photo by Caroline Phelan

Do You Not Know That I Need To Touch You

Do you not know that I need to touch you

as I touch a fruit or child?

Knowledge I need of you that comes not with words.

Let me touch your hair, your moving lip,

the bone beneath the gentle skin.

I will not harm you - I do not want your sex.

Trust me to touch you and to leave you whole.

Frances Horovitz (1938-83)

Mark Williams on Mindfulness

Mark Williams on Mindfulness from The School of Life on Vimeo.

"What mindfulness training is partly about is waking up to the actual life that we live. It's not trying to get somewhere based on fear - it's actually a way of discerning what our deepest values are, and living in line with those values."

Or, as Jon Kabat-Zin puts it...

"...start to pay attention to what might be most fundamental in our lives rather than most urgent."

(You can watch him on YouTube here)

http://www.toast.co.uk/

Master the twenty-four hours

"All of us are apprenticed to the same teacher that the religious institutions originally worked with: reality. Reality-insight says...master the twenty-four hours.

Do it well, without self-pity. It is as hard to get the children herded into the car pool and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha-hall on a cold morning. One move is not better than the other, each can be quite boring, and they both have the virtuous quality of repetition.

Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms. Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick - don't let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our "practice" which will put us on a "path" - it is our path."

Gary Snider, The Practice of the Wild, from Jon Kabbat-Zin's book, Wherever You Go, There You Are.