I am increasingly convinced
that the word “prayer,”
which has become a functional and pious thing
for believers to do,
was meant to be a descriptor
and an invitation to inner experience.
When spiritual teachers invite us to “pray,”
they are in effect saying,
“Go inside and know for yourself!”
~Richard Rohr
(1943 to pres., Spiritual writer, and Franciscan priest)
The reason that remarkable stories of forgiveness
take our breath away
is that we instantly feel the liberation
in the lifting of boundaries,
the end of separation,
of “inside” and “outside.”
~Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker
(Zen teacher in the White Plum Asanga,
member of the Zen Peacemakers)
And our inexplicable love for this world,
our delight and grief –
what is that but the Cosmos
loving itself,
delighting in itself,
grieving for itself?
~David Hinton
(1954 to pres., poet and translator)
The worldly man asks God
for good health, money, and position—
all of which are perishable.
The man of God asks
for God alone.
~ Sant Darshan Singh Ji Maharaj
(1921–1989, founder and head of Sawan Kirpal Ruhani Mission,
Indian mystic Urdu poet, Master Saint of Surat Shabd Yoga)
We are separate and individual in certain ways,
and in other ways that separateness is a fiction.
And who we are is related to a whole
so much bigger than that small,
separate sense of self.
~Jack Kornfield
(1945 to pres., Clinical Psychologist
And Buddhist teacher)
We need to know at different times in our day
what element of mindfulness
is really helpful to us.
Is it investigative awareness?
Is it learning to reframe our perceptions?
Or is it learning to draw
on the extended family of mindfulness:
of kindness, compassion, and joyfulness?
~Christina Feldman
(1952 to pres., Teacher at Insight Meditation Society
and co-founder of Gaia House in England)
I asked a hundred painters
and a hundred poets
how to paint sunlight
on the face of life.
Their answers were ambiguous and ingenuous
as if they were all guarding trade secrets.
Whereas it seems to me
all you have to do
is conceive of the whole world
and all humanity
as a kind of art work
a site-specific art work
an art project of the God of Light
the whole earth and all that’s in it
to be painted with light.
~Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(1919 to pres., American Poet and Publisher)
Do not be scared of the world.
It’s hard to love the world
when we are scared of the world.
All the earth,
of which humans are made,
needs love at this time.
~Lyla June
(Dine Navajo musician, scholar,
and community organizer)
If you think you’re enlightened
go spend a week with your family.
~Ram Dass
(1931-2019, Mystical Bhakti Spiritual Teacher)
Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing
in the dense forest of your life
and wait there, patiently
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how
to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
~Martha Postlethwaite
(Minister, author, recovery counselor)
Thought for Today 