“One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.”

— William Steig, from “Amos & Boris”

early morning fog, Magnuson Park, Seattle

“Do we know what it is to learn how to paint? When we are really learning we learn through our lives and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches us; a shadow of a tree, the pink of the nose, a brushstroke by Velazquez, a strong color, even a bad brush. We learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no one artist, no one teacher, life is our teacher and we are in a state of constant learning.”

 – Cesar Santos

Mindful   (by Mary Oliver)

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

“Genuine inspiration is not particularly dramatic. It’s very ordinary. It comes from settling down in your environment and accepting situations as natural. Out of that you begin to realize that you can dance with them. So inspiration comes from acceptance rather than from having a sudden flash of good gimmick coming up in your mind. Natural inspiration has a sense of stableness and solidity. Inspiration has two parts: openness and clear vision, or in Sanskrit, shunyata and prajna. Both are based on the notion of original mind, traditionally known as buddha mind, which is blank, nonterritorial, noncompetitive, and open.”

— Chogyam Trungpa, “True Perception; The Path of Dharma Art”

“There is such a thing as unconditional expression that does not come from self or other. It manifests out of nowhere like mushrooms in a meadow, like hailstones, like thundershowers.”

— Chogyam Trungpa, ‘True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art’