like a flash of lightning...

what is born will die
what has been gathered will be dispersed
what has been accumulated will be exhausted
what has been built up will be brought low

this existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
to watch the birth and death of beings is like
watching the movements of a dance

a lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the dark of night
rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountainside

- from the Buddhist Sutras

i lived for thousands of years...

I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a mineral. And then I died
and became a plant.
And I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a plant. And then I died
and became an animal.
And I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a mineral. And then I died
and became a human being.

Tell me, what have I ever
lost by dying?

Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

the subtle cause...

Curving back within myself, I create again and again and again. I create my mind, I create my body, I create my perceptual experiences. In fact, for the entire universe that I experience, I am the subtle cause...

The Vedic Scriptures

brass into pure gold...

Go ahead, light your candles and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out, because God will come and he will put you on his anvil and fire up his forge and beat you until He turns brass into pure gold.

Sant Keshavadas

scattering stars...

We come whirling out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

Rumi

the sun is but a morning star...

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realise all this; such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Henry D. Thoreau
from Walden

the great joy...

You must try to reach the great joy
that gave birth to the world.

Ananamayi

building heaven...

Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself has any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.

William Blake

great love...

We can do no great things –
only small things with great love.

Mother Teresa

as dreams are made of...

Our revels now are ended
There, our actors, as I foretold you,
were all spirits, and are melted into air
into thin air and,
like the baseless fabric of this vision,
the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea
all which it inherit shall dissolve
and like this insubstantial pageant faded
leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff as dreams
are made on and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare, from "The Tempest"

joy is the condition of life...

Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the luster of whose scales worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon the bank.


A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.

Henry David Thoreau

underlying emptiness...

Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute to attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively, we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
From Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

to be whittled and sandpapered...

We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what's left is who we truly are.

Arianna Huffington
from On Becoming Fearless: In Love, Work and Life

perseverance...

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

Henry Ward Beecher

growing unevenly...

We do not grow absolutely chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Anais Nin

dreaming together...

If you dream alone, it's just a dream. When we dream together, it's reality.

Brazilian folk song

thank you...

i thank you god for this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural which
is infinite which is yes.

e.e. cummings

a vision with a task...

A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is but drudgery. A vision joined with a task is the hope of the world.

Anonymous

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky...

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was specter-grey
And winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

courage...

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin