The divine presence that we sense in sacred places is often reinforced by architecture and decoration that reflect our aspirations toward the heavens. A sacred place requires a clear spiritual focus and separation from its physical surroundings. The word "temple" (and the associated activity of contemplation) -- Latin templum --means a piece of land marked off from ordinary uses and dedicated to the divine. Sacred structures provide expressions of, rather than merely a shell for, numinous experience
~ from THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF THE SOUL by Jane Hope
I began to face death and its implications very young. I could never have imagined then how many kinds of death there were to follow, one heaped upon another. The death that was the tragic loss of my country, Tibet, after the Chinese occupation. The death that is exile. The death of losing everything my family and I possessed ... for we had been among the wealthiest and most famous in Tibet.
~ from THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING by Sogyal Rinpoche
The wisdom of the peoples of elder cultures can make an important contribution to the post-modern world, one that we must begin to accept as the crisis of self, society and the environment deepens. This wisdom cannot be told, but it is to be found by each of us in the direct experience of silence, stillness, solitude, simplicity, ceremony and vision.
