There is nothing further to say on the subject of my work, which I have created myself, and whose face I do not know. It will be there - that's all one can be certain of - it will be there, it will abide and be there, and there's nothing to say. This is darkness and yet this is also light - this is life and work. Don't laugh, this is what it is.

If the ordinary men, the men who work and keep their silence, by which fact they are not ordinary after all - if then, the general run of men, were to write down all their thoughts or a fraction of them, what a universe of literatures we'd have! And I struggle with these pencil-marks and scribblings.

Western wind, when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my Love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

The most effective way to practice is to just practice.

What fates, what forces were guiding the flow of my own journey? It hardly seemed to matter. To enter Ryhope was to enter a confusion at the edge of things, a sensory cacophony of sound and vision - glimpses and echoes that could not be grasped - that was both frightening and seductive. I had experienced these feelings on a previous occasion, and had become determined to fight through the fear, to fight the dizzying defenses of this semi-sentient wildwood, to find that certain moment when a definable and welcome preeace replaced the screams of the anxious intellect and the tricks that the forest was playing. It was a moment when a hand seemed to reach out and soothe everything, from mind to brow. There was a certainty attached to this moment, a feeling that the direction was right, that the events which were being witnessed and the loss of control were all being carefully monitored. I was like a child, secure on the assertion and confidence of a parent, unaware, of course, that the parent was trained to respond to my fears in just this way.

Previously I had turned about when this catharsis had occurred. Now, however, with the rediscovery of Guiwenneth as my goal, I fought against the feeling to return and let events take their course.

I though of Longfellow as I launched the short canoe; I lay back, my pack at my head, my arms over the sides of the simple, smooth-hewn craft; I let the river take me and watched the sky through the over-reaching branches of the trees. I let the motion of hull and water become the movement of time itself, taking me backward, ever backward, into a distance of which I had only dreamed.

This was the edge of the wilderness. It was the true entrance to the past and to the Otherworld and I became afraid to watch it, aware of its beauty and its confusion. To try to see it, to document it, would perhaps have been to find that it ceased to exist; and it would spit me out, hurl me back into the bright air near the cornfield by Oak Lodge, drifting again on a stream in England rather than on a river that flowed into the realm of ghosts.

I thought of Longfellow, and his Hiawatha.

I thought of Arthur on his way to Avalon, stretched out in his brage, three queens tending to his mortal wounds. And I rued the lack of women, black cowled or otherwise. How nice, how pleasant it would have been to have had their strange company on this sluggish journey to the past.

Surviving in a combat environment meant taking as few risks as possible, because the ones you couldn't avoid were plenty bad enough.

As you do the form, the universe is dancing the moment with you.

It is not the act that makes something a meditative practice but the way and the state of mind with which it is executed.

We are afraid to put our whole heart into something because we are afraid of breaking our heart.

Being able to say "I'll try again" is one of the deepest expressions of faith in onself.

Tears sometimes mark the moments of great release and understanding and, ultimately, deep awakening.

Twill give itself to thee with ready will, if fate shall favor thee. If otherwise, no strength nor sharpened steel can sever it...

The way is empty

The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery -
The gateway of the manifold secrets.

They surfeited with honey and began to loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little more than a little is much too much

The hero is the one who comes to know

Wisdom cries out in the streets and no man regards it

...Mine ear is open and my heart prepared: The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold. Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, 'twas my care; and what loss is it to be rid of care? Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we? Greater he shall not be; if he serve God we'll serve Him too and be his fellow so; revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend; they break their faith to God as well as us: Cry woe, destruction, ruin and decay; the worst is Death, and Death will have his day.

Things past redress are now with me past care

...must I not serve a long apprenticehood to foreign passages, and in the end having my freedom, boast of nothing else, but that I was a journeyman to grief?

The way is near, but men seek it afar. It is in easy things, but men seek for it in difficult things.

Insects on a bough
floating downriver
still singing

I shut my eyes in order to see

All the time I pray to Buddha I keep on killing mosquitoes

Not everyone has a destiny

How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the milleniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? How represent on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional form, or in a three-dimensional image a multi-dimensional meaning? How translate into terms of "yes" and "no" revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void?

The hero himself is that which he had come to find.

We no longer desire and fear; we are what was desired and feared.

I ween that I hung on that windy tree
Hung there for nights full nine;
With spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.

I say unto you, Love your enemies. Do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. and as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye Love them which Love you, what thank have ye? For sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? For sinners also do the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the Children of the Highest: For he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: Hatred ceases by Love, this is an old rule.

Oh, Lord of the Universe
I will sing thee a song.
Where canst thou be found?
And where canst thou not be found?
Where I pass - there art thou
Where I remain - there, too, thou art
Thou, thou, and only thou.

With no-mind, blossoms invite the butterfly;
With no-mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes.

I feel myself driven towards and end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become uneccessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me.

Someone at this point discovered eternity

For the One who has become many, remains the One undivided, but each part is all of Christ. I saw him in my house, among all those everyday things he appeared unexpectedly and became unutterably united and merged with me, and leaped over to me without anything in between, as fire to iron, as the light to glass. And he made me like fire and like light. And I became that which I saw before and beheld from afar. I do not know how to relate this miracle to you.

Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.