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When I preach, I usually speak of detachment and  say that a man should be empty of self and all things;  and secondly, that he should be reconstructed in the simplicity   beyond all words and beyond all understanding that God is;  and thirdly, that he should consider the great longing  which God has set up in the soul, such that by means of it  man may wonderfully attain to God; and fourthly,  of the purity of the divine nature. ~ Meister Eckhart

Kling, the master carver, made a bell stand Of precious wood. When it was finished, All who saw it were astounded.  They said it must be The work of spirits. The Prince of Lu said to the master carver: "What is your secret?" Kling replied: " I am only a workman: I have no secret. There is only this: When I began to think about the work you commanded I guarded my spirit, did not expend it On trifles, that were not to the point. I fasted in order to set My heart at rest. After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success. After five days I had forgotten praise or criticism. After seven days I had forgotten my body With all its limbs." "By this time all thought of your Highness And of the court had faded away. All that might distract me from the work Had vanished. I was collected in the single thought Of the bell stand." "Then I went to the forest To see the trees in their own natural state. When the right tree appeared before my eyes, The bell s...

. . "I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. ... I have e...

A nightingale flies nearer the roses. A girl blushes. Pomegranates ripen. Hallaj will be executed. A man walks a mountain path, solitary and full of prayer. Trust grows for nine months, then a new being appears. Narcissus at the edge, creekwater washing tree roots: God is giving a general into- ductory lecture. We hear and read it everywhere, in the field, through the branches. We'll never finish studying. Neither of us has a penny, yet we're walking the jewelers' bazaar seriously considering making a purchase! Or shall I say this with other metaphors? A barn crowded with souls. Quietness served around a table. Two people talk along a road that's paved with words. ~ Rumi .

. Our self-centeredness, our distinctive attachment to the feeling  of an independent "I" works to inhibit our compassion. True compassion can only develop and grow as such self-grasping is reduced and eventually eliminated. ~ Dalai Lama  from Tibetan Portrait - The Power of Compassion photo by Phil Borges the woman is Tamdin, 69 years old, she was imprisoned in 1987 but now has escaped,  walking 35 days across the Himalayas to seek an audience with the Dalai Lama. .

Compassion is the destroyer of illusion,  it isn’t helping ladies over the road or helping people get through life.   Compassion doesn’t help the separate individual,  it exposes the dream of separation and leaves freedom.   Unconditional love doesn’t recognise that there is  a separate person who needs help…  that is the freeing nature of the boundlessness  that is palpable when we are together. ~ Tony Parsons

How can we ever know the difference we make to the soul of the earth? Where the infinite stillness of the earth meets the passion of the human eye, invisible depths strain towards the mirror of the name. In the word, the earth breaks silence. It has waited a long time for the word. Concealed beneath familiarity and silence, the earth holds back and it never occurs to us to wonder how the earth sees us. Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it? Perhaps your favorite place feels proud of you. We tend to think of death as a return to clay, a victory for nature. But maybe it is the converse: that when you die, your native place will fill with sorrow. It will miss your voice, yo...

Human beings try to avoid pain by setting up permanent zones of pleasure.  The mind is always seeking to create permanent territories of pleasure to avoid pain.  But these zones, what we might call 'zones of safety' don't last.  They always fall apart, and because they are fleeting,  then we scramble to find another zone of pleasure to help us forget our pain.  This going round and round is what we mean by samsara.  Hell is just resistance to life. It's counter-intuitive, but if we stop,  become curious about the pain, learn to befriend it  and work with it, actually learn how to be genuine friends  of ourselves, then the pleasures of life become authentic pleasures  as opposed to numbing agents, anesthetizing us from our genuine experience. ~ Pema Chodron,  Dharma talk, Karma Dzong, Boulder, Colorado, 1999  art by Edvard Munch

When you have understood that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help. You can help another by precept and example and, above all, by your being. You cannot give what you do not have and you don't have what you are not. You can only give what you are - and of that you can give limitlessly. - Nisargadatta Maharaj .

When another person makes you suffer,  it is because he suffers deeply within himself,  and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That’s the message he is sending. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotheraputic force.   ~ Abraham H. Maslow

. We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us.  We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake  those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up  in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed.  We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up  in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness.  We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better,  trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security.  Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by  untouched and untasted. ~ Henepola Gunaratana,  from Mindfulness In Plain English .