To be enlightened is simply to be absolutely, unconditionally intimate with this moment. No more. No less.
Your world is a garden from which you remove weeds of doubt and replace them with seeds of hope.
We then call the one object, Cause; the other, Effect. We suppose that there is some connexion between them; some power in the one, by which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the greatest certainty and strongest necessity.
Is life an obstacle course? Sometimes it may feel like it. If you join the military you will be sent around an obstacle course of increasing degrees of difficulty. Why? To increase your strength and stamina and expand your creative capacity under strain. So it is on the course called 'life' - you can choose to perceive people, situations or events as obstacles, or you can choose to use these things to strengthen and expand your capacity to be creative and to find ways round, under, over. The choice lies in your perception. Obstacles are never ever 'out there', they are always in our own minds
Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skilful execution.. It represents
the wise choice of many alternatives
But my experience is that people who have been through painful, difficult times are filled with compassion.
When everything goes against you, and it seems you cannot hold on for a minute longer never give up then, for that is just the time and place that the tide will turn.
The whole point of transforming our heart and mind is to find happiness. We all have the natural desire to be happy and the wish to overcome suffering. This is a fact, so we can make it our starting point.
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
Change doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.
Occasions do not make a man either strong or weak but they show what he is.
If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf.
One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
