Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail / For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale / And for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail / And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing BOB DYLAN Chimes Of Freedom
Ring them bells St Catherine from the top of the room / Ring them from the fortress for the lilies that bloom / Oh the lines are long and the fighting is strong / And they're breaking down the distance between right and wrong BOB DYLAN Ring Them Bells
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain? BOB DYLAN When You Gonna Wake Up?
The poet John Donne said 'never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' The bell Donne is referring to is the funeral bell, the bell that reminds us of our brief sojourn in this world. But there is another bell, the bell of mindfulness, that tolls in each moment, inviting us to come to our senses, reminding us that we can wake up to our lives, now, while we have them to live. The bell of mindfulness tolls for thee as well. It tolls for all of us. It tolls in celebration of life and what might be possible were we to hear it in its fullness, were we to wake up. JON KABAT-ZINN Coming To Our Senses
1 comment:
For a while in 2001, I sat in meditation with a local group of Buddhists who practice meditation in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. As I heard the bell which opened the meditation, an vivid image came to my mind of Vietnamese monks and nuns, in the midst of the war in Vietnam, in a room like the one were were sitting in. We were all in that vast room, hearing that one bell, a direct experience of oneness.
Thank you for reminding me of that.
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