“Loaves and Fishes” by David Whyte

This is not
the age of information.
This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.  –-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A university professor came to see a Zen Master to ask him what Zen was really all about.  He had done a lot of reading, and was now following up to get the real story.

The Zen Master invited the professor to sit down across the table from him and proceeded to serve him tea.  He poured the tea into his guest’s cup, and when the cup was full, he just kept pouring and pouring, and the tea ran out of the cup and over the saucer and all over the table and floor.

The astonished professor yelled, “What are you doing?  Can’t you see the cup is already full?”

“Yes, I see,” said the Zen Master.  “Similarly with your mind.  How can you expect me to put anything in it when it is already so full of ideas and opinions?”

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.