A great value in slowing down....

There is great value in quiet and going within. We often forget the peace that just a few moments of...slowing....down...and....listening...to rain or crackle of a fire or hiss of a warming tea pot can bring. Those moments are precious reminders that we can step off of the treadmill - or hamster wheel - and regain some connection to the vastness of our true self.

"Massed peaks pierce

The cold-colored sky;

A view the

Monastery faces.

Shooting stars pass

Into sparse-branched trees;

The moon travels one way

Clouds the other

Few people come

To this mountaintop

Cranes do not flock

In the tall pines.

One Buddhist monk,

Eighty years old,

Has never heard

Of the world's affairs." -Chia Tao (779-843)

Source: Jia, Dao. When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains: Selected Poems of Chia Tao. Trans. Mike O'Connor. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000. 51. Print.