DhammaSeeker.com

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

- T.S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”

The other day, walking to the bus stop in the morning, there was an early-elderly (continental) Indian couple walking on the sidewalk of my subdivision. I could tell the woman was ecstatic about the flowers in the landscaping on the main corner as she put her palms together. But the most striking thing about this couple was their attire. Granted, it was early morning, but it is mid-August, and the temperature could not have been lower than the mid-60s (Fahrenheit), and this lovely couple had on long pants and long sleeves, the man had a scarf wrapped around his neck, and the woman had a winter hat with ear flaps on her head. These poor souls must have been visiting from the scorching plains of India to have felt the need to dress that heavily. And I wondered what it would be like to live in such heat the majority of my life.