Oh, let me flow into the ocean
Let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy and let me be calm
Let the tide in
I want it to rush over me
 
I'm flowing under bridges
Then flying through the sky
I'm traveling down cold metal
Just a tear in a baby's eye
Let me flow into the ocean
Let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy and let me be calm
Let the tide in
I want it to rush over me

- Peter Townshend, British songwriter and musician

When the mind is haughty, sarcastic, full of conceit and arrogance, ridiculing, evasive and deceitful, when it is inclined to boast, or when it is contemptuous of others, abusive and irritable, then remain still like a piece of wood.

- Shantideva, Indian philosopher, Buddhist monk, poet, and scholar from the 8th Century.

"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." He screwed up his face in an expression of disgust.

"And yet," said Susila, "in a certain sense the advice is excellent. Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if ever they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference."

"And rises again from the dead?" he asked sarcastically.

"That's the one question the Buddha always refused to discuss. Believing in eternal life never helped anybody to live in eternity. Nor, of course, did dis-believing. So stop all your pro-ing and con-ing (that's the Buddha's advice) and get on with the job."

"Which job?"

"Everybody's job - enlightenment. Which means, here and now, the preliminary job of practicing all the yogas of increased awareness."

"But I don't want to be more aware," said Will. "I want to be less aware. Less aware of horrors...less aware of hideous sights and loathsome smells - even some of the delicious smells...less aware of my fat income and other people's sub-human poverty. Less aware of my own excellent health in an ocean of malaria and hookworm, of my own safely sterilized sex fun in the ocean of starving babies...And here you go, asking me to be even more aware than I am already."

"I'm not asking anything," she said. "I'm merely passing on the advice of a succession of shrewd old birds, beginning with Gautama and ending with the Old Raja. Start by being fully aware of what you think you are. It'll help you to become aware of what you are in fact."

- Aldous Huxley, English writer and philosopher, from his novel, "Island."

Ma means "interval" or "opening," both in space and time. Often referred to as negative (empty) space, it's positive in that it can birth something new. An invitation to heightened awareness is seen, for instance, as open space in rooms and gardens. With regard to time, it's a pause that invites contemplation. Ma is found in unpainted areas on folding screens, void areas in a photograph, silence during conversation, the hush between breaking waves. It's about the vitality generated by emptiness, in the way a blank page gives rise to creative energy. It's about being in relationship, because our engagement with ma allows fresh perspectives to emerge.

- Ann Tashi Slater, writer, speaker and teacher, from her book, "Traveling in Bardo: The Art of Living in an Impermanent World," as quoted in "The Marginalian."

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

- Mae West, an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned more than seven decades.

Many people need desperately to receive this message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, American author, from his book, "Timequake"

Rooted in feeling I am tossed by the waves
Rooted in thinking I am trapped in a maze
Rooted in sensation I am lost in a kaleidoscope
Rooted in being I am

Bustling about may seem helpful,
but stillness is the way of the Tao.
Filling the air with words may seem effective,
but silence is the way of the Tao.
We are taught to be busy,
and it is difficult to be still.
Most people choose a way of effort
and keep themselves unconscious
of the true nature of things.

Mindful actions
and a few words, gently spoken:
this is the movement of the Tao.

- William and Nancy Martin, from their book, "The Caregiver's Tao Te Ching"

Silence is the only phenomenon today that is "useless." It does not fit into the world of profit and utility; it simply is. It seems to have no other purpose; it cannot be exploited.

All the other great phenomena have been appropriated by the world of profit and utility. Even the space between heaven and earth has become a mere cavity for aeroplanes to travel through. Water and fire have been absorbed by the world of profit; they are only noticed in so far as they are parts of this world; they have lost their independent existence.

Silence, however, stands outside the world of profit and utility; it cannot be exploited for profit; you cannot get anything out of it. It is "unproductive." Therefore, it is regarded as valueless.

Yet there is more help and healing in silence than in all the "useful things." Purposeless, unexploitible silence suddenly appears at the side of the all-too purposeful, and frightens us by its very purposelessness. It interferes with the regular "how" of the purposeful. It strengthens the untouchable, it lessens the damage inflicted by exploitation. It makes things whole again, by taking them back from the world of dissipation into the world of wholeness. It gives things something of its own holy uselessness, for that is what silence is: holy uselessness.

- Max Picard, German-Swiss writer and philosopher, from his book, "The World of Silence"

Have the courage to throw yourself into life, take risks, weather blows, knowing before you begin that you will be exposed to a series of opposites; success and failure, happiness and unhappiness, praise and blame...saying yes, opening up, and loving: these are the keys that will unlock the prison door.

- Arnaud Desjardins, French author.