Blum

"Don't worry about what you ought to do or what other people will think.  You cannot predict the eventual outcome of your choice.  All you can do is listen to that little voice deep inside you that knows what you want to do."

Tennyson

"Again at Christmas did we weave 

         The holly round the Christmas hearth; 

         The silent snow possess'd the earth, 

And calmly fell our Christmas-eve: 

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost, 

         No wing of wind the region swept, 

         But over all things brooding slept 

The quiet sense of something lost. "

Alan Watts

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."

Tao

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”

you'll be a Woman, my daughter!

"If you can keep your head when all about you  
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;  
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;  
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,  
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"
~Rudyard Kipling~

Maya Angelou

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self.”

St John

"I was sad one day and went for a walk;

I sat in a field.

A rabbit noticed my condition and came near.

It often does not take more than that to help at times --

to just be close to creatures who

are so full of knowing,

so full of love

that they don't --

chat,

they just gaze with

their marvelous understanding.

Celtic Prayer

"Bless Thou to be mine eye.
May mine eye bless all it sees;
I will bless my neighbor,
May my neighbor bless me."

Naomi Long Madgett

"I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.
Such watchful nurturing may do it harm.
Let the soil rest from so much digging
And wait until it's dry before you water it.
The leaf's inclined to find its own direction;
Give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.

Much growth is stunted by too much prodding.
Too eager tenderness.
The things we love we have to learn to leave alone."

25th Verse

"There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene.  Empty.

Solitary.  Unchanging.

Infinite.  Eternally Present.

It is the Mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,

I call it the Tao.

I call it great.

Great is boundless;

boundless is eternally flowing;

ever flowing, it is constantly returning.

Therefore, the Way is great,

heaven is great,

earth is great,

people are great.

Thus, to know humanity,

understand earth.

To know earth,

understand heaven.

To know heaven,

understand the Way.

To know the Way,

understand the great within yourself."

t.s. eliot

"Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are..."

Dag Hammarskjold

"The light died in the low clouds.  Falling snow drank in the dusk.  Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace.  When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that I exist."

Romain Rolland

"Be reverent before the dawning day.  Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years.  Think of today."

Anne Wilson Schaef

"How wonderful that we not only have the opportunity to live our lives, we have the opportunity to accept them! We have spent so much time and energy foolishly fighting things that we cannot change and butting our heads up against steel-reinforced brick walls that we have not stopped to ask ourselves... Is this the hill I want to die on?"

Lao Tzu

"How can a man's life keep its course

If he will not let it flow?

Those who flow as life flows know

They need no other force:

They feel no wear, they feel no tear,

They need no mending, no repair."

richard bolles

"Use this opportunity.  Make this not only a hunt for a job, but a hunt for a life.  A deeper life, a victorious life, a life you're prouder of.  The world currently is filled with workers whose weeklong cry is, 'When is the weekend going to be here?' And, then, 'Thank God it's Friday!'  Their work puts bread on the table but... they are bored out of their minds.  They've never taken the time to think out what they uniquely can do, and what they uniquely have to offer the world.  The world doesn't need any more bored workers.  Dream a little.  Dream a lot.  One of the saddest pieces of advice in the world is, 'Oh come now -- be realistic.'  The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were 'realistic.'  They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and then gave them horses to ride."

Dalai Lama

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

Edna St Vincent Millay

"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another... it's the same damn thing over and over again."

Victor Hugo

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  God is awake."

DeGeneres

"Really, when I look back on it, I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean, it was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is ... to be true to yourself. Ultimately, that’s what’s gotten me to this place. I don’t live in fear. I’m free. I have no secrets and I know I’ll always be OK, because no matter what, I know who I am."

Self- Reliance

“I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing. "
~Emerson~

Again...

~Tolstoy~

"I often lie awake at night from happiness, and all the time I think of our future life together. I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate."

Be Yourself

Always Emerson...

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

Newell

“The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.”

Strayed

"It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”

st. augustine

"you pray to what you love; for true, whole prayer is nothing but love!"

ram dass

"Did you ever have a bad day?  Everything seems to go wrong and you are completely lost in anger, frustration, and self-pity.  It gets worse and worse, until the final moment when, say, you have just missed the last bus.  There is some critical point where it gets so bad the absurdity of it all overwhelms you and you can do nothing but laugh.  At that moment you up level your predicament, you see the cosmic joke in your own suffering."

Gandhi

"My commitment is to truth as I see it each day, not to consistency."

