Wednesday 25 November 2015

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems.

J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life


Sunday 22 November 2015

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Dalai Lama



Live the Four Seasons in a Day

Is it not essential that there should be a constant renewal, a rebirth? If the present is burdened with the experience of yesterday there can be no renewal. Renewal is not the action of birth and death; it is beyond the opposites; only freedom from the accumulation of memory brings renewal, and there is no understanding save in the present.
The mind can understand the present only if it does not compare, judge; the desire to alter or condemn the present without understanding it gives continuance to the past. Only in comprehending the reflection of the past in the mirror of the present, without distortion, is there renewal.
If you have lived an experience fully, completely, have you not found that it leaves no traces behind? It is only the incomplete experiences that leave their mark, giving continuity to self-identified memory. We consider the present as a means to an end, so the present loses its immense significance. The present is the eternal. But how can a mind that is made up, put together, understand that which is not put together, which is beyond all value, the eternal?
As each experience arises, live it out as fully and deeply as possible; think it out, feel it out extensively and profoundly; be aware of its pain and pleasure, of your judgments and identifications. Only when experience is completed is there a renewal. We must be capable of living the four seasons in a day; to be keenly aware, to experience, to understand and be free of the gatherings of each day.

J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life


Thursday 19 November 2015

Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it.
Before gardens and after gardens.


Kabir


Saturday 14 November 2015

YOUR OTHER HALF IS WITHIN

These days, so many people are searching for a partner, a soul mate, their ‘other half’. They feel incomplete, ‘single’, without that ‘special someone’ in their life.

But you are not half of a whole, friend. That is the lie. You have never been half of a whole. You are whole; that is your true nature.

If you are searching for a partner, or staying in a relationship, because you feel ‘half’ of a whole, incomplete when alone, unhappy with your own solitude, fearful of the void, you will be bringing a partner into your field of unhappiness, and anxiety will rumble underneath the relationship.

Find your happiness within. Make happiness the field in which you live and have your being. Discover the joy of your aloneness. As long as you run away from your aloneness, you will always be lonely, however crowded your life is, because you will be running away from yourself, and that is the greatest pain of all.

Find joy within. Be the one you have always sought. Then, when and if you are ready, allow another dear one into that field. Let them hang out, play, stay if they stay, and leave if they leave. Take delight in their freedom. Connect deeply. Notice when you are happy, and notice when you are unhappy, but do not blame them or credit them for either.

Help them learn to love their own aloneness too.

Maybe you will call them your friend, your partner, your lover. Maybe you will marry, maybe you will live together, maybe you will start a family, maybe you will never see each other again. In the joy of deep connection, the labels will not matter so much, and the future will take care of itself.

And you will have found your other half within yourself. And the fear of loneliness will disappear into sunsets.

Jeff Foster


Friday 13 November 2015

Few cross over the river. Most are stranded on this side. On the riverbank they run up and down. But the wise man, following the way, crosses over, beyond the reach of death. He leaves the dark way for the way of light.

Buddha



Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
Bruce Lee


Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.

Helen Keller


Thursday 12 November 2015

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Dan Millman


If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you'll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.

Sharon Salzberg


Monday 2 November 2015

To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To travel is to live.
To roam the roads of lands remote,


Hans Christian Andersen


The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.


D.T. Suzuki