Belonging
When we smile
and welcome the newbie
or allow ourselves to be welcomed,
we act out of our recognition
that belonging
is a common human need,
one that is not an obstacle to,
but in service of,
waking up.
~Kate Johnson
(Insight Meditation Teacher)
Great Love
Great love is never justified.
It’s like the little tree
that springs up
in some inexplicable fashion
on the side of a cliff:
where are its roots,
what does it feed on,
what miracle produces
those green leaves?
But it does exist
and it really is green —
clearly, then, it’s getting
whatever it needs to survive.
~Wisława Szymborska
(1923–2012, Polish poet, essayist, translator,
recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature)
Saved By Love
The world is violent and mercurial —
it will have its way with you.
We are saved only by love —
love for each other
and the love that we pour
into the art we feel compelled to share:
being a parent; being a writer;
being a painter; being a friend.
We live in a perpetually burning building,
and what we must save from it,
all the time, is love.
~Tennessee Williams
(1911 to 1983 American Playwright)
First Principle
The first principle, the basic principle
and I would say the grandest of all,
is to know that God is everywhere.
We are living in Him and He is in us.
We live and have our being in him,
like fish in the river.
The fish lives in the water;
it lives on the water,
from whence it gets its food.
When God wished
“I am One and wish to be many,”
the whole universe emanated,
came into being.
The whole world is an expression,
a manifestation of God.
Where is that place where He is not?
We are in Him, He is in us
and is our controlling power.
All ensouled bodies
are the drops of the ocean
of all-consciousness.
When we know this, all is beautiful.
God is beautiful
and any world made by Him,
manifest by Him,
is also beautiful.
~Sant Kirpal Singh Ji Maharaj
(1894-1974 Mystic Adept, Spiritual Teacher,
Organizer of World Conference on Unity of Man,
President of the World Fellowship of Religions,
and Sant Satguru of Surat Shabd Yoga)
Stopping the War
STOPPING THE WAR
by Jack Kornfield
The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding and gradual training. Ongoing spiritual practice can help us cultivate a new way of relating to life in which we let go of our battles.
When we step out of the battle, we see anew, as the Tao Te Ching says, “with eyes unclouded by longing.” We see how each of us creates conflict. We see our constant likes and dislikes, the fight to resist all that frightens us. We see our own prejudice, greed, and territoriality. All this is hard for us to look at, but it is really there. Then underneath these ongoing battles, we see pervasive feelings of incompleteness and fear. We see how much our struggle with life has kept our heart closed.
This is a task for all of us. Individually and as a society, we must move from the pain of our speed, our addictions, and our denial to stop the war. The greatest of transformations can come from this simple act. Even Napoleon Bonaparte understood this when, at the end of his life, he stated, “Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit.”
Compassion and a greatness of heart arise whenever we stop the war. The deepest desire we have for our human heart is to discover how to do this. We all share a longing to go beyond the confines of our own fear or anger or addiction, to connect with something greater than “I,” “me,” and “mine,” greater than our small story and our small self. It is possible to stop the war and come into the timeless present-to touch a great ground of being that contains all things. This is the purpose of a spiritual discipline and of choosing a path with heart — to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us.
Jack Kornfield (1945 to pres., Clinical Psychologist
and Buddhist Teacher, Excerpted from “A Path with Heart”)
Real Love
Real love
comes with a powerful recognition
that we are fully alive and whole
despite our wounds or our fears
or our loneliness.
It is a state where we allow ourselves
to be seen clearly by ourselves
and by others, and in turn,
we offer clear seeing
to the world around us.
It is a love that heals.
~Sharon Salzberg
(1952 to pres., Co-founded
the Insight Meditation Society)
Love Someone
I find the best way
to love someone
is not to change them,
but instead, help them
reveal the greatest version
of themselves.
~Steve Maraboli
(1975 to pres., Behavioral scientist)
