Heart of the World

“As long as I live, 

I'll hear waterfalls and 

birds and winds sing. 

I'll interpret the rocks,

learn the language of flood,
storm, and the avalanche. 

I'll acquaint myself with the

glaciers and wild gardens,

 and get as near the heart

of the world as I can."

- John Muir (1838 - 1914)

Anaesthetic of Familiarity

"There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways."

- Richard Dawkins (1941 - )

Time Doesn't Pass

"In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of."

- Paulo Coelho (1947 - )

Meditation

"Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense…. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind—to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Well Conceived Forms

"If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms."

- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

A Train of Moods

"Dream delivers us to dream, 

and there is no end to illusion. 

Life is like a train of moods

like a string of beads, 

and, as we pass through them, 

they prove to be many-colored lenses 

which paint the world their own hue..."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Silence

"The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find our self engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us."

- Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)