The outer work

The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small.

The cause of our wonder

We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

A consequence of what we have become

We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become.

The truth of one's Self can be discovered in everyday life. To live with care and kindness is all that is necessary. The rest reveals itself in due time. The commonplace and God are not distinct.

Twilight of the Self

My heart is solitary now.
It finds no companionship anywhere
And no wish to find any.

My sole desire is You,
And You are always absent.

Can one love absence so intensely
That even your presence
Seems like an intrusion?

I move around in aimless circles.
Rituals and sacred symbols,
Once treasured symbols of relating to You
Are meaningless to me now.

They communicate nothing of You,
Who are everything to me
But for whom and from whom I feel no love,
Nor hope of fulfillment.

The stream of events both inside and outside

The Witness is that which is capable of observing the flow of what is—without interfering with it, commenting on it, or in any way manipulating it. The Witness simply observes the stream of events both inside and outside the mind-body in a creatively detached fashion, since, in fact, the Witness is not exclusively identified with either. In other words, when you realize that your mind and your body can be perceived objectively, you spontaneously realize that they cannot constitute a real subjective self. As Huang Po put it, "Let me remind you, the perceived cannot perceive."

Room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Stuff your eyes with wonder

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Biophilia

Biophilia (noun): A hypothetical human tendency to interact or be closely associated with other forms of life in nature: A desire or tendency to commune with nature

Doing something small today

Everyone talks about how traveling back in time and doing something small, like killing a butterfly, can drastically change the present, but no one talks about how doing something small today, like planting a tree, can drastically change the future.

Tip toward an enduring good

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

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