Gratitude

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today,

at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little,

at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick,

at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”

Buddha

Freedom

"Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom."

Marilyn Ferguson

Talent

"Happiness is a how, not a what.

A talent, not an object."

Hermann Hesse

Be

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

Lao Tzu

Ourselves

"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it's always ourselves that we find in the sea."

E.E. Cummings

Protection

"Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.

For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you.

So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs,

and they will then be powerless to vex your mind."

Leonardo da Vinci

Shadows

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The game

"The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody."

Ram Dass

Peace

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Sri Chinmoy Ghose

Society

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

J. Krishnamurti

Joy

"He who binds to himself a joy

does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise."

William Blake

Dharma

"Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to

Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions;

they have not yet discovered that there are no

everyday actions outside of Dharma."

Zen Master Dogen

From Blossoms

"From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom."

Li-Young Lee

Warriors

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Patience

"Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.

Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Renunciation

"Leaving one's homeland is accomplishing half the Dharma."

Milapera

The Heart Sutra

"Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, practicing deep prajna

paramita

Clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty, transforming all

suffering and distress.

Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;

Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form;

sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness are also like this.

All things are marked by emptiness - not born,

not destroyed;

not stained, not pure; without gain, without loss.

Therefore, in emptiness, there is no form, no sensation,

thought, impulse, consciousness;

no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of thought;

no realm of sight to no realm of thought;

no ignorance and also no end ending of ignorance

to no old age and death and also no ending of old age and death;

no suffering, also no source of suffering, no annihilation, no path;

no wisdom, also no attainment. Having nothing to attain,

Bodhisattvas live prajna paramita

with no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, thus no fear.

Far beyond delusive thinking, they attain complete Nirvana.

All Buddhas past, present, and future live prajna paramita

and thus attain perfect awakened enlightenment.

Therefore, know that prajna paramita is

the great mantra, the wisdom mantra,

the unsurpassed mantra, the supreme mantra,

whcih completely removes all suffering.

This is the truth, not deception.

Therefore, set forth the prajna paramita mantra,

set forth this mantra and say:

Gaté, gaté, paragaté, parasamgaté, Bodhi Svaha."

Mind

"If you don't get what you want, you suffer, if you get what you don't want, you suffer, even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality."

Dan Millman

Experience

"Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you."

Aldous Huxley