth of mind
sun the essence
sky and duty
strength is knowledge
Heaven people
awareness in practice

each person
in touch
that's enough