Present Moment, Only Moment: Reminders
Let the soul be happy in the present, and refuse to worry about what will come later.–Horace, Odes You only live once. Keep yourself in the present. The past is gone, and the future is…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
For Whom Are We Living?
If we live only for ourselves, as most of us are conditioned to do, we will plunge ourselves and all those around us into misery. There is no human being who, once he develops this…
Up to Me
Buddhist nontheism teaches us that no one else is going to liberate us. We are each responsible for our own liberation. Thus, self-self-liberation first is most important because without self-self-liberation true compassion, the fuel to…
A Classic Is a Book That Has Never Finished Saying What It Has to Say
The moral compass of Les Misérables thus spreads far beyond the history, geography, politics and economics of the world in which its story is set. The novel achieves the extraordinary feat of being at the…
Dear Anya
Thank you for your cool list of queries which I saw after I got back from vacation at Blue-Eye, Missouri! I will start with an easy one: “Favorite Book”— The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevskyas translated by…
Get to Work
Work on reducing your likes and dislikes, not only in personal relationships but in everything….Try this with jobs and responsibilities: the nagging little things you have to do but just don’t want to. It’s…
Mirrors
CLEANSE THE MIRROR OF YOUR HEART AND YOU WILL SEE GOD. –Neem Karoli Baba, in Ram Dass, Miracle of Love, 249 The heart-mind of the ordinary person is like a dirty and stained mirror. One…
Getting Free
We are caught in the prison of the mind. If we are to escape we must recognize that we are in prison. If we think we are free, then no escape is possible.—George Gurdjieff, quoted…
Liberate Yourself by Examining and Analyzing
If we would only avoid deceiving ourselves, we would find out what to do, where to go, how to live, and do so with clarity. –Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited by Charles E. Moore Title…
Keep It Simple
The goal of human life is constructing an architecture of the soul. –Simone Weil, quoted in Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography