The true nature of mountains is that they are mountains. They practice both stillness holding their place and moving with change. Men and women can be reborn through mountains. Ancestors abide in mountains. And mountains disappear the closer you are to them. As Dogen wrote in the Shobogenzo: ‘They passed aeons living alone in the mountains and forests; only then did they unite with the Way and use mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void.’ Realizing fully the true nature of place is to talk its language and hold its silence…….Joan Halifax
how can it be possible to forget to love? and yet, we miss the beauty within each other, surrounding us in the trees and somewhere deep within……time and philosophy and music all come from never forgetting…..
The rain surrounded the cabin- with a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside. Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, the rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen…..Thomas Merton
Daily prayers are delivered
on the lips of breaking waves,
the whisperings of grasses,
the shimmering of leaves.
….Terry Tempest Williams
