Life feels crooked
when we want it straight,
and empty
when we want it full.
We sometimes get what we desire.
We sometimes lose
that which is most precious to us.
The future cannot be predicted,
and therefore it frightens us.

Taking refuge in what is,
we find relief from all our struggle.
No longer demanding something different,
we find a simple peace within.
Not trying to control events,
we preserve our energy.
We are no longer in opposition to life
so our strength is fully available
and our spirit is capable of all that is needed.

- From, "The Caregiver's Tao Te Ching", by William and Nancy Martin

Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions.

- Matthieu Ricard, a Nepalese French Buddhist monk, writer, photographer, and translator.

We believe profoundly in silence - the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. Those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon a shining pool - those, in the mind of the person of nature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.

- From, "The Wisdom of the Native Americans," edited by Kent Nerburn

You are not who you think you are. You are not your fears, your thoughts, or your body. You are not your insecurities, your career, or your memories. You’re not what you’re criticized for and you’re not what you’re praised for. You are a boundless wealth of potential. You are everything that’s ever been. Don’t sell yourself short. Every sunset, every mountain, every river, every passionate crowd, every concert, every drop of rain – that’s you. So go find yourself. Go find your strength, find your beauty, find your purpose. Stop crafting your mask. Stop hiding. Stop lying to yourself and letting people lie to you. You’re’ not lacking in anything except awareness. Everything you’ve ever wanted is already there, awaiting your attention, awaiting your time.

- Vironika Tugaleva, Ukrainian-born author

We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.

- Jack Kornfield, American psychologist, writer and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada  Buddhism

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

- Ranier Maria Rilke, Austrian poet.

A loving parent's message is: you are enough; you matter; I see you, and I'm so glad you're here. A loving parent also affirms that it's okay to have feelings - both pleasant and unpleasant. They do not judge or react. They feel compassion, curiosity, gentleness, calm, connection, acceptance and patience toward you. Loving parents protect, nurture, support and guide.

- The Loving Parent Guidebook

I am heading for a time of quiet
When my restlessness is past
And I can lie down on my blanket
And release my fists at last
 
And when they say
That you’re not good enough
Well, the answer is
You’re not
But who are they
Or what is it
That eats at what you’ve got?
With the hunger of ambition
For the change inside the purse
They are handcuffs on the soul, my friends
Handcuffs on the soul
And worse
 
And I am heading for a place of quiet
Where the sage and sweet grass grow
By a lake of sacred water
From the mountain’s melted snow

- Paul Simon, American songwriter and musician

It's dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly - it's the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremelos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That's why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.

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

For those of us who are not congenitally the members of an organized church, who have found that humanism and nature-worship are not enough, who are not content to remain in the darkness of ignorance, the squalor of vice or the other squalor of respectability, the minimum working hypothesis would seem to run to about this:

• That there is a Godhead, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of the Void, which is the un-manifested principle of all manifestations.

 

• That it is possible for human beings to love, know and, from virtually, to become actually identical with the divine Ground.

 

• That to achieve this unitive knowledge of the Godhead is the final end and purpose of human existence.

 

• That there is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao of Way which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end.

- Aldous Huxley, English writer and philosopher, from a 1944 introduction to, "Vedanta and the West."