The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.

And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.
Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road
the sun and moon will continue to shine.

- Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism.

The wise person, learning how things happen, lives according to the principal.

Without this understanding one might dismiss the single principal of how things happen as total nonsense. After all, they say, any principal that does not get you love or money or power must be useless. A silent mind is a dumb mind. Selflessness is no way to get ahead. Virtue is for fools. Kindness is weakness. And so on.

This is a problem: because the wise person's only allegiance is to how things happen, people who do not see how things happen naturally think the wise person's behavior has no basis in reality. Also, the wise person's silence and manner of being are disturbing. Because the wise person's motives are obscure, the wise person is hard to figure out.

The problem comes back to the fact the principal is not a thing and cannot be defined. That does not make sense to some people.

It is not easy to understand a person whose foundation is invisible.

We, unaccustomed to courage
Exiles from delight
Live coiled in shells of loneliness
Until love leaves its high holy temple
And comes into our sight
To liberate us into life.

- Maya Angelou, American memoir writer, poet, and civil rights activist

To understand all is to forgive all, and I believe that if we knew everything we'd arrive at a certain serenity. Now having this serenity as much as possible, even when one knows - little - nothing - for certain, is perhaps a better remedy than what's sold in the chemists. A lot of it comes of its own accord, one grows and develops of one's own accord.

- Vincent Van Gogh, a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around.

- Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer and humorist, from The Sirens of Titan book

We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
No we must got back and tell the people this is the Hour.

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.
Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast
It is so great and swift that there are those who will
be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.

The Elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
keep your eyes open, and our head above water.

See who is in there with you and Celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.

For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves!

Banish the world "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner.
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we have been waiting for..."

-The Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi, Arizona

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us...Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

- Alcoholics Anonymous

Clinging to how we think things should be
brings confusion and despair.
Seeing things as they are
brings clarity.
Clarity leads to effective action.

Trying to change others
leads to resistance and frustration.
Seeing others as they are
leads to acceptance.
Acceptance leads to change.

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

Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree. This we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit. For not only people but all things and all beings pray to that, continually, in differing ways. The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers. And when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit and that this center is really everywhere…it is within each of us. All things are our relatives. What we do to everything we do to ourselves. All is really one.
 
We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great spirit is within all things. The trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples. And even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand this all deeply in our hearts then we will respect and love and know the Great Spirit. And then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
 
As you walk upon the sacred earth then let every step you take be as a prayer. One should pay attention to the smallest crawling creatures because these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, so that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.
 
Grown men may learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure and therefore the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss. Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry. For then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives and there was plenty for them and for us.
 
But the invaders came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds and always these islands are becoming smaller, for all around them surges the gnawing flood of the European invaders, and it is dirty with lies and greed. Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of their own passions. It is in the darkness of men’s eyes that they get lost.
 
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with my own eyes, still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard – a people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.
 
There can never be peace between nations before there is known that true peace that is within the souls of all people. Peace will come to the hearts of people when they realize their oneness with the universe. It is everywhere like the grasses showing tender faces to each other. This should we do, for this was the wish of the grandparents of the world.
 
The Great Spirit is everywhere. It hears whatever is in our minds and our hearts. And it is not necessary to speak to the Spirit in a loud voice. Everything is sacred. All over the sky a sacred voice is calling your name. Behold this day. It is yours to make. Know the power that is peace. May you always walk in beauty.

- Black Elk, Hehaka Sapa, a holy man of the Oglala People

All nature is a temple, formal, wild or bare
I'm at the feet of all creation, for the time that I am here,
Deciding what to plant, to pleasure not myself,
Perhaps I'll be remembered for the beauty that I felt.

No footsteps taken backwards, just the hill that I'll descend,
Townsfolk will tell stories and mourn our era's end,
And say we laboured just for love, in this vale of Chiltern chalk
Where Botanica is exalted and nurtures those who walk.

- Olivia Harrison, an excerpt from Tree Time from her book Came the Lightning, Twenty Poems for George.