Truth...(quoted from Ajahn Brahm's How To Stop)

Its the freedom that comes, from knowing your own truth rather than always expecting other people's truth to control you. When you look upon that, it's an expression, of letting go, contendment, loving kindness, compassion, you are being compassionate to yourself, allowing yourself to be, saying to yourself, "with all of my faults, the door of my hearts open to me, despite my silly jokes, despite my failures and successes, despite who i am, I am ok". Its being at peace with oneself. What is it actually being? Its actually being true to yourself. Do you understand how letting be, contendment, compassion and truth all becomes the same word? You are being true to how you feel, you are being truth to who you are in this moment, rather than other peoples idea and expectation. Too often we take our ques from other. I always encourage people to be rebellious, i dont mean against society but being rebellious in order to find out truth.

Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh

I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us. The first is a twelve-year-old girl, one of the boat people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a sea pirate, and after that she threw herself into the sea. The second person is the sea pirate, who was born in a remote village in Thailand. And the third person is me. I was very angry, of course. But I could not take sides against the sea pirate. If I could have, it would hve been easier, but I couldn't. I realized that if I had been born in his village and had lived a similar life - economic, educational, and so on - it is likely that I would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to take sides.

Out of suffering, I wrote this poem. It is called "Please Call Me by My True Names," because I have many names, and when you call me by any of them, I have to say, "Yes."
Don't say that I will depart tomorrow -- even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

True and False Mind

It is the mind

that is the mindconfusing the mind

Do not leave the mind

O mind

to the mind.

Quoted from The Book of Family Traditions On the Art of War. Yagyu Munenori

The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done,

we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change.

So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger,

but in wisdom, understanding and love.

by Jennifer Edwards