perspective

"...hitched to everything else..."

When we try to pick out anything by itself,

we find it is hitched to everything else in the universe.

~John Muir

The light that shines higher than heaven

is the very same light we have within us ...

There is nothing in the universe

that is not myself.

~Upanishads

There is no need for temples,

no need for complicated philosophy.

Our own brain,

our own heart,

is our temple.

Our philosophy is kindness.

~Dalai Lama

(I like the Dalai Lama's quote because the above image reminded me both of temples (Middle Eastern) and of brain waves.)

 



'... a notion of self ...'

 

"... everything has to do with loving ..."

I am (s)he that aches with love;

Does the earth gravitate?

Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?

So the body of me to all I meet or know.

~Walt Whitman

A night full of talking that hurts,

My worst held-back secrets;

Everything has to do with loving and not loving.

This night will pass.

Then we have work to do, painstaking work.

Then the swan opens its wings.

~Rumi

... today ...

"We do not know how to resist the deceptions of too many persuaders."

~Abraham Joshua Heschel

... universe/self ...

Live the Self that fills the whole universe.

~Sawaki Roshi

The universe is in us in such a way ...

that everyone in the universe

is the universe.

~Nicholas of Cusa

The universe is a mountain

And you are its echo.

~Rumi

I saw light gleaming in the unseen.

I gazed at it continually,

until the time came when

I had wholly become that light.

~Abu'life-Hosain al-Nuri

"...existence pathology..."

"What is little known in our culture is that when the desire for truth, realization, and transcendence is not acknowledged within oneself, it results in pathologies like cynicism, alienation, meaninglessness, or addiction.  Not knowing that this is an existence pathology or how to deal with it, the mind turns to the old gratifications.  But since these gratifications are not what we really need, we end up in a vicious cycle of compulsively consuming more and more, yet feeling fundamentally unsatisfied."   (italics mine)

~Roger Walsh