You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As is your desire, so is your intention.
As is your intention, so is your will.
As is your will, so is your deed
As your deed is, so is your destiny,
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Hindu Scriptures, 7th-6th century BCE.
Each thought creates according to its own nature.
Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
Paramahansa Yogananda, 1893 – 1952
Most of nature – plants and animals – have periods of rest. We find it hard.
All of our unhappiness comes from one thing only, which is the inability to sit quietly, in a room alone. Pascal
[Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.]
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass….
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
Wendell Berry 1934- American poet, environmental activist and farmer, Stay Home
Albert Einstein once said that the most important question a human being could answer is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we are willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth. As soon as we begin to …..open to faith in a friendly universe, the proverbial path opens before us. The people, events and teachings we need are supplied. This is the action of grace.
Joan Borysenko, Fire in the Soul: A New Spirituality of Spiritual Optimism
I gaze on myself in the stream’s emerald flow,
Sit on a boulder by a cliff.
My mind, a lonely cloud,
Leans on nothing, needs nothing
From the world and its endless events.
HanShan, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist poet
A lot of thunderstorms these days in Ireland
The Buddha often used images to try to convey some of this sense of all appearances arising, with nothing we can hold on to. He said life is like a rainbow, an echo, a dream, a drop of dew on a blade of grass, a flash of lightning in a summer sky.
What does a deeper glimpse into this truth of change offer us, ultimately? We see that there is a tender, exultant beauty to every hour, in fact to every minute we have just because we are alive. ..The fragility and dynamism of life is what makes it so vital. Every experience, every encounter, every realized desire, and every unfulfilled longing that comes into our lives is moving, changing…
Life is short, and it is sacred
Sharon Salzberg, Real LIfe: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom
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