Nothing happens …

You Aren't Just Buying

They need us

Got My Wings

Jarvis Masters [a prison inmate currently sentenced to death row who took vows as a Buddhist from behind bars] unintentionally helped some other inmates connect with the absolute, vast quality of their own minds. There is a teaching that says that behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there's always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. Jarvis, in this story of trying to avert harm, conveyed this fundamental openness to the other inmates. One day there was a seagull out on the yard in San Quentin. It had been raining and the seagull was there paddling around in a puddle. One of the inmates picked up something in the yard and was about to throw it at the bird. Jarvis didn't even think about it-he automatically put out his hand to stop the man. Of course this escalated the man's aggression and he started yelling. Who the hell did Jarvis think he was? And why did Jarvis care so much about some blankety-blank bird? Everyone started circling around, just waiting for the fight. The other inmate was screaming at Jarvis, "Why'd you do that?" And out of Jarvis's mouth came the words, "I did that because that bird's got my wings."

Pema Chödrön, Practicing Peace in Times of War

Krishnamurti

Deep Roots

"When the spiritual life has put down deep roots, there is a natural, organic evolution into deep nonviolence: the attitude and practice of non-harming.  Even individuals who come from aggression naturally progress beyond the need to the resort of violence. The realization of the interconnectedness of all beings brings with it a sense of the utter preciousness of all life. Every being in every species is precious and irreplaceable. Man and women on the spiritual journey who have made this realization would rather suffer harm themselves then harm another. They extend this attitude of non-harming to all sentient beings and to the planet itself. A commitment to deep nonviolence is necessary to the emerging global culture, and to inter-spirituality.  Nonviolence adjusts our external actions to our inner attitudes, and makes them consistent with compassion and the demands of love. As we grow in spiritual wisdom, we become more sensitive to the rights of others, including other species.  Gentleness, calm, patience, and humility are all aspects of non-harming; they are expressions of this wonderful quality often regarded as an attribute of the divine itself."

Brother Wayne Teasdale in "The Mystic Heart: Discovering Spirituality in the World's Religions"

A Vision

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place,
Renewing it, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or heaven.

Then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here,
Their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides,
Fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear,
as we will never know it,
And over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be green meadows,
Stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
An old forest will stand,
Its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground.
They will take nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting.
Memory, native to this valley,
will spread over it like a grove,
and memory will grow into legend,
legend into song, song into sacrament.

The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradise or dream.
Its hardship is its possibility."

- Wendell Berry 

Meaning and Purpose

ASK

Legend says

Initiated

If the young men are not initiated, they will burn down the village. (African Proverb)

Clinging to hate

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."  (James Baldwin)

God Has No Body

"God has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. God has no body now on earth but yours."

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Children learn what they live

Truly heard

"I like to be heard. I can testify that when I am in psychological distress and someone really hears me without passing judgment on me, without trying to take responsibility for me, without trying to mold me, it feels damn good! At these times it has relaxed the tension in me. It has permitted me to bring out the frightening feelings, the guilts, the despair, the confusions that have been a part of my experience. When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening." 

Carl Rogers - Experiences in Communication

Anam Cara

Anam Cara means "Soul Friend." Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and Cara is the word for friend. In Celtic tradition, an Anam Cara is a teacher, companion or spiritual guide. With the Anam Cara you can share your innermost self to reveal the hidden intimacies of your life, your mind and your heart. This friendship cuts across all convention to create an act of recognition and belonging that joins souls in an ancient and eternal way. In everyone's life, there is a great need for an Anam Cara, a soul friend. In this relationship, you are understood as you are, without mask or pretention. When you are understood, you are at home.

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