Man

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered: "Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money in order to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

Collision of immoral power

"Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.
Martin Luther King

KINDNESS

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder"
- Aldous Huxley

Avoiding danger

"Security is mostly a superstition, it does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men (and women) as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!"
Helen Keller

Purpose of life

"The whole idea of compassion is based on the keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another...The whole purpose of life is to live by love."
Thomas Merton

Pascal's Wager

I have a choice: either first I believe God exists or second I do not believe God exists. First, if I believe God exists, and God in fact does exist, then I will gain infinite happiness. However, if I believe God exists, and God in fact does not exist, then I will have no payoff. Second, if I do not believe God exists, and God in fact does exist, then I will gain infinite pain. However, if I believe God does not exist, and God in fact does not exist, then I will have no payoff. Thus, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by believing in God, and I have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not believing in God. On these grounds, one would be foolish not to believe.
Blaise Pascal

Action has quality

“Action has quality when action and contemplation are interrelated and integrated. The hunter for example is not just participating in a purely mechanical subsistence activity, but is engaged in a complex set of meditative acts, all of which -- preparatory prayer and purification, stalking the quarry, the sacramental manner by which the animal is slain and subsequently treated -- are infused with the sacred. Black Elk says the “act of hunting is being (not representing) life’s quest for ultimate truth.” (Joseph Epes Brown)

...with what is

"Humans are tuned for relationships..... for the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every ... form. All could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostrils or focused with our listening ears, and to which we replied -- whether through sounds or through movements of minute shifts of mood ... and every sound was a voice, every scrape a meeting -- with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. And from these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished. We have an ages-old reciprocity with the many voiced landscape."
Dave Abrams’ simple premise is that we are human beings “only when we are in contact and in conviviality with what is not human.”

Most important aspects

All the most important aspects of thoughts come from that which is thinking through us. And this process is the myth, one of the most profound things of life; it is creation itself, which becomes accessible and, in part, energizes and gives, of its own accord, a sense of direction to the human creature. It is something with which -- if we use our brains and imaginations -- we are in partnership. (Sir Laurens van der Post)

Waunsila is the cure

“During the fourth year, I finally understood why I danced and then I decided I will dance as long as I live. I understood that I have to live what I teach. The true medicine men, Holy Ones, have no reservations about teaching. They are so secure, peaceful, they are not afraid to share and they welcome whoever comes. Spirituality involves waunsila -- compassion; having compassion for people. Give freely; you get back four times. If you practice this compassion, helping others -- those values, those qualities, generosity -- that is your religious life, your spirituality, your Wowacintanka, moral strength. It’s hard work, but you wake up happy. And in waunsila, you don’t have to lie anymore to exist. I have to be compassionate, I have to forgive, and sometimes it’s so hard I am brought to my knees or to tears, or both. However, grudges, anger, revenge, frustration cause cancer. Waunsila is the cure. (Albert White Hat)

Working assumption

"My working assumption is that we are here as local-Universe information gatherers. We are given access to the divine design principles so that from them we can invent objectively the instruments and tools that qualify us as local Universe problem solvers in support of the integrity of an eternally regenerative Universe."
Buckminster Fuller

Our Hands

"it's our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits to our abilities do not exist. We are collaborators in Creation -
the Future of the earth is in our hands."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin