Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
- Muhammad Yunus, (1940- ), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2006
Archive for the 'serene sundays' Category
Today, not the first and likely not my last experience of such, a death leads me to forego the usual Serene Sundays quote. A friend–a small, wizened, frail feline of around 20 years–has changed dwellings, moving to the stronghold of the great joy of deathlessness.
The move began a few days ago. Not quite ready to let go, but not able to hold much longer to the tenuous lifestream, the svalakṣaṇa of death became apparent. In the small hours of this morning, she came asking for succor.
One cannot refuse a friend in such circumstances.
Later this morning, heaves brought no quenching, bladder relaxed, she lay shivering among the last puddled liquids of life, much like an infant in the first liquids of life. Continue reading ‘precious is death of the loyal’
Doubts demand from us a real skillfulness in dealing with them, and I notice how few people have any idea how to pursue doubts or to use them. It seems ironic that in a civilization that so worships the power of deflation and doubt, hardly anyone has the courage to deflate the claims of doubt itself–to do as one Hindu master said: turn the dogs of doubt on doubt itself, to unmask cynicism, and to uncover what fear, hopelessness, and tired conditioning it springs from. Then doubt would no longer be an obstacle, but a door to realization, and whenever doubt appeared in the mind, a seeker would welcome it as a means of going deeper into the truth.
- Sogyal Rinpoche (1950- )
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”
- Judge Billings Learned Hand (1872-1961), speech given in New York City to new citizens, May 21, 1944
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot (neé Mary Anne Evans, 1819-1880)
Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward [people], but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power.
- Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 1952
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove. Continue reading ’sustain this recollection’
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never shared,
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence…
- Simon & Garfunkel
Truth may be immutable, but the form in which it is embodied consists of elements which admit of change.
- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, (1888-1975)
In the night we stumble over things and become acutely conscious of their individual separateness. But the day reveals the greater unity which embraces them. The man whose inner vision is bathed in an illumination of his consciousness at once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme over all differences. His mind no longer awkwardly stumbles over individual facts of separateness in the human world, accepting them as final. He realizes that peace is in the inner harmony which dwells in truth and not in any outer adjustments. He knows that beauty carries an eternal assurance of our spiritual relationship to reality, which waits for its perfection in the response of our love
- Rabindranath Tagore, (1861-1941), The Religion of Man
