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The bamboo shadows
Sweep the steps
But raise no dust.
When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us, thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing happens.
True religion is the establishment by man of such a relationship to the Infinite Life around him, which, while connecting his life with Infinite Life, and directing his actions, is also in agreement with his reason and with human knowledge.
So God most high has said, “When I love a servant, I am his ear, so that he hears by me; I am his eye, so that he sees by me; and I am his tongue, so that he speaks by me.”
In the presence of greater meaning all lesser meanings that fill our ordinary mind full to the brim, shrink to their true proportions, and cease to steal from us. For in the presence of greater meaning we are redeemed from everything small and trivial and absurd.
Be neither the slave of your impulses and sensations of the moment, nor of an abstract and general plan; be open to what life brings from within and without, and welcome the unforeseen, and give to your life unity, and bring the unforeseen within the lines of your plan. Let what is natural in you raise itself to the level of the spiritual, and let the spiritual become once more natural. Thus will your development be harmonious.
Consider, O discerning man, that you are the image of God and the bond of all creation, both of the heavenly and the terrestrial beings, and whenever you bend your head to worship and glorify God, all the creations, both heavenly and terrestrial, bow their heads with you and in you, to worship God. And whenever you do not worship and glorify Him, all the creations grieve over you and turn against you, and you will fall from grace.
It is only when everything, even love, fails, that, with a flash, man finds out how vain, how dream-like is this world. Then he catches a glimpse… of the beyond. It is only by giving up this world that the other comes; never through holding onto this one.
Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them.
Begin to search and dig in your own field for this pearl of eternity… and when you have found it you will know that all which you have sold or given away for it is as mere a nothing as a bubble upon the water.
Happiness does not come into being when you seek it. Happiness is a byproduct. It comes into being when there is goodness, when there is love, when there is no ambition, when the mind is quietly seeking out what is true.
Celestial as thou art, O, pardon, love, this wrong,
That sings heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.
The Light by which we see this world comes out of the soul of the observer.
Why then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash’d behold our works,
And call them shames? which are indeed nought else
But the protractive trials of great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in men.
We would be quite surprised if we knew what the soul sometimes says to God, who seems to take such great pleasure in these conversations that He permits the soul complete freedom, provided that it wishes to remain always with Him and rely on Him. And, as though He were afraid that the soul might return to created things, God takes care to supply it so well with all that it can desire that over and over it finds deep within itself a source of nourishment that is very savory and delicious to its taste, although it never desired it or procured it in any way, and without its having contributed anything on its part other than its consent.
The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy: their own self-love.
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure, you were created for Joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself… The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour… some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within… to a higher life.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
