Sing forth the honour of his name:
Make his praise glorious.
Psalms 66:1-2
Know this Atman,
Unborn, undying,
Never ceasing,
Never beginning,
Deathless, birthless,
Unchanging forever.
Bhagavad Gita
We tend to be alive in the future, not now. We say, "Wait until I finish school and get my Ph.D degree, and then I will be really alive." When we have it, and it's not easy to get, we say to ourselves, "I have to wait until I have a job in order to be REALLY alive." And then after the job, a car. After the car, a house. We are not capable of being alive in the present moment. We tend to postpone being alive to the future, the distant future, we don't know when. Now is not the moment to be alive. We may never be alive at all in our entire life.
~THICH NHAT HANH, From "Suffering is Not Enough"
I entered-yes but where,
Knew nothing being there
burst the mind's barrier.
I entered - where, who knows?--
but being where I would
(where, who dare suppose?)
great things understood
no telling if I could
Knew nothing being there,
burst the mind's barrier
Written by the Spanish monk Saint John of the Cross
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi retrovai per una selva oscura
che la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood
for the straight path had been lost.
Ah quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la poura!
Ah, how to describe how hard it was,
this savage bitter wilderness,
even to think of which strikes fear in me again!
Taken from Dante's INFERNO
There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.
~DALAI LAMA XIV
My Heart is fixed, O God(Goddess), my heart is fixed:
I will sing and give praise.
Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp:
I myself will awake early.
I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people:
I will sing unto thee among the nations...
~Psalms 57:7-11
Before every human being comes a retinue of angels, announcing, "MAKE WAY FOR AN IMAGE OF THE HOLY ONE. BLESSED BE HE/SHE!" ~Hasidic Teaching
Though a man be soiled
With the sins of a lifetime,
Let him but love me,
*************
In utter devotion:
*************
that man is holy.
*************
the man that loves me,
He shall not perish.
~Bhagavad Gita
"Oh the devil, the devil" we say when we might be saying, "God! god!"... Ia m quite sure I am more afraid of people who are themselves terrified of the devil than I am afraid of the devil himself.
~Saint Teresa of Avila, from her book LIFE.
Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one Creed.
~IBN AL-ARABI
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. ~Albert Einstein
~The Peace of Wild Things~
When despair for the world grows in me and I
wake in the night at the least sound in fear of
what my life and my children's lives may be, I go
and lie down where the wood drake rests in his
beauty onj the water, and the great heron feed.
I come into the peace of wild things who
do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water. And
I feel above me day-blind stars waiting for their
light. Fora time I rest in the grace
of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry, b.1934
May the wind bring whispers of truth to your soul,
Alight on the radiant love put forth from your core
May you know the love that see's all
And find the path you seek
Love Light and peace
ORIIAH
Oriiah's Sanctuary
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