Self-reliant

"The world is moving very rapidly into the changing that many of us have seen in our visions, and we see that many prophecies have come to fulfillment. Dear friends, we strongly urge you to be as self-reliant as possible... Our vision is of people coming together to learn to share and work with each other and from these permanent alliances people can come together with like hearts and minds."
Vincent LaDuke

Reflexive

"The deliberate use of reflective thought or inquiry can reveal a set of unconscious assumptions, habits, and compulsions that we have set in motion. This can be very helpful and can yield great insight. We establish a steady, open mindfulness and then ask: 'What is it that knows this? What is aware of this moment? Who is it that feels pain? Who is it that is having this fantasy? Who is it that is wondering about supper?' At that moment a gap opens up. Milarepa once said something along the lines of, 'When the flow of discursive thinking is broken, the doorway to liberation opens.' In exactly the same way, when we pose that kind of question, it is like an awl being worked into a knotted tangle of identification and loosening its strands. It breaks the habit, the pattern of discursive thinking. When we ask "who" or "what," for a moment the thinking mind trips over its own feet. It fumbles. In that space, before it can piece together an answer or an identity, there is timeless peace and freedom. Through that peaceful space the innate quality of mind, mind-essence, appears. It's only by frustrating our habitual judgments, the partial realities that we have unconsciously determined into existence, that we are forced to loosen our grip and to let go of our misguided way of thinking."
- Achan Amaro Bhikku

Even the Neanderthals

Even the Neanderthals with such careful burials understood the visible material world was not the only reality. From the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value. -Karen Armstrong-

True Essence

The true essence of humankind is kindness. There are other qualities, which come from education or knowledge, but if one wishes to be a genuine human being and impart satisfying meaning to one’s existence, it is essential to have a good heart. -The 14th Dalai Lama-

The Center of the Universe

The Tao is the center of the universe, the good man's treasure, the bad man's refuge. Honors can be bought with fine words, respect can be won with good deeds; but the Tao is beyond all value, and no one can achieve it. Thus, when a new leader is chosen, don't offer to help him with your wealth or your expertise. Offer instead to teach him about the Tao.

The Ultimate

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away. Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it. Flow with whatever may happen and let our minds be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever we are doing. This is the ultimate.
Zuangzhi We

Temporary Madness

Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Love is the roots that grow towards each other underground, slowly and determined. And when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, you find you are no longer two, but one.
One root, One tree, One Love."- By Louis de Bernieres, from Captain Corelli's Mandolin

The Price

"The price of anything is the amount of life we pay for it."

Henry David Thoreau

Let it come and let it go ...

As Suzuki Roshi, a great contemporary Zen master,
wrote in his classic book, Zen Mind Beginners Mind:

“When you are practicing Zazen meditation, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears that the something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer . . . Many sensations come, many thoughts and images arise but they are just waves from your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind . . . If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called Big Mind.”

When he makes a mistake

A great nation is like a great man. When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts." (Lao Tse)

99.99 per cent

When I was born in 1895, reality was everything you could see, smell, touch and hear. The world was thought to be absolutely self-evident. When I was three years old, the electron was discovered. That was the first invisible. It didn't get in any of the newspapers; (nobody thought that would be important!) Today 99.99 percent of everything that affects our lives cannot be detected by human senses. We live in a world of invisibles. The fact that humanity does not understand nature is the prime reason for humanity's failure to exercise its option to attain universally sustainable physical success on this planet I am confident that humanity's survival depends on all our willingness to comprehend feelingly the way nature works."
Buckminster Fuller

Dine(Navajo) Blessing Request

"Bless those who challenge us to grow, to stretch, to move beyond the knowable,to come back home to our elemental and essential nature. Bless those who challenge us for they remind us of doors we have closed and doors we have yet to open. They are big medicine teachers for us."

Millennium closure

Humans are in the midst of a millennium closure. In the next millennium we will shift from the cause and effect pattern recognition paradigms to understanding “how the universe works” in acausal, symmetrical, and synchronous and cognitive terms. Earth People will lead the way because Earth People understand divination; which taps subatomic underpinnings without inevitable illusions, and Earth People provide myths, rituals and secret societies to assist in re-membering the whole picture. Yet, what lies behind us and what lies before us are insignificant compared to what lies within us. What lies within each of us is the awareness of very profound knowledge, which the Holy Ones use in their divinations.

First photographs

The first photographs of the Earth taken from outer space by a satellite, showing the whole blue orb with spirals and whorls of cloud, was a great landmark for human consciousness. We now know that we live in a system that is enclosed in a certain way; that has its limits, and that we are interdependent with it. -Stewart Brand-

Never allow despair ...

"Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lay defeat and death. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never to allow despair to have the last word."
Nelson Mandela

Religious denial

The content of scientific theories itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life. This does not excuse religions from denying the validity of values in scientific theories.

Great Ideas

"Great ideas...come into the world as gently as doves...if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar...a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate... the crudest implications of history. As a result there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every one of us,
on the foundation of our own sufferings and joys, builds for all."
-- Albert Camus