The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
The secret of change is to focus all your energy
not on fighting the old,
but on building the new
Dan Milmann, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives
I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
Helen Keller
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.
Of course, at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
Mary Oliver, I Have Decided
One regret, dear world,
I am determined not to have
when I am dying on my deathbed
is that I did not kiss you enough.
Hafiz
When there is full awakened awareness, there is no identification with the body or with conditioned factors of mind…. the body and mind are not-self, so the heart remains serene through all life’s ups and downs, its many psychological births and deaths, triumphs and failures, as well as the ‘big death’ of the body’s ending. As St Teresa of Avila put it when expounding on this same theme: ‘We die before we die so that when we die, we won’t die.’
Ajahn Amaro, What does ‘I am the Way’ mean
Mindfulbalance 