John Tarrant

"Meditation is just showing up for what we have, and there is joy in that.  It's different from the kind of happiness that comes from getting what you wanted.  It's a joy that doesn't have a good reason.  It's a joy that allows you to be sad or upset, because you're alive in the midst of it."

Karmapa

aloud...

"all is calm.  how can we describe the indescribable?  can we say like this, like that?  things are or are not.  there is an unreality, an emptiness, a supernatural power of everything that is, like the sky that covers all.  past, present, future, are the same, beyond thought.  how can we explain?  is or is not?  not like this nor like anything else.  away even from transcendency.  emptiness and the cosmic nature are not different.  beyond all signs whatsoever.  beyond communications.  different.  nameless.  sudden like lightening.  with a meaning beyond thought.  therefore there is no meaning.  now it's all finished.  words are liars."

Frank O'Connor

"All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose.  It means we had something worth grieving for.  The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not even knowing what grief is."

Thoreau

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails... If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains.  If the bell rings, why should we run?...  I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born."

Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves."

Fasting 2

“Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”  ~Hermann Hesse~

“Fasting, when combined with a properly selected diet, is the nearest approach to a ‘cure-all’ that is possible to conceive– profoundly simple and simply profound!” ~John Tilden~

"The light of the world will illuminate within you when you fast and purify yourself." ~Gandhi~

Fasting 1

"A little starvation, can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors." ~Mark Twain~

"Fasting is the first principle of medicine; fast and see the strength of the spirit reveal itself." ~Rumi~

"Fasting is a natural method of healing. When animals or savages are sick, they fast." ~Yogananda~

"The best of all medicines is resting and fasting." ~Benjamin Franklin~

Leonardo da Vinci

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

Joshua Loth Liebman

"We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow healing process of time.  We should discipline ourselves to recognize that there are many steps to be taken along the highway leading from sorrow to renewed serenity... We should anticipate these states in our emotional convalescence: unbearable pain, poignant grief, empty days, resistance to consolation, disinterestedness in life, gradually give way... to the new weaving of a pattern of action and the acceptance of the irresistible challenge of life."

M.A. Kelley

"Watch your way then, as a cautious traveller; and don't be gazing at that mountain or river in the distance, and saying, "How shall I ever get over them?" but keep to the present little inch that is before you, and accomplish that in the little moment that belongs to it.  The mountain and the river can only be passed in the same way; and, when you come to them, you will come to the light and the strength that belong to them."

Twelve

"We learned that there were pangs too sharp, griefs too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register.  When emotion reached this pitch the mind choked; and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more." ~T.E. Lawrence~

"give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er wrought heart and bids it break" ~Shakes~

"Remember - What do you remember? Do you remember too much? Or not enough? Remember. What don't you want to remember? What is is like to remember?" ~Shakes~

Rilke

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Yoga

"As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self.  We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, our time management.  This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a "should."  We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care."

~Stephen Cope~

Rumi

"This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival.  A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor... Welcome and entertain them all.  Treat each guest honorably.  The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.  Be grateful for whoever comes, each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Pema Chödrön

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

Anthony de Mello

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”

John O'Donohue

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”

Navajo Prayer

"Happily may I walk.

May it be beautiful before me.

May it be beautiful behind me.

May it be beautiful below me.

May it be beautiful above me.

May it be beautiful all around me.

In beauty it is finished."

May Sarton

"She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome."

Emily Dickinson

"Hope, is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul...
And sings the tune without words
And never stops... At all"

plato

"one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

sing

~Lennon~ "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people, Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people, Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will be as one...

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people, Sharing all the world...

~Osbourne~ "Gazing through the window at the world outside, Wondering will mother earth survive, Hoping that mankind will stop abusing her sometime...

After all there's only just the two of us, And here we are still fighting for our lives, Watching all of history repeat itself, Time after time...

I'm just a dreamer, I dream my life away, I'm just a dreamer, Who dreams of better days...

I watch the sun go down like everyone of us, I'm hoping that the dawn will bring a sign, A better place for those Who will come after us, This time...

Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ, It doesn't really matter much to me, Without each others help there ain't no hope for us, I'm living in a dream of fantasy...

If only we could all just find serenity, It would be nice if we could live as one, When will all this anger, hate and bigotry, Be gone?"

