Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

~ Live & Learn

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either…

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper…

And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper.

And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is par of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper…This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

—  Thich Nhat Hanh, from “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life”

 

Photo: Anka Zhuravleva with Head in the Clouds

21 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

    1. It reminds of a Mary Oliver Passage:

      Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else? Plant your peas and your corn in the field when the moon is full, or risk failure. This has been understood since planting began. The attention of the seed to the draw of the moon is, I suppose, measurable, like the tilt of the planet. Or, maybe not— maybe you have to add some immeasurable ingredient made of the hour, the singular field, the hand of the sower.

      ~ Mary Oliver, from “Upstream” in Upstream: Selected Essays (Penguin Publishing Group. 2016)

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  3. WOW, after my short break of medias (except newspapers and some YTubes) I went through some little books of mine (I’m still ‘weeding out’ my vast library) ….. and my interest fell on THE BOOK OF MINDFULNESS (collected by Lizzie Cornwall) where my mind got into the words
    WALK AS IF YOU ARE KISSING THE EARTH WITH YOUR FEET. Guess by whom? Yep, Thich Nhat Hanh…. And also this:
    DRINK YOUR TEA SLOWLY AND REVERENTLY, AS IF IT IS THE AXIS ON WHICH THE WORLD EARTH REVOLVES.
    Am I going to part with this my little book (as I did already with hundreds of my beloved ones)? No, non, nein, nah
    Happy mindful Monday!

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  5. Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:

    Everything is because of our perception and their mere existence! Cane we say we are all connected? … “We cannot point out one thing that is not here – time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper … This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, from “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life”

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  6. Everything is connected to everything.

    I have a practice I learned in a course last year where, when in the forest, I stand beside a tree. Breathe deeply of its essence and the air around me and say, out loud, “Here I am.” Sometimes I lean into the tree’s trunk and whisper a prayer of gratitude. “I am you. You are me.”

    Or, as Ubuntu suggests, “I am because you are.”

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  7. Yes, everything is interconnected. Maybe that is why I saw something different in this photo. When I first opened the page, I could only see the top of the photo, from the toes not quite to the knees. Then I scrolled down and smiled. What I thought the photo was going to be about was totally different from the whole picture. From the toes to almost the knees, I saw what I thought was two long-necked birds nuzzling each other’s heads. It looked like two ostriches facing me head on, leaning into each other to whisper sweet nothings into the other one’s ears. So I suppose the girl’s legs and the ostriches’ necks have a connection somewhere, somehow. I know I know, it’s a “stretch” – but even that is a connection. I think I need to go have another cup of coffee now. (Poor girl! Legs like an ostrich’s neck.)

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