Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Rumi: Silence

  
Why are you so afraid of silence, 
silence is the root of everything.
If you spiral into its void,
a hundred voices will thunder
messages you long to hear.

 
~ Rumi
 

Pema Chödrön: True Compassion


True compassion does not come from 
wanting to help out those less fortunate 
than ourselves but from realizing 
our kinship with all beings.
 
 ~ Pema Chödrön 

from ॐ Blue Buddha Quote Collective

Mary Oliver: The Sun


The Sun

Have you ever seen 
anything 
in your life 
more wonderful
 
than the way the sun, 
every evening, 
relaxed and easy, 
floats toward the horizon
 
and into the clouds or the hills, 
or the rumpled sea, 
and is gone-- 
and how it slides again
 
out of the blackness, 
every morning, 
on the other side of the world, 
like a red flower
 
streaming upward on its heavenly oils, 
say, on a morning in early summer, 
at its perfect imperial distance-- 
and have you ever felt for anything 
such wild love-- 
do you think there is anywhere, in any language, 
a word billowing enough 
for the pleasure
 
that fills you, 
as the sun 
reaches out, 
as it warms you
 
as you stand there, 
empty-handed-- 
or have you too 
turned from this world--
 
or have you too 
gone crazy 
for power, 
for things?
 
~ Mary Oliver ~
 
(New and Selected Poems)

Monday, June 24, 2013

Rumi: Only Love Is Real


 If you see a head
happy and thrilled 
filled with joy 
every night and day
this head was fondled
by the fingers of love.
 
Whatever you know or don't - 
Only Love is real. 
 
~ Rumi
 

Rumi: Lots of Ways to Reach God


Lots of ways to reach God,  
I chose LOVE.

~Rumi

Kahlil Gibran: The Path of the Night

Patagonia, Argentina

One may not reach the dawn save by 
the path of the night.

- Kahlil Gibran 

The Dalai Lama: Our Responsibility to Creating a More Peaceful World


Education is the best way to train ourselves that we will 
secure our own well-being by concerning ourselves 
with others. It is possible to create a better world, a more 
compassionate, more peaceful world, which is not only in everyone’s interest, but is everyone’s responsibility to achieve.
 
- H.H. the Dalai Lama

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Meister Eckhart: It is in the Darkness That One Finds the Light


Truly it is in the darkness
that one finds the light, so
when we are in sorrow,
then this light is nearest of
all to us.
 
- Meister Eckhart

Don Juan Matus: Making Ourselves Miserable or Strong

Approaching Storm, Moraine Lake, Canada
 
We either make ourselves miserable 
or we make ourselves strong. 
The amount of work
is the same.

- Don Juan Matus
as quoted by Carlos Castaneda

The Blessing of Staying Open to What We Need


As I look back on my life, I realize that every time 
I thought I was being rejected from something good, 
I was actually being re-directed 
to something better.

~ Steve Maraboli

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Kabir: Seeking


Seeking
 
Why run around sprinkling holy water?
There's an ocean inside you, and when you're
ready you'll drink.
 
- Kabir

Chief Seattle: All Things Are Connected

© Iron Tazz Scaggs

This we know: All things are connected
like the blood that unites us.
We did not weave the web of life,
We are merely a strand in it,
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
 
- Chief Seattle 

Rumi: This Silence


This Silence, 
this moment, every moment, 
if it's genuinely inside you, 
brings what you Need. 

~Rumi

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Howard Zinn: Small Acts When Multiplied by Millions of People Can Transform the World


In the ever growing wave of courageous and passionate truth-tellers, whistle-blowers, activists, artists, authors, teachers, healers, historians, investigative journalists, poets, storytellers, visionaries, and all those who illuminate a path of being in the world with eyes and minds and hearts wide open, I am inspired to share the below quotes by Howard Zinn. I love and miss this amazing man dearly, and I am profoundly grateful for his wisdom and fierce caring which lives on. Blessed are the courageous ones! May they inspire us all! Another world is possible - one in which we each take up our part in working to transform war to peace, beginning within our own hearts, minds, souls and expanding outward to embrace all beings. May we awaken. With gratitude, passionate caring, and peace ~ Molly

******

War itself is the enemy of the human race.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and human. But, too often, US actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reasons is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.

What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.


I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.

I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
 
Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.


To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.