"Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior"

"Until we can perceive reality as it is, without all the extras, meanings, and complications, we slumber through our days, dreaming our lives away in a reality of our own creation." (13)

"How different might our own lives look if we could remember that within all the people we meet--no matter how irritating their personalities at any given moment--stirs a soul like our own, yearning for the light?"

"The ignorant are like stones and the wise are like water. Stones do not change, they only break or wear down over time. Yet water remains the same as it adapts perfectly to the shape of its container; even when moving from ice to liquid to gas, its essential nature remains." (32)

Random Quotes

"Let it not suffice to be book-learned, to read what others have written and
to take upon trust more falsehood than truth, but let us ourselves examine
things as we have opportunity, and converse with Nature as well as with
books."
John Ray, 1660, The Wisdom of God

"Forgiveness is a position of power because it frees you from being slave to oppressive emotions."
-Anonymous

"True love hurts, it always has to hurt."
-Mother Teresa

"We are changing--we have to change--we can no more help it than the leaves can help going yellow and coming loose in autumn."
-D. H. Lawrence

"In the midst of winter I discovered within me an invincible summer."
-Albert Camus

Way of the Peaceful Warrior

"Meditating an action is different from doing it. To do, there is a doer, a self-conscious 'someone' performing. But when you meditate an action, you've already released attachment to outcomes. There's no 'you' left to do it. In forgetting yourself, you become what you do, so your action is free, spontaneous, without ambition, inhibition, or fear." (151)

"The birth of the mind is the death of the senses." (158)

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less." (162)

"The only thing you know absolutely is that you are here, wherever here may be. From now on, whenever your attention begins to drift off to other times and places, I want you to snap back. Remember, the time is now and the place is here." (162)

Poetry

Meditations: Metta

Beating wings drumming in the distance,
Golden wings that send their echo from afar.
As I breathe, a wave washes over me
Cleansing the coldness from my breath,
And retreating to seek new warmth--

Rising Again with fingertips
that permeate my body,
And caress my soul.
I exhale--
and they withdraw,
Leaving me the seasoned virgin.

Returning now to feathered fancy
and the fleeting song they sing,
I invoke the golden light.
Radiating invisible tendrils,
Spanning the plane of space
And bending time to find you.

In your sullen presence I mock
the movement of the wave,
Becoming now the prism.
Washing you with light.

Breathing again.
The vehicle of your peace.

Projecting and absorbing
In my now amorphous Self.
I watch the lifeless form lying on the beach.
And think on it with delight,
That I just might...
Leave the shell behind.

--Anonymous--