Image / Jeroen van Valkenburg


We cannot know if it is gold

Until we see it through the fire.

- Zen saying


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

A full text version of this speech can be found here.

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

"When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust, respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature. You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself and for the other person."

- Thich Nhat Hanh, from How to Love


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/

Photo Credit: Joseph Belanger


Simply by thinking I stood among the clouds. They sur-
rounded and passed me, being and becoming. Blood
released into clear water. Breath into cold air. Formless-
ness entering form, forced into form. Breathing felt huge
then smaller than a cell. And I thought,"Don't the clouds
themselves feel ambivalent between heaven and earth,
hardly more substantial than their shadows? They come
into being as randomly as we do. And they disintegrate.
They go. What is the lifespan of a cloud? We want to float
among them, loving the colossal, shot through with
crooked pins of fire, towering side by side.

How did I get up there? I was thinking about changing
my life and wanted to talk to a cloud, since clouds are
always changing. And the clouds said, "How long has it
been since you felt completely happy? Because you are
always dissatisfied, always disappointed - it has been a
long time. Talk to us. We are admired and disparaged.
We are less than everything you compare us to except
nothingness. We are not nothing. Talk to us. Our silence,
like the new shapes we are forever assuming, will be sym-
pathetic. In the clouds, you will understand yearning as
you never have and come back to earth changed, who
knows how?"

- Mark Jarman, from "In the Clouds"


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
http://www.danawyss.com/