February 13th, 2015 Aiako Harria yesterday, first time this year; overtaken by the beauty. It is at about this time along the hillsides and in the thickets that the brown of the end of winter starts mixing with the green of the beginning of spring. But an outing like this, though refreshing, can do nothing for the interior state of mind when one is tired and helpless; it only offers a slight reprieve, but we are back again, missing it: the sights, the sounds, the smell of the forest--somehow it only adds to the misfortune. It is difficult to wander along the thin trails because we have built up a reason and an inspiration for our coming; there is a goal, a new plant to find; something to be attained, a new path to take. All the expectation dies with each step, and yet it is still beautiful, still appealing, still the key to some secret meaning we have created for ourselves; and when we stop and look at it all, we realize we are merely the sum of our attainments, the sum that keeps
May 15th, 2014 Hope comes at the end of the day and the whole body is lightened. The day is over and the mind no longer subject to its suffering. Yet body and mind are never so long inconsistent to one another except when the thought believes itself an extension of action. For it is then that the end must come, that we seek with great anticipation the habitual comfort that has been hidden in our liberation from the burdens we are constrained to undertake. Hope comes and with it the insensitive eye that we are one with our nature, but nature does not await the future, it waits upon no ideal moment. The thought and the action are not a part of striving toward our nature, but merely obscure it by searching--for how often have we not found that the dullest and most distressing moments in hindsight become the happy and most eventful memories of our past? Douglas Thornton