Yolo Ono

The radiance of the good makes beauty real. But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: cutting away here, smoothing there, making this line lighter until a lovely face has grown upon the work. So do you also, cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, and labor to make the glow of beauty shine and never cease chiseling your statue. - Plotinus I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set it free. - Michelangelo

NOW SELLING: Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of @badgalyipyip starting at $236.4 million TFW u masterpiece 🖥️: @amallonee @sothebys

Se non che la mia mente fu percossa da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa: Ma già volgeva il mio disio e ‘l velle si come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. “Yet, as I wished, the truth I wished for came cleaving my mind in a great flash of light. Here my powers rest from their high fantasy, but already I could feel my being turned - instinct and intellect balanced equally as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars - by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.” - Dante Paradiso Canto XXXIII

“Physicists are made out of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.” - Carl Sagan “It’s possible that 🌎 is the only place where complex biology has emerged in the universe. If that’s true, this is the only island of meaning in a universe with 200 billion trillion suns. If we destroy ourselves, through deliberate action or inaction, then we will be responsible for destroying meaning in the universe potentially forever.” Brian Cox 📸 Vera C. Rubin Observatory

SUMMER READING 2025 “In some native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’ Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, gives us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” Robin Wall Kimmerer Ayni 💚 Light + Carbon + Water = ?

Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind: our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape. In the process of discovering bodhichitta, the journey goes down, not up. It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. @anipemachodron Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring by Ma Yuan

Come back, come back, whoever you are Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, it doesn’t matter Ours is not a caravan of despair Come back, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times Come back, and yet again, come back - Rumi 🎨 A Winter Sky by George Inness

Motto for 2025: NAKE NULA WAUN Lakota for: l AM READY FOR WHATEVER COMES NEXT “Bring It” by @montileauxart “Crazy Horse” by @greg_overton_fine_art

NEVER take health advice from someone who isn’t in the best shape of their life. Thanks @tombrady and @foundmyfitness

We are living in a renaissance, an evolutionary inflection point. Our institutions/containers need to be redesigned, re-imagined and remade. So much of what is before us: (economic, ecological, inequality) challenges, crises demand moral imagination. This is a growth edge. The American soul is in distress, which is bringing us back to name something we haven’t been able to name. Spirituality is our interior life. Spiritual life does not go away in the absence of a belief in God. Our mortality and frailty opens us towards our need for each other 🤍 “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life - no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground - my head bathed in the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent 👁️; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. I am the lover of unconfined and immortal beauty.” - R.W. Emerson (Nature 1836)

TOTALITY How could it be? asked the ancients that the earth, moon, sun and stars are exactly where they are? How could it all be so vast? How could it be? asked the atheist that the sun is exactly 400x bigger than the moon and at the same time 400x farther away? How could it all be an accident? How could it be? asked the artist that no matter where you are, you are exactly in the right place to experience the bliss of sheer being? Enlightenment is already exactly where you are. How could it all be so beautiful?

There is not a hairsbreadth of difference between oneself and others in the limitless universe; heaven, earth and I are of the same root. Spring Rain by Hasui Kawase 川瀬巴水