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."