22 October 1982

~ed abbey~
     "Once again we citizens of America confront the farce of another make believe election.  Tweedledum, tweedledee and tweedledoo - the bad, the worse, the ridiculous.  Once again we are supposed to try to figure out which is the lesser evil.  In truth there is no choice, all of the major candidates are financed by corporate money, all of them support and promote the industrial expansion and commercial greed which is gradually destroying this country. Politics has become a game for millionaires or the cronies of millionaires; no wonder that our quisling officials work for the interest of the rich and powerful.  As Will Rogers once said, 'We have the best politicians that money can buy.'
     To vote in such a rigged scheme amounts to tacit consent.  If it were not for the presence on the ballot of some propositions deserving our support (placed there by the citizens, of course, not by our cowardly politicians), one would be tempted to ignore the whole sick comedy.  But there is one more rule worth considering:  when in doubt, when there is little choice, always vote against the incumbent.  Keep the rascals rotating.  The one thing worse than a hack politician is a hack politician entrenched in power.  Power corrupts, and the longer in power, the more corrupt they become."

Gandhi

"True morality, consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the righteous path for ourselves and following it fearlessly."

einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

ed abbey

"There is no land more kind than home.  Where you have found your happiness!"

ed abbey

"I've imagined that maybe at the moment of death, the mind experiences the glory of eternity in that very instant.  In that flash between life and death.  And then everything shuts off but doesn't know that it shuts off because the last conscious perception was the realization of eternity.  Then the body decays and its elements meld with other forms of matter."

beloved

tiny feet

wandering in

sand

the salt

of your smell

engulfing

my senses

unconditionally

unconditional love

figure eights

running through

my mind

in times
past
my tears
comforted by
your tiny kisses

now needed
more than
ever, but
unable to
grasp...

long hikes

long walks

long time

your beauty

overwhelms
me

my heart
still

swollen

with love

the gifts I 

gave

were less 

than I 

received

did i think

that i could

keep you alive

forever?

yes.

daughter

companion

friend

you held my 

secrets

chased my

demons

and found

my laugh

first true trust

first true promise

first true love

a part of me...

has gone with you.

innocence, naivety

the lost child in me

her heart stopped

with yours

I laid
her in the
ground

with you

entwined in

each other

an eternal embrace

for our eternal slumber

goodbye my love.

Fry

"Shall we live in mystery and yet conduct ourselves as though everything were known?"

Lindbergh

"it is as if the intensity of grief fused the distance between you and the dead.  or perhaps, in reality, part of one dies.  like orpheus, one tried to follow the dead on the beginning of their journey.  but one cannot, like orpheus, go all the way, and after a long journey one comes back.  if one is lucky, one is reborn."

marcel proust

"We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the full."

Charles Dickens

"And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up!"

Kafka

"A book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us."

Camus

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

on the mount

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Proverb

"He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it."

Hickman

"And in the holy distillations of this moment, how we are comforted by the blessing of warm sun, soft wind, the green earth."

Alfred Tennyson

"I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within."

proust

"there is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life.  such grief, felt in such a way, is always "present" and it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again."

martha hickman

"we were surprised and disappointed that people we thought were good friends became distant, uneasy, and seemed unable to help us.  others who were casual acquaintances became suddenly close, sustainers of life for us.  grief changes the rules, and sometimes rearranges the combinations."

steinbeck

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” 

Winterson

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?” 

Louis de Pointe du Lac

"But all my passion went with her golden hair."

a hole in the world

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night."
~St Vincent Millay~

Irving

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

monsoon

"If there was a love strong enough to make you stay...
You'd be here.

But you're not here, 
and with all my tears...
It feels like monsoon every day."

Strand

"Nothing could stop you.
Not the best day.  Not the quiet.  Not the ocean rocking.
You went on with your dying."

Joan Didion

"Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me - how really tenuous our sanity is."

gone

"It is hard to forget, when there is such an empty space when you have gone."

Garden

"Grief can be the garden of compassion. 
If you keep your heart open through everything, 
your pain can become your greatest ally 
in your life's search for love and wisdom."

river runs through it...

"Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give... is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us... But we can still love them... We can love—completely—even without complete understanding..."

Grief

"Life's not a song. 

Life isn't bliss. 

Life is just this: it's living. 

You'll get along. The pain that you feel, it only can heal by living. 

You have to keep on living, so one of us is living."

Thomas Browne

"We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume."

As the Buddha says...

"So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love,
Born out of concern for all beings…
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become"

kevin griffin

"While many people tend to think of spirituality as looking up, toward the heights of perfection or saintliness, the Steps remind us that we must first look down, into the darkness of our souls, and see and accept our shadow before we attain an honest and authentic spiritual life."

more rumi...

"Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair; for there are hopes: they are real, they exist!
Do not go in the direction of darkness; I tell you: suns exist!"

Six Years

"To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part."
~ Aldo Leopold ~

Bruce Lee

"Don't pray for an easy life.  Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one."

