Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

The beauty of the heart is the lasting beauty: its lips give to drink of the water of life. Truly it is the water, that which pours, and the one who drinks. All three become one when your talisman is shattered. That oneness you can't know by reasoning. -Rumi We spent the last week touring round bits of Ireland. On Thursday we set off for the lakeland. Unlike the English version it isn't filled with breathtaking mountains and pools of water in between. No. Ireland's lakes are found in the middle of the country and is mostly flat, apart from the Drumlins - the land sculptured by glacial morraine. Scraped off and flat. In fact a few million years ago it was all lying at the bottom of some ocean, as the limestone karsts testify to. The result is some of the soggiest, wateriest and most undefined land you've ever been in. If you stepped n the wrong place, you'd end up wringing your socks dry. It's the Fens, but inland. Or it's the Fens that rn on for miles and mi...

The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.

All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

After the rain, the empty mountain at dusk is full of autumn air. A bright moon shines between the pines; The clear spring water glides over the rocks. Bamboo leaves rustling — the washer-girls bound home. Water lilies swaying — a fisher-boat goes down. Never mind that spring plants are no longer green. I am here to stay my noble friends!

I said to the wanting-creature inside me: What is this river you want to cross? There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road. Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting? There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it. There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford! And there is no body, and no mind! Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty? In that great absence you will find nothing. Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don't go off somewhere else! Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are.

by Wu Men Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. ------------------ We were in Donegal over the weekend. Driving along the Inishowen 100, I visited some places I hadn’t done in years. The place has changed. Empty holiday homes everywhere after the housing boom so if anyone is looking for a holiday home to break into and squat for the next few months, Inishowen is the place. Every other house was up for sale and the ones which weren’t had been abandoned in the process of building. I exaggerate, but only a tad. The scenery is still stunning, even if it was drizzling all the time. And we discovered Dunree Fort, this amazingly located old fort which has been there since 1611 or so. It was given to the Irish Free State, as the interpretation called it, round about WWII, which surprised me really. Seeing how Wolfe Tone and the Spanish Armada were ...

A grey drizzly day blankets us. Not the best day for going to Donegal, but we go there because we don't really have a choice. Perhaps it will be a bit brighter up North. Perhaps we will be able to take little detours along the way to make the journey as much the point as the destination. It is good to be the age i am - 38 going on 39. I feel, despite - or perhaps because of - everything i'm going through, like a rider that now understands the horse. Life is the steeplechase we run and i am the horse. I am also the rider. A fence is coming up - we will jump it. A water trap looms, we will get across. Come now, i urge myself. Around me my parents and family look on, they encourage and urge me. All their love and teaching comes back to me. Each moment we live is a moment we have lived. I recall all of lives lessons - their proximity and warmth allow me to. Be more forgiving. Allow memory in. There is room for mistakes and the lessons we learn from our mistakes. There is no need to...

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter: The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. - William Morris Ghin is drawing beside me. Invariably it tends to be a circle, train or flower. He breathes on the paper and scribbles - round within round. They are all alike, interchangeable and legible to him. He rolls the sheet up into a white paper tube. I'm making a plane. The plane will not fly, but he does it nonetheless. That he believes he will be able to, that he is doing is, that is the point. That is important to him. And so it is important to me. My mom folds the clothes. I have not ...

The classic Chinese poet...Li Po... Gold vessels of fine wines, thousands a gallon, Jade dishes of rare meats, costing more thousands, I lay my chopsticks down, no more can banquet, I draw my sword and stare wildly about me: Ice bars my way to cross the Yellow River, Snows from dark skies to climb the T'ai-hang mountains! At peace I drop a hook into a brooklet, At once I'm in a boat but sailing sunward... (Hard is the journey, Hard is the journey, So many turnings, And now where am I?) So when a breeze breaks waves, bringing fair weather, I set a cloud for sails, cross the blue oceans!

I met up with an old friend yesterday. He had just published a book and was looking well. As well as could be expected given his circumstances. We met at Esporta, this fitness chain on the edge of Belfast, and just chatted. Catching up. It wasn't the most atmospheric of places, but it was a good place to share a pot of tea and a bun. Our lives are amazing. In this little corner of the globe someone is bringing up a family and someone else is going to be on a boat for two weeks doing a marine survey. Back home my mother is sewing a bag from the remanants of a curtain and my dad is doing sudoku online. Oisin is watching the Simpsons and Ghin is preparing for bed. My sister is about to wake up on the other side of the world, to get ready for work. She will teach classroomfulls of boys. Are our lives not amazing? And it is this quality, of how it is all tinged with magic, the edges of the pages, how in everything, when we stop to truly look at it is fringed with wonder. It is this that...

Heaven's Himalayan encouragement And earth's Atlantic encouragement Simultaneously echo and re-echo In his soft, tender and flower-like heart. - Sri Chinmoy

You put one foot in front of the other and use poetry to remind you of the beautiful things you must do in your life. Last night, as I sat at the dining table with the warmth of family around me, I recalled these three poems, three small things, like fragments of shells which I had forgotten, discarded somewhere, along a beach I had gleaned them, collected them and on that day in a summer long past, when I was young and everything was possible, I put them in my pocket. Then I forgot about them. Along the years I had left them in the back of a drawer. To be pushed behind the children’s socks, the piles of washing, the unmet needs, the mounds of used tissues, the dry crumbs that came off tables where I waited and waited. And then, yesterday, these three poems, which I had never seen before unearthed themselves before me and in the knocking of the bones against mine, something was awoken. Memory began with a soft sweet call and then it became louder and louder – like the empress listening...

By Anna Akhmatova.... Here is my gift... Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone. Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

The night is black and the forest has no end; a million people thread it in a million ways. We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where or with whom - of that we are unaware. But we have this faith - that a lifetime's bliss will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips. - Tagore

Finally arriving well worn and travel weary at Dublin Connelly. The roar of the engine was DEAFENING!!! Thomas hitches a ride on the 186 - it's a 1876 engine which got many waves and gasps of excitement as we chugged along the countryside. Ghin is 'writing', if you're wondering what he's up to. Here he is showing his vampire teeth - which is meant to be really really scary. Another photo of Mama and Ghin... Mama and her number one grandson. Do you like my lack of teeth...? Number 186 and Oisin - we've decided to call the engine Oisin. The one we came back in, No 4 is called Ghin... :-) The train arrives in Central Station... The photos are in reverse, if you haven't noticed....of course you have. We had an amazing time steaming through the countryside...it was certainly an event you'd remember for the rest of your life. Especially the people on it. Revellers, bon homies, railway enthusiasts - all mostly drunk by the time we returned thanks to the quantit...

I thought that i'd include something by a mystic everyday...this is by Kalidasa... Look to this day: For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course Lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The bliss of growth, The glory of action, The splendour of achievement Are but experiences of time. For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision; And today well-lived, makes Yesterday a dream of happiness And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day; Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!

We went for a Leonard Cohen concert. It was excellent. Pa and Ghin enjoying the view in Donegal. When Pa lifted him up to see it, he went, it's beautiful! Oisin recovers after being rescued from the Bann. Peter and Oisin - about half an hour before they have to be towed in. On the pirate ship! Feeding ducks and swans Found the camera and have downloaded the few photos i had taken. It's been a busy ol time, but things are moving along, finally. Ma and Pa have been strong and encouraging, as they have always been - and i hope that i can be too one day, for my boys if they ever needed me to be. I can only admire their clarity and determination. We'll be going on a steamtrain today - a trip to Dublin, no less! More photos then.