The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences... Make the smallest distinction, however and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things of things is not underrstood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

3rd Zen Patriarch
Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist (Yogic) ones.
All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

Thich Nhat Hanh
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us, the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein
Time was when I despised the body,

but then I saw the God within.
The body, I realized, is the Lord's temple
and so I began preserving it with infinite care.

Bhogar, 17th cent yogi

Success
"To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition,
to know even one life
has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Give up all questions except one: 'Who am I?' After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.

Discover all that you are not - body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that - nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.
Alan Watts
"The moral problem before us, is the liberation of our souls from the idea of personality; and the opening of the door to the life of the universal Self, which will enter our hearts, and rule them, once the personal idea is put out of the way. And there is no more potent weapon for combating the personal idea than the clear and lucid understanding that what we call our personality is, in reality, only one of many pictures in the mind, a picture of the body, held before our consciousness, viewed by it, and therefore external to it. If the personality is a picture in the field of consciousness, it cannot be consciousness itself; cannot be our real self; but must necessarily be unreal and transient."

Charles Johnston
The Flood of the Infinite through the top of the head

is not something you

can control.

It can be

fostered.
"Remarkable!
Everything is alive!"
Pythagoras
"We become
what we repeatedly do"
Aristotle

Wisdom

Wisdom comes only with mistakews,
Then only after deep reflection.
Noone was ever wise ahead of time.
Look at the crystal
from all sides and take no sides,
settle into no viewpoint.
Clear seeing.
If the non viewpoint lacks compassion,
if it lacks heart
the process isn't finished.

Tom Gillette

Annicca

Everyday bathe in the realization that every molecule, every cell, every atom, every neutron, proton and electron is ceaselessly rolling in change.A trillion trillion transformations every second moving by seamlessly. This perception of perpetual change is the opening, the door way to directly experiencing quantum reality, the Ultimate Ground of Being. It is essential to understand and then experience everything as an event. Otherwise, one is lulled into the erroneous belief of object permanence, the solidity of materiality, lost in the imaginations, plans and artifical contructs of serving one's personality.
.

Ten Stones

In

Out

Deep

Slow

Calm

Ease

Smile

Release

Present Moment

Wonderful Moment

.

Box of Rain

"Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before
Maybe you'll find direction
around some corner
where it's been waiting to meet you -
What do you want me to do,
to watch for you while you're sleeping?
Well please don't be surprised
when you find me dreaming too...

Its just a box of rain.
I don't know who put it there."

Robert Hunter

"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend." Theophrastus

"Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." William Penn

"Time is not a line, but a series of now-points." Taisen Deshimaru

"Use your time wisely. Develop your inner life, your connection to the eternal, before your time runs out." Pliny, the Younger
"After all is said and done, a human being's most powerful act is willing renunciation of self-interest."
Eknath Easwaran

"If you look for litter,
you find litter.
If you look for joy and happiness,
you find joy and happiness."

Tom Gillette May 11, 2005

"The service we render others
is the rent we pay
for our room on earth"

Wilfred Grenfell
Buddha in Glory
"Center of all centers, core of all cores,
almond self enclosed and growing sweet-
all this universe to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow
illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead."
Rainer Maria Rilke
The image of the Buddha is a reminder of our potential as human beings for going into stillness and discovering freedom on all levels of our being. A Buddha like mind, trained inward, is one of the goals of Yoga practice. Through the practice, the heart opens like a lotus and we awaken our capacity for love and compassion. The simplicity of the sitting Buddha calls us to a more enlightened state free from suffering and fear. It is a path free of dogma and extremism and results in inner peace even in times of great distress and hardship.
.

“The idea of forgiveness
is completely different
from the warm feeling of
forgiveness spreading
through your body.
Forgiveness takes away
your deepest pains.”
Tom Gillette Oct 12, 2006

"We put our hands over our eyes,

and weep that it is dark."

Swami Vivekananda