Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.
– Mother Teresa of Calcutta
O Lord
Open our eyes to your presence
Open our minds to your grace
Open our lips to your praises
Open our hearts to your love
Open our lives to your healing
And be found among us.
by David Adam, from Tides and Seasons, England
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
In the new year, I live one day at a time. Being in the present, I do not dwell on the past or the future. My fears, resentments, dislikes and negativity fall away as I grow and am renewed. God’s spirit flows through me and I am more aware of Him, as I try to live the way I believe God wants me to live.
Jeff, Redwood City
Religion is a path to God. Spirituality is also a path to God. However they have differences in approach.
“The essence of religion:
Fear God and obey God.
The quintessence of spirituality:
Love God and become another God.”
- Sri Chinmoy
Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness.
– Hans Selye
A rushing mind jumps to conclusions, causing stress. It is often going too fast to see events and people as they truly are. Such a mind is constantly on the move – desiring, worrying, hoping, fearing, planning, defending, rehearsing, criticizing. It cannot stop or rest except in deep sleep.
By slowing down the mind – the first purpose of meditation – much of this tension can be removed. Then we are free to respond to life’s difficulties not as sources of stress but as challenges, which will draw out of us deeper resources than we ever suspected we had. A one-pointed mind is slow and sound, which gives it immense resilience under stress. With a mind like this, we always have a choice in how we respond to life around us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A compulsive desire is like any other thought over which we have no control. It flows continuously: “I want that; I want that; I want that.” There seems to be no space between the thoughts. But when your meditation begins to deepen, two things happen. First, the thought process slows down. Second, you develop a new attitude toward desires – you begin to realize that you needn’t give in to the desire. You have a choice.
Now, when a very strong desire starts to overtake you, and your mind is just one long string of “I want that,” you catch sight of a tiny opening between the demands. It may be only a split second in duration at first, but in time it grows long enough for another thought, another kind of thought, to make itself known. “Hmmm,” we think, “maybe part of me does want that – but do I? Is it really in my long-term best interest to gratify this desire?”
Eknath Easwaran
An introduction to the Mind & Life Institute, describing its founding and mission of building a scientific understanding of how to cultivate a mind of compassion and wisdom. Speakers include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Adam Engle, Richard J. Davison, and Helen J. Neville. Narrated by Richard Gere.
The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers. – Arab proverb
Before words get past the lips, the first gatekeeper asks, “Is this true?” If the words get past the first gatekeeper, there is a second who asks, “Is it kind?” And for those words that qualify here too, the last gatekeeper asks, “Is it necessary?”
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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