When you set off on a path, the first thing you do is surrender yourself to a greater power, for you will encounter things you will not understand. You will understand things only with your heart, and that can be a little frightening. For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night, but then any search is an act of faith.
But God, who is far harder to understand than a Dark Night, appreciates our act of faith and takes our hand and guides us through the Mystery.
Paulo Coelho, Brida
Imagine you’re at a movie, and the person sitting in front of you is so huge and fat you can’t see the screen because he’s completely blocking your view. He’s also talking loudly, so you can’t hear the movie.
That person is you.
You can’t see the perfection of your life, as it is right now, because you’re in your own way.
Dogo Barry Graham sensei
It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.
It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed.
We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.
John O’ Donohue, The Inner Landscape of Beauty,
If one knew oneself to be precious,
One would guard oneself with care.
A wise person will watch over herself
In any part
Of the night.
Dhammapada, verse 157,
Read no newspapers.
Try to find a few friends who think as you do;
Read the wonderful writers of earlier times – Kant, Goethe, Lessing – and the classics of other lands;
Enjoy the natural beauties of your surroundings.
Make friends with a few animals.
Then you will become a cheerful man once more, and nothing will be able to trouble you
Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone – and necessarily so – and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.
Albert Einstein, letter of 5 April 1933 to a troubled, unemployed musician living in Munich who was fearful of the rise of fascism around him.
The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He’ll never give up.
If he’d let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
Hakuin 1686–1769
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