Successful Poet

"The successful poet, the poet who really carries his message, is the one to whom the words come that have this particular power... What he does for you, what he does for us all is always to produce a metaphor in which we suddenly see two separate parts of the world, and we say, 'My God, why did I not think that they belonged together?' ... It is the essence of poetry, as of painting, as of all art, to communicate that, to leap over the gulf between us -- to make the metaphor suddenly speak to us, not so that we understand it, but so that we recreate it. Style is the means by which we recreate the content for ourselves." --Jacob Bronowski
  

One Body

"Once you have adopted such an attitude of infinite interconnectedness, you naturally want to liberate not just yourself but all beings from suffering.  The Buddha calls this 'the conception of the spirit of enlightenment.'  It is the soul of the Bodhisattva, the person who dedicates him-or herself to helping all beings achieve total happiness.  When you open to the inevitability of your infinite interconnectedness with other sensitive beings, you develop compassion.  You learn to feel empathy for them, to love them, to want their happiness.  You want to keep them from suffering, and you do so just as if they were a part of you.  You don't think your behavior makes you special.  You don't congratulate yourself for helping others, just as you won't congratulate yourself for healing your own leg when you hurt it.  It is natural for you to love your leg because it is one with you, and so it is natural for you to love others.  You would certainly never harm another being.  As the great Buddhist adapt Shantideva (8th century Indian sage) wrote, 'How wonderful it would be when all beings experience each other as limbs on the one body of life!'"  Robert Thurman, professor, Columbia, in his book, Infinite Life

Dalai Wisdom

Rules for Being Human

Never to forget

"The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."
- Arundhati Roy

Let it go

"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go." 
- Mary Oliver

Stones

Never again me for just me

 "So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credos and theories. I vowed to apply my own inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth."

 - Buckminster Fuller

A grand symphony

"When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of the great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies-living or nonliving-and will be part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. We share not only life's molecules but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. And since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts, and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. We belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful."

--Fritjof Capra

  

the Motion of the Universe

Before you diagnose ...