MINDFULNESS
Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfect ripe ones bruise at even too heavy a human touch...Every strawberry you have ever eaten - every piece of fruit - has been picked by callused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represents someone's knees, someone's aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat.
- Alison Luterman, quoted on p. 262 in After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path
"Capping Verse"
The mind empty of all activity,
Embraces all that appears,
Like gazing into the jeweled mirror,
Form and reflection see each other.
No coming or going; no arising or vanishing; no abiding.
The ten thousand hands and eyes manifest of themselves,
Each in accord with circumstances -
Yet never forget the way.
- Master Dogen, Shobogenzo
“There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence”. - Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)