from the weeks of 8, 15, 22 & 29 December 2025
For the air, the tree, and the forest, form and narrative emerge from relationship. Selves are ephemeral aggregations, made of the enduring substances of life—connections and conversations.
—David George Haskell, from The Songs of Trees
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As an amateur chef, one must trust their innate culinary sensibility.
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Let go of what you think 2026 should be… and open yourself to what 2026 will be…
It’s alright to have hopes and dreams for the year ahead, but we’ve also got to have a great openness and equanimity for all that time may hold… for whatever it is that we may long for, time longs to give us much, much more.
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2026 will be what 2026 will be. Let it be.
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The whole of Nature is erotic: every leaf, branch and stem is positively dripping with the desire to erupt into passion.
The question is not “What is erotic in the natural world?” but “What in the natural world is not erotic?”
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These 3 things matter: Love, truth & joy.
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以柔制刚 (yǐ róu zhì gāng): (the art of) controlling brute force with gentle fluidity
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In matters of sex, passion & love, follow your joy.
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3 Zen Kōans
How many steps do you have to take away from a church before you leave it?
How many steps do you have to take towards a church before you reach it?
If you never moved beyond where you lived, could you still go to church?
(More about kōans here (Wikipedia))
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The way to your Beloved
lies in your heart. Follow your
heart.
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Don’t look for love. Be love. You are love.
What organ within you is the organ of love?
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Phuket was previously known as Thalang, also Salang and Jungceylon. Phuket is a word derived from the Malay word “Bukit” meaning Hill, as Phuket does indeed have many hills.
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Love is always loving you.
—Tara Brach, from Trusting the Gold
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Less work — More Abundance
—Source Unknown
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How much someone means to us is reflected more truly in how much we are willing to suffer for them instead of how much joy they bring us.
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We live in an overstimulated, crowded present. So as a practitioner of meditation, the challenge is to retrain ourselves to really allow slow-motion reality to soak into our consciousness.
In the present moment, there’s a multidimensionality we often neglect: there’s touch, taste, scent, and embodied awareness.
As a meditator our task is to become fascinated with what the present moment feels like.
—Sister True Dedication, from Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
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It wasn’t that I would fail on audition, I couldn’t get on a list!
If you start blaming other people, then you give away all your power. You have to always be the one that has the power. You always have to feel, I have to get better. It lies here with me.
So I had to I tell myself that I wasn’t there because I wasn’t good enough and when I was good enough, it would change.
—Sally Field
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Thich Nhat Hanh on how the energy of mindfulness is the energy of a picnic:
A picnic can happen right now, in this very moment. We are sitting here, are we there to do something? No, there we have nothing to do. We just enjoy our sitting, with no worries. Because sitting is a pleasure… Sitting and listening to someone to speaking is a pleasure.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
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十年树木，百年树人.
It takes 10 years to grow a tree, but a 100 years to fully develop a person.
Ground-Up Initiative is just one place to shape the next generation’s character. It’s unique as a soil bed because of the community, the 5Gs (Green, Grounded, Giving, Grateful, Gracious) and the surrounding nature. But it’s possible there are better soil beds out there that can serve the next generation. And other soil beds might promote the 5G values without calling it 5G.
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Be as soft as silk and as strong as the truth.
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If it feels like you’re overspending, you are probably overspending.
Julian JP Lee 
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