“Watchfulness is the path of immortality; unwatchfulness is the path of death. Those who are watchful never die; those who are unwatchful are already as dead.
The monk who has the joy of watchfulness and looks with fear on thoughtlessness, he goes on his path like a fire, burning all obstacles both great and small.”
— The Dhammapada, 2: 21, 31
“I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to. I have an interior I never knew of. Everything passes into it now. I don’t know what happens there.
Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes I am beginning. It’s going badly. But I intend to make the most of my time. ”
— Ranier Marie Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurdis Brigge
“Who doesn’t love roses, and who doesn’t love the lilies of the black ponds
floating like flocks of tiny swans, and of course, the flaming trumpet vine
where the hummingbird comes like a small green angel, to soak his dark tongue in happiness -
and who doesn’t want to live with the brisk motor of his heart singing
like a Schubert and his eyes working and working like those days of rapture, by Van Gogh in Arles?
Look! for most of the world is waiting or remembering - most of the world is time
when we’re not here, not born yet, or died - a slow fire under the earth with all our dumb wild blind cousins who also can’t even remember anymore their own happiness -
Look! and then we will be like the pale cool stones, that last almost forever.”
— Mary Oliver, "Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine”