Look for Your Soul

And who will care,
who will chide you
if you wander away
from wherever you are,
to look for your soul?

Mary Oliver

The World Comes to Us

When we stop trying to manage our experience
and let go, the world comes to us in all its richness.

John Einarsen

Beyond Words and Concepts

Seeing is perception with the original unconditioned eye.
It is a state of consciousness in which separation

of photographer/subject, audience/image dissolves;
in which a reality beyond words and concepts opens up.
It is a state of consciousness in which a reality
beyond words and concepts opens up.

John Daido Loori

See or Think

You cannot 
see and think
at the same time.

John Einarsen

A Better Place Than You Found It

Make the world a better place than you found it.
Because when your time is up and you step
into the spirit world, the love that you gave
will be there to welcome you home.

James Van Praagh

Must Be the Truth

Once we've ruled out the impossible,
what remains, no matter how improbable,
must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)

Today We Would Call Them Artists

All mythic images are rendered by what are called seers
or prophets; today we would call them artists.
The artist is one who's opened the eye of vision and
sees past the phenomenal forms to the morphological
principles that animate them, and then renders them to us.

Joseph Campbell

The Great Western Truth

This, I believe, is the great Western truth:
that each of us is a completely unique creature
and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world,
it will have to come out of our own experience
and fulfillment of our own potentialities,
not someone else's.

Joseph Campbell

Live Your Life

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing.
And put your lips to the world.
And live your life.

Mary Oliver

Keep on Going

Said the river:
Imagine everything
you can imagine,
then keep on going.

Mary Oliver

Two Lives

We have two lives,
and the second begins
when we realize 
we only have one.

Confucius

In the Presence of Truth

I'm one of the strange people that absolutely delights
and enjoys being with people as they're dying.
In fact, it is such incredible grace for me that
in the morning when I know I'm going to be
with such a person, I get absolutely thrilled
in my body and in my being, because I know
I'm going to have an opportunity to be
in the presence of truth.

Ram Dass

The Art of Life

The art of life is more like navigation than warfare,
for what is important is to understand the winds,
the tides, the currents, the seasons, and
the principles of growth and decay, so that
one's actions may use them and not fight them.

Alan Watts

Quest for the Grail Alone

In the church, there are leaders who tell
the followers what to think and how to worship.
The priests hear confessions, celebrate the Mass,
and assure the faithful that salvation is theirs.
But the adventurer must always quest
for the Grail alone.

Joseph Campbell

The Aimless, Empty Life

To the Taoist mentality, the aimless,
empty life does not suggest anything depressing.
On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds
and mountain streams, wandering nowhere,
of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beauty
for no one to see, and of the ocean surf
forever washing the sand, to no end.

Alan Watts

Make Peace with Death

The appreciation of death and the spiritual journey
after death is the prerequisite for living life joyfully now.
Death does not have to be treated as an enemy for you
to delight in life. Keeping death present in your conscious-
ness as one of the great mysteries and as the moment
of incredible transformation umbues this moment
with added richness and energy that otherwise is
used up in denial. I encourage you to make peace
with death, to see it as the culminating adventure
of this adventure called life. It is not an error.
It is not a failure. It is taking off a tight shoe 
that you have worn well. The way that is understood
in the morning, one can gladly die in the evening.

Ram Dass

Find One for Yourself

You really can't follow a guru. You can't 
ask somebody to give you The Reason,
but you can find one for yourself;
you decide what the meaning of your life
will be.

Joseph Campbell

Improve the Silence

Don't talk unless
you can improve
the silence.

Jorge Luis Borges

No Subject is Terrible

No subject is terrible if the story is true,
if the prose is clean and honest, and if it
affirms courage and grace under pressure.

Ernest Hemingway

Nothing But Atoms and Space

Nothing exists except atoms and space.
Everything else is opinion.

Democritus

Go Everywhere

Logic will get you from A to Z.
Imagination will get you everywhere.

Albert Einstein

Not Serious

Awakening is not a serious business.
If you make it serious, then you've
gone astray somewhere and the mind
is trying to do something.

Eckhart Tolle

Why Language Was Invented

Man invented language to satisfy
his deep need to complain.

Lily Tomlin

Love Letters

Before beginning to study the sacred texts
and constantly singing the sutras,
the student should learn to read
the love letters sent by the snow,
the wind, and the rain.

Ikkyu