Year 2005 Archive
Here we archive
"Here's A Thought" items from the year 2005.
To return to the current year, click here.
Addional years' archives are also accessible from the
same page.
December 25, 2005
Don't wait for the Last Judgment.
It takes place every day.
December 18, 2005
One should accept the truth from whatever source it proceeds.
December 11, 2005
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
December 4, 2005
If you become holy, it is because God has made you so. You will not know it anyway.
November 27, 2005
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
November 20, 2005
Single is each being born; single it dies; single it enjoys the reward of its virtue; single it suffers the punishment of its sin.
November 13, 2005
What will one gain by merely quoting or hearing the scriptures? One must assimilate them. The almanac makes a forecast of the rainfall for the year, but you won't get a drop by squeezing its pages.
Sri Ramakrisha
in The
Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
November 6, 2005
Let me tell you how to love all equally. Do not demand anything of those you love. If you make demands, some will give you more and some less. In that case, you will love more those who give you more and less those who give you less. Thus your love will not be the same for all.
October 30, 2005
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggle within yourself -- the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us -- that's where it's at.
October 23, 2005
However dark the prospects, however intractable the opposition, however devious and mendacious the diplomacy of our opponents, we ourselves have to carry so clear and intense a picture of our common humanity that we see the brother beneath the enemy, and snatch at every opportunity to break through to his reason and his conscience, and, indeed, his enlightened self-interest.
Adlai
E. Stevenson
quoted in Abounding
Grace
October 16, 2005
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.
October 9, 2005
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
Rabindranath
Tagore
in Stray Birds
October 2, 2005
The full circle of spiritual truth will be completed only when we realize that, but for a destiny not fully understood, we might actually have been born in the other person's faith.
September 25, 2005
The principles of quantum mechanics require the cosmos to create a phenomenon like life that observes and contemplates. In this view, the universe would be impossible without something like us to observe it.
September 18, 2005
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
William
Blake
The Divine
Image
September 11, 2005
There is no possibility of arguing the existence or place of God, because God is not susceptible to the criteria which are available.
Idries Shah
in The Sufis
September 4, 2005
The Buddha himself said: "Whoever thinks of me, I am in front of them".
Quoted in The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying
August 28, 2005
Never be glad except when you look at your brother or sister with love.
Gospel of The Hebrews, 7
in The Complete Gospels
August 21, 2005
Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.
August 14, 2005
The purpose of labor is to learn;
when you know it, the labor is over.
The apple blossom exists to create fruit;
when that comes, the petal falls.
August 7, 2005
From the blossoming lotus of devotion, at the
center of my heart,
Rise up, O compassionate master, my only refuge!
I am plagued by past actions and turbulent emotions:
To protect me in my misfortune
Remain as the jewel-ornament on the crown of my head, the mandala of
great bliss,
Arousing all my mindfulness and awareness, I pray!
Jikme Lingpa
Tibetan Buddhist Master & Poet
See
here
July 31, 2005
Religion, which is the highest knowledge and the highest wisdom, cannot be bought, nor can it be acquired from books. You may thrust your head into all the corners of the world, you may explore the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Caucasus, you may sound the bottom of the sea and pry into every nook of Tibet and the desert of Gobi, but you will not find it anywhere until your heart is ready to receive it and your teacher has come.
Swami Vivekananda
in Vivekananda
- The Yogas & Other Works
July 24, 2005
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
July 17, 2005
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a 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. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being". I think it worked.
July 10, 2005
Hey, I've looked all my life for You,
Now You're here.
"All My Life"
Linda Rondstadt & Aaron
Neville
Lyrics by Karla Bonoff
July 3, 2005
The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'.
June 26, 2005
All beings by nature are Buddha,
as ice by nature is water;
apart from water there is no ice,
apart from beings no Buddha.
Hakuin Zenji (Hakuin Ekaku)
June 19, 2005
I am the One whom I love, and the One whom I
love is myself.
We are two souls incarnated in one body;
if you see me, you see Him,
if you see Him, you see us.
June 12, 2005
The fullness of truth seldom resides in one point of view and therefore we need to hold ourselves open to the possibility that our own perspectives will be enlarged by those of others with whom we disagree.
June 5, 2005
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
May 29, 2005
Where love rules, there is no will to power and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
May 22, 2005
Just as the devotee may choose the particular aspect of God he [she] feels most inclined to worship, so also he [she] may choose the particular kind of relationship he [she] wants to establish between God and himself [herself]. To Jesus, God was a Father. To Ramakrishna, God was a Mother. Brother Lawrence regarded himself as God's servant. The Wise Men of the East adored God as the Christ child. In the person of Sri Krishna, Arjuna saw God as a Friend, while Radha saw him as a Lover. Thus all human relationships may be sublimated through the practice of bhakti yoga [the path of devotion].
As for sin and disease, Christian Science says, in the language of the Master, "Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead". Let discord of every name and nature be heard no more, and let the harmonious and true sense of Life and being take possession of human consciousness.
Mary Baker Eddy
in Science
and Health
May 8, 2005
Whatever you do,
Whatever you eat,
Whatever you offer in sacrifice,
Whatever you give away,
And whatever you practice in the form of austerities,
Do it as an offering to Me.
Bhagavad Gita 9:27
May 1, 2005
All truths are easy to understand once they
are discovered;
the point is to discover them.
April 24, 2005
The Lord bless you and protect you!
The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!
The Lord bestow His favor upon you, and grant you peace!
Numbers 64-26
April 17, 2005
The five colors can blind,
The five tones deafen,
The five tastes cloy.
The race, the hunt, can drive men mad
And their booty leave them no peace.
Therefore a sensible man
Prefers the inner to the outer eye:
He has his yes, -- he has his no.
April 10, 2005
For I am God, and there is none else,
I am divine, and there is none like Me.
Isaiah 46.9
April 3, 2005
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Walt Whitman
Leaves
of Grass
March 27, 2005
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran
March 20, 2005
Folding his palms, he lifted them in prayer,
With gaze set eastward, that said visibly
to God, "For Thee and nothing else I care".
Dante Alighieri
The
Divine Comedy, Purgatory VIII:10
trans. Dorothy L Sayers
March 13, 2005
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
March 6, 2005
Qualify yourself with the qualities of God.
Sufi Saying
in The
Most Beautiful Names
February 20, 2005
Holy men are born on earth to show people the way to God. They teach differently. There are many paths leading to the same goal. Therefore, the teachings of all the saints are true.
Sri
Sarada Devi
in Holy
Mother
February 13, 2005
Give me a church or a religion that has one principle: Love one another as you love yourself, and I will belong to that church.
February 6, 2005
The realization that the body and mind are motivated by the intrinsic attributes of nature to perform actions will loosen your karmic bonds. Body, breath, mind, and soul are held together by the strings of the body. That is why, despite excruciating pain, people are still not able to leave the body easily. Attachment clouds the inner vision and thus the person fails to know that even though he has a body, he is separate from the body.
Swami Rama
quoted in At
The Eleventh Hour
January 23, 2004
We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Jalaluddin Rumi
in The
Essential Rumi
January 16, 2004
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
January 2, 2004
My aim is to agitate and disturb people.
I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast.
