That point of rest has got to be in all of it. Even though you are active out there in the world, within you there's a point of complete composure and rest.

When the world

seems to be falling apart,

the rule is to hang onto your own bliss.

It's that life that survives.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 82

Or, the light within which is free from all suffering and sorrow

- Yoga Sutra I.36

We become sensitive to the subtle energies of the environment, and they become sensitive to us, because our senses are open to all realms.

Now we are able to judge conditions and time decisions properly in order to give new endeavors the greatest possible advantage for success. Because we are in tune with it, the environment becomes reflective in our decision making, shutting the door in our face or providing what we need to go forward.

- Sakyong Mipham

Ruling Your World, p. 158

It takes courage

to do what you want.

Other people

have a lot of plans for you.

Nobody wants you to do

what you want to do.

They want you to go on their trip,

but you can do what you want.

I did. I went into the woods

and read for five years.

The privilege of a lifetime is being

who you are.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 62

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

- Matthieu Ricard

Happiness, p. 19

The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects rest purely, without utterance. "Launch into the deep," says Jacques Ellul, "and you shall see."

- Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 35

The Nothing You Are Grasping

Do you still not know how little endures?

Fling the nothing you are grasping

out into the spaces we breathe.

Maybe the birds

will feel in their flight

how the air has expanded.

- Rilke

from the First Duino Elegy

A Year With Rilke, p. 255

translated by Macy and Barrows

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

excerpt from "The Summer Day"

from the collection House of Light

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

- William Stafford

from The Darkness Around us is Deep, p. 126