William Gass

"The true alchemists do not change lead into gold.  They change the world into words."

Paulo Coelho

"When you say 'Yes' to others, make sure you are not saying 'No' to yourself."

rumi

"Doing as others told me, I was blind.
Coming when others called me, I was lost.
Then I left everyone, myself as well.
Then I found everyone, myself as well."

One Altar

"I go into the Muslim mosque and the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church and I see one altar."
~Rumi~

Rumi

"When you're walking through the graveyard at night 

and you see a boogeyman, run AT it,

and it will go away."

"Let the beauty we love be what we do."

"Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit."

"Don't regret what's happened.  If it's in the past,

let it go."

"This world is a mountain.  What we do

is a shout.  The echo comes back to you."

"Some human beings are safe havens.

Be companions with them.

Others may seem to be friends,

but they're really consuming your essence"

Appreciating Ourselves

"We are the greatest thing that will ever happen to us. Believe it. It makes life much easier.

It is time to stop this nonsense of running around picking on ourselves.

We may have walked through much of our life apologizing for ourselves either directly or indirectly—feeling less valuable than others, believing that they know better than we do, and believing that somehow others are meant to be here and we are not.

We have a right to be here.

We have a right to be ourselves.

We are here. There is a purpose, a reason, and an intention for our life. We do not have to apologize for being here or being who we are.

We are good enough, and deserving.

Others do not have our magic. We have our magic. It is in us.

It doesn’t matter what we’ve done in our past. We all have a past, woven with mistakes, successes, and learning experiences. We have a right to our past. It is ours. It has worked to shape and form us. As we progress on this journey, we shall see how each of our experiences will be turned around and used for good.

We have already spent too much time being ashamed, being apologetic, and doubting the beauty of ourselves. Be done with it. Let it go. It is an unnecessary burden. Others have rights, but so do we. We are neither less than nor more than. We are equal. We are who we are. That is who we were created and intended to be.

That, my friend, is a wonderful gift.

God, help me own my power to love and appreciate myself. Help me give myself validity instead of looking to others to do that."

~Melody Beattie~

Anne Lamott

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image if it turns out that your God hates the same people you do."

Cobain

"I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."

Timber Hawkeye

"No one can drive you crazy, unless you give them the keys."

Bob Dylan

"Just when you think you lost everything, you find out that you can always lose a little more."

Gesshin Greenwood

"From the ultimate perspective, True practice is all the same practice. There's zazen in the morning, work, zazen and then sleep. Throughout zazen and work and sleep there's always your mind, your thoughts and opinions and emotions drifting by like clouds. There's your attitude and attention, which is the only thing you can really control: how you relate to people, how you chop vegetables, the quality of your interaction with the world around you. There are doubts and fears and then letting go of those doubts, and continuing with practice. The water is clear right down to the bottom, and fish swim like fish."

Thomas Edison

"The doctor of the future will give no medicines, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the causes and prevention of disease."

10 x 10

“To rise at six, dine at ten, sup at six and go to bed at ten, makes one live ten times ten." 
~ 16th century proverb

Einstein

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'the universe', a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.  This delusion is a  kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Sakyong Mipham

"The most outrageous thing we can do in this world is to accept what happens and fly with it."

Samuel Beckett

"Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.  Try again. Fail again.  Fail better."

Don Miguel Ruiz

"Once lived, the past has very little value.  And yet we carry its lifeless body into all future moments.  Allowing it to crush us with its weight, to identify us, and to speak for us."

Mark Twain

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great"

Sakyong Mipham

"We are meant not to wait for moments of love to randomly arise but to be always cultivating love like a garden.  We need to till the soil so that the seed of our love can open, sprout and break through.  If we water it and give it air and sunshine, it will grow."

Nelson Mandela

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

Jim Morrison

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

Bruce Lee

“I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.”

Albert Camus

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

Dalai Lama

"Don't let the behaviors of others destroy your inner peace."

Paulo Coelho

"Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

Thich Nhat Hanh

"To be beautiful means to be yourself.  You don't need to be accepted by others.  You need to accept yourself."

Live In Truth

"Once when golfer Bobby Jones was playing in a big tournament, he inadvertently moved his ball a few inches in the rough.  He penalized himself based on what had happened.  When someone pointed out to him that no one else had seen the ball move, he said, 'I saw it move, and that is all that matters.'"

~Sakyong Mipham~

Ajahn Chah

"If you let go a little
you will have a little happiness.
If you let go a lot
you will have a lot of happiness.
If you let go completely
you will be free."