Balancing past, present and future

[Lately I have been thinking about our connections to the past- its hand in the meaningful shaping of who we are in the world today. That's why this reading hit the intellectual and spiritual hot spots in my brain and collided pleasantly with some of these thoughts.]

Grow Forward

Growth means not only continual change and transformation, but also continuity; and it is this continuity that gives an aim and sense to change and transformation. Continuity cannot be achieved by clinging to the past or what is transitory, but only through the conscious direction of our forward march, in which, out of the organic connection with the past, there grows an understanding of the present and a meaningful shaping of the future.

–Lama Anagarika Govinda, from Buddhist Reflections (Weiser)

Silence and Me: Seeking the Sea

Poem Thirty-One

Silence is the sea, and speech is like the river.
The sea is seeking you: don't seek the river.
Don't turn your head away
from the signs offered by the sea.
Mathnawi IV, 2062-2063

[I have been seeking silence lately because she's a willing partner who leads me through my mind's whirlwind to peace: a welcome relief to sit with her and share burdens only I can shed from my heart. She understands.]

Poem Forty

Don't hide your heart but reveal it,
So that mine might be revealed,
And I might accept what I am capable of.
Mathnawi I, 2682