From Outside the Box

May Sarton. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing W.W. Norton and Company 

You can't afford self-pity. Too much is at stake. Your whole life maybe. Use your bean start thinking. 

It seems to me I have been doing nothing else!

Going around in circles isn't thinking. You have to try and find some way to get outside it, don't you know? Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing outside you. pg 31-32

Confidence

From "Outrageousness," a talk given in July 1978 to Directors of Shambhala Training. by Chogyam Trungpa.

Confidence brings the natural dignity of gentleness. You can afford to be gentle. You are not pretending to be gentle in order to achieve something by it, but you have a general sense of gentleness, which means you are being kind to yourself. Sometimes when the warrior feels doubtful about himself, he might have a problem being gentle to himself. Gentleness to yourself is necessary for a warrior; otherwise you find yourself puffed up, with no way to expand your vision to a great level at all. At that point, warriorship becomes pure bluff.

The Contemplative

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William h. Shannon, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003

Genuine contemplation involves no tension. There is no reason why it should affect anyone's nerves: on the contrary, it relaxes them. It leaves you rested and refreshed on your whole being. There is no strain in real contemplation, because when the gift is real, you do not depend on it, you are not enslaved by the "need" to experience anything. the contemplative does not seek reassurance in himself, in his virtue, in his state, in his "prayer". His trust is in God, not in himself. The peace and "rest" of contemplation is the fruit of a living faith in the action of divine grace. The contemplative is able to let go of himself and everything else, knowing that everything that matters in his life is in God's hands, and that he does not have to "take thought for the morrow." He fully realizes the meaning of the Gospel message of salvation by the grace of God and not by dependence on human ingenuity. pg. 113

A Buddhist Catholic Blog

This is wonderful resource that I found by typing into Google "thomas merton buddhist photographs". I was trying to find the site in Sir Lanka where he had an epiphany while looking at the giant rock carvings of the Buddha and Ananda. That site by the way is the Gil Vihara at Polonnaruwa.

A Buddhist Catholic Blog

This blog is by Debbie who understands the Catholic Faith very well but is finding a much sought after need for a deeper experience of God and is discovering this through her explorations with Vipassana. As she puts it "The institutional church, and things such as the Vat II docs all point to the exoteric church. I believe that we have lost sight of the esoteric church. As a result, we see so many young people, in search for a God they can experience, turning to eastern experiences and why Eastern Spirituality has become SO appealing to many of the young who are searching for meaning in their live." Read entire post.