वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्

Max, 29, USA, Buddhist ☸️ This is an online journal and pinboard for my winding path through spirituality and religion. Always curious and looking to learn. All are welcome!

[metamorphesque]

— Mary Oliver, "Why I Wake Early"

[philosophybits]

“Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you — this is best.”

— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 4)

[philosophybits]

“Decay, growth, fullness, emptiness, now murky, now bright, the sun shifting, the moon changing phase — day after day these things proceed… Life has its sproutings, death its destination, end and beginning tail one another in unbroken round, and no one has ever heard of their coming to a stop.”

— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 21)

[commonplacebuddhism]

In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practice so that each moment of our lives becomes real life. When we meditate, we sit just for sitting; we don't sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, these twenty minutes should bring us joy and life. If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive anywhere. We have to be alive each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us.

— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Other Shore

[odettecarotte]

[thezenangel]

[commonplacebuddhism]

Therefore, you should entreat trees and rocks to preach the Dharma, and you should ask rice fields and gardens for the truth. Ask pillars for the Dharma, and learn from hedges and walls.

— How to Raise an Ox: Zen practice as taught in Zen master Dogen's Shobogenzo by Francis Dojun Cook

[xartus]

The coolest thing about being an animist is that everyone is

Whoops! All Spirits

And you don't have to follow any super rigid rules other than being respectful and reciprocal fr

The most frustrating thing about being an animist is

Whoops! All Spirits

Because who knows who you're talking to, what names you give them or they give themselves, what category of whoever they might inhabit, and at the end of the day it actually doesn't matter 🥳

Sure you can do things in a Norse or Gaulish or whatever way and maybe there's coherent gods that you can worship there (pantheons are never neat and tidy and barely exist!) and MAYBE you do that enough to get to the god you actually set out to worship but MOST OF THE TIME

you're honoring certain ancestors by doing things a certain way, or a certain culture because you find it interesting and respect it (it's still ancestor veneration babey). My practice comes from weirdo shit I find interesting and want to honor, ancestral things near and far, and things that are comforting to me

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. by Richard Howard, from “The Rock Garden,”

[sailermoon]

always thinking of this poem

[sticksandsharks]

A selection of artwork I made for Carved in Stone, a comprehensive guide to early medieval Pictish society.

You can learn more about this incredible book here!

[wild-flowers-blog1]

Sawtooth Blackberry

[kuttithevangu]

I know a lot about esoterica but one of the things I know about it is that “divine feminine” is just misogyny in a nice dress

[kuttithevangu]

If “feminine” represents the mysterious, the unknown, the unknowable, what does that imply about the knowER, the seeker of knowledge? Who is being positioned here as the agent, and who as the object of study?

[crag-strider]

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

— Kahlil Gibran (via thecalminside)

[furordinaricvs]

Ram shaped gravestones of Tunceli province of Turkey.

Standing tall they feature reliefs of swords, daggers, shields, looms and sun discs.

To whom they belong remains debated, some claim them as Turkish, some as Kurdish and some as Armenian.

[lurelurk]

Dirt is sacred.

There is nothing wrong with leaving offerings on the naked earth.

When we die we are returned to the ground be it whole or as ash.

From the ground comes all our food, be it directly grown or eaten from to what else we eat.

There is nothing wrong with leaving offerings on leaves or stone, plates or trays but...

There is nothing wrong with laying them to the soil either.

The compost pile is as hallowed a hill as any shrine or shelf.

[inatungulates]

Rocky Mountain mule deer Odocoileus hemionus hemionus

Observed by aydenburd, CC BY-NC