In profound meditation, we drop below all and become concentrated on one thing and one thing alone: our true identity. In this absorption, this great gathering within, we break through the surface of consciousness and plummet deep, deep into our real nature.

What we discover cannot be put into words, but thereafter we are never again the same. With all our consciousness gathered to an intense focus within, the boundaries that seem to separate us from the rest of the world disappear. We are opened to a transcendental mode of knowing.

In this profound state all petty personal longings, all hungering and thirsting, all sense of incompleteness vanish. We discover, almost in every cell of our being, that deep within us we lack nothing. Our inner reserves of love and wisdom are infinite; we can draw on them endlessly and never diminish them.

- Eknath Easwaran

from Meditation

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. I did not want to live a life that was not mine; living is so dear.

- Henry David Thoreau

When we practice meditation, we stabilize the mind and try to reduce confusion. When the mind is agitated, it is more susceptible to self-absorbtion.

- Sakyong Mipham

Ruling Your World, p. 56

What you have to do,

you do with play.

Life is without meaning.

You bring the meaning to it.

The meaning of life is

whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p.16

On this path

effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure.

Even a little effort towards spiritual awareness

will protect you from the greatest fear.

- Bhagavad Gita

Chapter III, lines 40-44

Eknath Easwaran translation

Ultimately, we are merely observing the very act of creation.

The whole universe is expanding at ever increasing speeds out from itself. It's becoming something creative and new in each moment. Nothing is remaining the same; everything is in creative transition towards a new expression of itself.

In our tired and somewhat burdened lives we don't perceive the activity of life as a sense of creation itself.

We too in our lives are part of that universe. You are that universe. In fact, you are the center of the universe because the universe only has center. All things are the center.

There's no edge to the universe. It's creating the very space it's evolving into. We are moving into something that is inexplicably wondrous.

There is a need to honor past influences within us. The Buddha invites us into the body and whatever the body contains we have to work with. What the body contains is the scar tissue of what we have known or the abuse we have given it or the emotions that are locked. And as we enter the body the past begins to express itself.

What each of us takes ourselves to be is a residue of the past and a film that blocks the effervescent light of this creative force.

How can we bring this into the creative movement of the universe itself?

- Rodney Smith

Seattle Insight Meditation lecture, 9/13/2011

"Sleeping in the Forest"

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

- Mary Oliver

from Twelve Moons

What you have to do,

you do with play.

Life is without meaning.

You bring the meaning to it.

The meaning of life is

whatever you ascribe it to be.

Being alive is the meaning.

- Joseph Campbell

from Reflections on the Art of Living, p.16

Knowing others is intelligence;

knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,

you are truly rich.

If you stay in the center

and embrace death with your whole heart,

you will endure forever.

-tao te ching, #33

Stephen Mitchell's translation

If you want to shrink something,

you must first allow it to expand.

If you want to get rid of something,

you must first allow it to flourish.

If you want to take something,

you must first allow it to be given.

This is called the subtle perception

of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.

The slow overcomes the fast.

Let your workings remain a mystery.

Just show people the results.

-tao te ching, #36

Stephen Mitchell's translation

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on an kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living, p. 18

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

- Henry David Thoreau