Where My Work Lies

I would like my life to be a statement
of love and compassion - and where it
isn't, that's where my work lies.

Ram Dass

Walking Each Other Home

We're all just walking

each other home.

Ram Dass

Welcome Us All Home

For the people who experience the most painful suffering,
Who feel trapped and hopeless,
Who feel life makes no sense and seems utterly cruel –
There is a place in the center of each moment,
Available right now,
Where freedom and compassionate truth wait
To welcome us all home.

Penney Pierce
Dedication for
“Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration”

Shamanic Diagnostic Interview

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman
or medicine person complaining of being disheartened,
dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four
questions:

When did you stop dancing?

When did you stop singing?

When did you stop laughing?

When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Spending Time Doing No Harm

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our
time, what would be wrong with a world in which every-
body were writing poems? After all, there's a significant
service to humanity in spending time doing no harm.
While you're writing your poem there's one less
scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't
you, in which people actually took time to think about
what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a
more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think
there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry,
even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor
and affirm life. We say 'We loved the world but could
not stay.'

Ted Kooser
Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006

I'll Meet You There

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase
"each other" doesn't make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth

across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

Rumi

Basic Goodness

When you live your life
in accordance with basic goodness,
then you develop natural elegance.
Your life can be spacious and relaxed,
without having to be sloppy.
You can actually let go of your depression
and embarrassment about being a human being,
and you can cheer up.

Dorje Dradul of Mukpo, on Letting Go