YOGA PILATES ROLLER
NO MUD, NO LOTUS “If you look deeply into a flower, you see that a flower is made only of nonflower elements. In that flower there is a cloud. Of course we know a cloud isn’t a flower, but without a cloud, the flower can’t be. If there’s no cloud, there’s no rain, and no flower can grow. You don’t have to be a dreamer to see a cloud floating in a flower. It’s really there. Sunlight is also there. Sunlight isn’t flower, but without sunlight no flower is possible.
If we continue to look deeply into the flower, we see many other things like the earth and the minerals. Without them a flower cannot be. So it’s a fact that flower is made only of nonflower elements.
A flower can’t be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with everything else. You can’t remove the sunlight, the soil, or the the cloud from the flower.”
“What the world needs more than anything is active servants of peace clothed in the armor of perseverance, dedicated to the spreading of wisdom into all reaches of our experience… working to transform their minds and actions and those of others, working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support of the buddhas and enlightened beings, for the preservation of our world, and for a more merciful future. As Teilhard de Chardin said: “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity… we shall harness… the energies of love. Then for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.””
-from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
“Perhaps it is only those who understand just how fragile life is who know how precious it is. Taking life seriously does not mean spending our whole lives meditating as if we were living in the mountains in the Himalayas or in the old days in Tibet. In the modern world, we have to work and earn a living, but we should not get entangled in the nine-to-five existence, where we live without any view of the deeper meaning of life. Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overstretch ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. In Buddhism this is what is really meant by discipline.”
-from ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ by Sogyal Rinpoche
“Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others. That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.”
-from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche