Spiritwalk Thought for Today

Archive/February 1999

February 1, 1999

There is the dual nature of the self:
The incomplete self and the complete self…
As humans, we are seeing from the perspective of the incomplete self.
The incomplete self is undoubtedly very important.
But if we attach to this incomplete self…
then we will never be able to experience the complete self.
We zen people say, if you believe in God,
this complete self means the same thing as God.
That is, it shares the same standpoint as God.

~ Joshu Sasaki Roshi

February 2, 1999

We’re all sleeping buddhas~
enlightened beings of perfect wisdom,

equanimity, and compassion,
who have yet to awaken to our own magnificence.
We don’t need to add anything to our state;

we only need to realize it.
Sooner or later the alarm goes off.
The clock radio we set in some forgotten aeon
blares the clear signal of Radio Free Buddha,
blasting the shackles of ignorance from our minds,
blowing away the morning cobwebs

that obscure our innate Vastness.

~ Dean Sluyter

February 3, 1999

This pure Mind,
Which is the source of all things,
shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection.
But most people are not aware of it and think that the Mind
is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels and knows.
Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing
They do not perceive the radiance of the source.

~  Huang Po

February 4, 1999

However young, the seeker who sets out
upon the way shines bright over the world.
But day and night the person who is awake
shines in the radiance of the spirit.
Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet.
Do your work with mastery.
Like the moon,
come out from behind the clouds.
Shine.


~ Buddha

February 5, 1999

So many people don't know how to inspire themselves.
Use everything that moves you:
music, walking by water, flowers,
photographs of the enlightened ones.
Inspiration helps so deeply in overcoming laziness,
summons what the Sufis call

the fragrance of the Beloved
into everything.

~ Andrew Harvey

February 6, 1999

When the five senses are stilled,
When the mind is stilled,
When the intellect is stilled,
That is called the highest state by the wise.

~ traditional, Katha Upanishad

February 7, 1999

More than all else,
Keep watch over your heart,
Since here are the wellsprings of life.

~ Proverbs 4

February 8, 1999

Your soul is a often-times a battlefield,
upon which your reason and your judgement
wage war against your passion and appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul,
that I might turn the discord and the rivalry
of your elements into oneness and melody...

But how shall I, unless yourselves
be also the peacemakers, nay,
the lovers of all your elements.

~ Khalil Gibran

February 9, 1999

Living in this marvelous reality ~ living in peace, is something we all want.
But I would like to ask: Do we have the capacity of enjoying peace?
If peace is there, will we be able to enjoy it, or will we find it boring?
To me, peace and happiness and joy and life go together,
and we can experience the peace of the divine reality right in the present moment.
It is available, inside us and around us. If we are not able to enjoy that peace,
how can we make peace grow?

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Wednesday, February 10, 1999

To transform the world,
we must begin with ourselves.
However small may be the world we live in,
if we can transform ourselves,
bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence,
then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationships with others.

~ Jiddhu Krishnamurti

Thursday, February 11, 1999

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
(Journal, February 11, 1840)

~ Henry David Thoreau

February 12, 1999

I looked around upon the world,
and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow
and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering.
And I looked for the cause.
I looked around, but I could not find it;
I looked within, and found there
both the cause and the self-made nature of that cause.
I looked again, and deeper, and found the remedy.
I found one Law, the Law of Love;
one Life, the life of adjustment to that Law;
one Truth, the Truth of a conquered and obedient heart.

~ James Allen

February 13, 1999

 

In developing a personal relationship with the Great Spirit,

you first pay attention to the fact

that you already have a relationship with Spirit.

Spirit is not something that you need to seek

or grab or go to Tibet to find.

Spirit lives in you;

It lives within your body, in every cell.
You can touch the Great Spirit

by touching your own aliveness.

All you need is a different attitude

about how big you are,

how deep you are,

how high you are.

You must be willing to own

that you are God;

even though you are

a minute part of the All That Is,

you are connected and one with it.

 

~ Brooke Medicine Eagle

February 14, 1999

Love ~ stronger than Death and harder than Hell.

 

~ Meister Eckhart

February 15, 1999

Love is Life.
All, everything that I understand,
I understand only because I love.
Everything is, everything exists,
Only because I love.
Everything is united by it alone.
Love is God,
and to die means that I, a particle of love,
shall return to the general and eternal source.

~ Leo Tolstoy

The unhappiness and suffering that we experience

arise through our inability to control our minds,

and the happiness that we wish to achieve

will only be achieved by learning to control our minds…

You can use Inner Science to educate each individual

to understand himself or herself,

to control his or her negative emotions and distorted notions,

and to cultivate his or her highest potentials of love and wisdom.

 

~ The Dalai Lama

 

Every being in the universe
is an expression of the Tao.
It springs into existence,
unconscious, perfect, free,
takes on a physical body,
lets circumstances complete it.
That is why every being
spontaneously honors the Tao.

The Tao gives birth to all beings,
nourishes them, maintains them,
cares for them, comforts them,
protects them, takes them back to itself,
creating without possessing,
acting without expecting,
guiding without interfering.
That is why love of the Tao
is in the very nature of things.

~  Lao Tzu

February 18, 1999

In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness,
so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world,
until its eye can learn to contemplate reality
and that supreme splendor which we have called the good.
Hence, there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing…

~ Socrates

~ The Gospel of St. Thomas

February 20, 1999

It seems to me
that one of the most basic human experiences,
one that is genuinely universal and unites –
or, more precisely, could unite - all of humanity,
is the experience of transcendence
in the broadest sense of the word.

~ Vaclav Havel

Sunday, February 21, 1999

February 22, 1999

As the twentieth century comes to a close,
we human beings find ourselves moving

through a significant time of transition.
The call grows stronger every day

to let go of our old, limited patterns of thinking
and behaving so that we can embrace the new,

more harmonious ways of living in the world.
We are being urged from within

to die to the past and be resurrected.

~ Yogi Amrit Desai

February 23, 1999

The first problem for all of us,
men and women,
is not to learn,
but to unlearn.

~ Gloria Steinem

 
February 24, 1999

 

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

~ Jellaludin Rumi

February 25, 1999

What is Truth?
A difficult question;
but I have solved it for myself
by saying that it is
what the “voice within” tells you.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

February 26, 1999

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions.
We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.

~ Daniel J. Boorstin


Emptiness is two things at once:
The absence of self and the presence of the Divine.
Thus as self decreases, the Divine increases.

~ Bernadette Roberts


The way of the Buddha is to know yourself;
To know yourself is to forget yourself;
To forget yourself is to be awakened by all things.

~ Dogen

February 27, 1999

All is God.
But some things are more God than others.

~ Ken Wilbur

February 28, 1999

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive ~
to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love…

~ Marcus Aurelius

[Next Meditations, March 1999 or return to Thoughts Archive]              [Search Spiritwalk]

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