Quote of the Week #56 - Interconnecting Fibers

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

--Herman Melville

Quote of the Week #55 - Different Kinds of Silence

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?...Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.

-- from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

Quote of the Week #54 - There's Nothing to Get

I think a lot of people come to Zen practice because they want to be free of their suffering. They’ve read about Zen enlightenment and want to attain that. So it’s really sad when I have to tell these people, “You know, actually, you have everything you need. You don’t have to get anything. You just have to get clear in yourself, and then you’ll recognize that it’s already there, that there’s nothing to get.”

--Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, interviewed by Sam Mowe, in Spirituality & Health magazine, January/February 2015 issue

Quote of the Week #53 - Looking Within the Human Heart

I look out into the world, and I see a deep night of unthinkable cruelty and blindness. But when I look within the human heart, I find something of love there, something that cares and shines out into the darkness of our times like a bright beacon. And in the shining of that inner light, I feel the dreams and prayers of all beings. In the shining of that beacon, I feel all of our hopes for a better future. In the shining of our heart lights, we find the strength to do what must be done.

-- John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, Voices of the Food Revolution, No Happy Cows, quoted in Spirituality & Health magazine, Sept/Oct 2014 issue

Quote of the Week #52 - Universal Vision

Above all else, those who are established in the consciousness of one-ness have universal vision. They see the divinity in every human being. Enlightened individuals can discern how each person fits into the greater whole, how each is an essential piece of the puzzle that we call life. They understand that both the saint and the sinner, the virtuous person and the scoundrel, the wise man and the fool, are part of the play of this material existence. They know that all of these actors are part of the wondrous manifestation of God’s Eternal Spirit in this finite physical world.

-- from Living the Life of Jewish Meditation; A Comprehensive Guide to Practice and Experience, by Rabbi Yoel Glick

Quote of the Week #51 - Mystery and Manifestation

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

--Tao Te Ching

Quote of the Week #50 - Being Comfortable with Paradox and Confusion

Enlightened space, the place of unconditional love, cannot be achieved until and unless one is willing to be comfortable with paradox and confusion.

--Ralph Walker

Quote of the Week #49 - The World's Breathing

The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

-- Clarice Lispector

Quote of the Week #48 - My Peace

I thrive on the eccentricity of my imagination. Outwardly, I’m conventional and boring. Inwardly, I can’t keep the wild thoughts from flowing. That’s my peace. In that wildness lives my creative and comforting stillness.

--Thomas Moore, in the article “The Place Beyond Seeking”, Spirituality & Health magazine, January/February 2015 issue

Quote of the Week #47 - Essence is More Than the Sum of the Parts

A biological organism is something more than the sum of its parts. Consider the people you know. If you analyze them according to height, weight, age, where they went to school, and so on, you are engaging in a form of reductionism that will never capture their essence. We intuitively understand this to be true with human beings, but we have been trained not to apply it to every other substance and life-form and the planet.

--Herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner in an interview by Akshay Ahuja in Sun Magazine, December 2014, Issue 468

Quote of the Week #46 - With Your Light

Con tu luz, si se puede.

With your light, it can be done.

--Carlos Santana