Tie Your Camel to the Post

"There are those who grasp at philosophies and views and simply wander around the world annoying people."

The Buddha

There's a part of my spiritual maturity that allows me to hold the contradictions of life in my heart.  While I have a long journey to Buddha-hood still ahead of me I find that I can, from time to time, see the paradox in my life and become more comfortable and even appreciative of life's ambiguities, its many levels and layers of confusion and befuddling bafflement.  I can laugh at life's irony and metaphor and embrace the whole amazing mess, beauty and outrageousness both, at the same time, tucked into the chambers of my heart.

"As our spiritual practice matures we learn to allow the opposites of our practice to be part of the dance of our spirit, to hold it all with ease and humor, to be at peace with it all.  When we are just ourselves, without pretense or artifice, we are at rest in the universe.  In this ordinariness there is no higher or lower, nothing, to fix nothing to desire, simply an opening in love and understanding to the joys and suffering of the world."

Jack Kornfield

"Praise Allah, but tie your camel to the post."

Sufi Proverb

"Beware any activity that requires the purchase of new clothes."

Henry David Thoreau