from ‘The World We Have’, by Thich Nhat Hanh

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“If we don’t know how to stop our over-consumption, then the death of our civilization will surely come more quickly. We can slow this process by stopping and being mindful, but the only way to do this is to accept the eventual death of this civilization, just as we accept the death of our own physical form. Acceptance is made possible when we know that deep down our true nature is the nature of no-birth and no-death”

from ‘The World We Have’, by Thich Nhat Hanh

from ‘Free Play’, by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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“Our body-mind is a highly organized and structured affair, interconnected as only a natural organism can be that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years. An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution; all that we were is encoded somewhere in us. Beyond the vast history we have even more to draw upon: the dialogue with the Self — a dialogue not only with the past but with the future, the environment […] This rich, deep patterning is the original nature that impresses itself like a seal upon everything we do or are”

from ‘Free Play’, by Stephen Nachmanovitch

from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ (with special reference to Julian of Norwich)

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“Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us – a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.”

from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ (with special reference to Julian of Norwich)