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

Candles

A candle loses nothing

by lighting another candle.

Maya Angelou

Not Poet Enough

If your daily life seems poor,
do not blame it;
blame yourself that you
are not poet enough
to call forth its riches.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Never Forget

I've learned that people will forget what you said,

people will forget what you did, but people will

never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Loving Somebody

When we give ourselves over to loving somebody,
it is not just them we are discovering and loving
but who we are and who we will become
when we are with them.

Stephen Mitchell

Elephant in the Dark

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant.

They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come

out saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.

"A water-pipe kind ...of creature."

Another, the ear. "A very strong, always

moving back and forth, fan-animal."

Another, the leg. "I find it still, like

a column on a temple." Another touches

the curved back. "A leathery throne."

Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk.

"A rounded sword made of porcelain."

He's proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place and

understands the whole in that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling

in the dark are how the senses

explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there, and

if we went in together, we could see it.

Rumi

Not Understanding

It is difficult to get a man
to understand something
when his job depends
on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair