Reading Archives (Author)
Does Life Have A Purpose?
J. Krishnamurti
Questioner: Why do you maintain that Life has no purpose? If Life has no purpose, the individual life, even in pure being, can have no purpose either; because individual perfection can have a meani...
Truth is a Pathless Land
J. Krishnamurti
Truth is a pathless land. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along a...
A Path to Truth
J. Krishnamurti
When you speak of a path to truth, it implies that truth, this living reality, is not in the present, but somewhere in the distance, somewhere in the future. Now to me, truth is fulfillment, and to f...
Fear: Its Beginning, Middle and End
J. Krishnamurti
Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. Ther...
Mass Movement
J. Krishnamurti
We see throughout the world extremes of poverty and riches, abundance and at the same time starvation; we have class distinction and racial hatred, the stupidity of nationalism and the appalling cruel...
Where Skillfullness and Clarity Meet
J. Krishnamurti
We have become very skillful in dealing with our daily life; skillful, in the sense of being clever in applying a great deal of knowledge which we have acquired through education and experience. We ac...
How Can You Live In This World And Yet Be Innocent?
J. Krishnamurti
How can you live in this world and yet be innocent? First, be innocent and then you will live in this world, not the other way round. Be vulnerable, be tremendously vulnerable. You do not even unde...
Why Do Social Work?
J. Krishnamurti
Q: "I want to do social work, but I don't know how to start." Krishnamurti: I think it is very important to find out not how to start, but why you want to do social work at al...
Bedrock On Which We All Stand
J. Krishnamurti
Do you realize, sir, that you are the world and the world is you? The world is not separate from you and me. There is a common thread of relationship weaving us all together. Deep down we are all tota...
Listening Is A Great Art
J. Krishnamurti
You know, listening is a great art. It is one of the great arts we have not cultivated: to listen completely to another. When you listen so completely to another, as I hope you are doing it now, you a...
What Exactly Is Love?
J. Krishnamurti
Fear is not love, dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessiveness and domination are not love, responsibility and duty are not love, self-pity is not love, the agony of not being loved is...
A Key To End Sorrow
J. Krishnamurti
The demand to be safe in a relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. The seeking for security invites insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us ...
He Who Accumulates Cannot Learn
J. Krishnamurti
It seems that communion is a very difficult art. To commune with one another over the many problems that we have requires listening and learning, which are both very difficult to do. Most of us hardly...
Is There Righteous Anger Ever?
J. Krishnamurti
One of the most common expressions of violence is anger. When my wife or sister is attacked, I say I am righteously angry; when my country is attacked, my ideas, my principles, my way of life, I am ri...
Simplicity of the Heart
J. Krishnamurti
Simplicity of the heart is of far greater importance and significance than simplicity of possessions. To be&nb...
Every Sensation Comes to an End
J. Krishnamurti
I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously p...
Awareness is Profound Interest
J. Krishnamurti
The man who wants to improve himself can never be aware, because improvement implies condemnation and the achievement of a result; whereas in awareness there is observation without condemnation, witho...
Creative Revolution
J. Krishnamurti
To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no rev...
Four Seasons In A Day
J. Krishnamurti
If you have lived an experience fully, completely, have you not found that it leaves no traces behind? It is only the incomplete experiences that leave their mark, giving ...
What is meditation?
J. Krishnamurti
The question is not how to meditate, what system to follow, but what is meditation? The 'how' can only produce what the method offers, but the very inquiry into what is meditation will open ...
Be A Light Unto Yourself
J. Krishnamurti
To be aware is to watch your bodily activity, the way you walk, the way you sit, the movements of your hands; it is to hear the words you use, to observe all your thoughts, all your emotions, all you...
When I Say I Know You
J. Krishnamurti
When I say I know you, I mean I knew you yesterday. I do not know you actually now. All I know is my image of you. That image is put together by what you have said in praise of me or to insult me, wha...
Sorrow
J. Krishnamurti
Sorrow has to be understood and not ignored. To ignore it is to give continuity to suffering; to ignore it is to escape from suffering. To udnerstand suffering needs an operational, experimental appr...
What is Time?
J. Krishnamurti
Do you know what time is? Not by the watch, not chronological time, but psychological time? It is the interval between idea and action. An idea is for self-protection obviously; it is the idea of bei...
Addiction
Jac O'Keeffe
It seems that a believed thought (most often unconscious) underpinning addictions goes like this: ‘something outside of me can make me feel complete/happy or whole’. Experiencing extern...
The Golden Eternity
Jack Kerouac
I have lots of things to share now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Eve...
Stopping The War
Jack Kornfield
The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding and gradual training. Ongoing spiritual practice can he...
Only Passing Through
Jack Kornfield
Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek t...
Path With Heart
Jack Kornfield
In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: We must make certain that our path is connected with our heart. In the end, spiritual life is not a process of seeking or gaining some extraord...
Where We Are Is Our Temple
Jack Kornfield
Expanding our spiritual practice is actually a process of expanding our heart, of widening our circle of insight and compassion to gradually include the whole of our life. Being on earth here in human...
Moving The Rocks
Jack Kornfield
A writer I know began his practice with a well-known teacher many years ago. The writer didn't know much about meditation, but after some preliminary instruction he decided that enlightenment was for...
The Wisdom Of Uncertainty
Jack Kornfield
One day Ajahn Chah held up a beautiful Chinese tea cup, “To me this cup is already broken. Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.&...
The Poisoned Tree
Jack Kornfield
The maturity we can develop in approaching our difficulties is illustrated by the traditional story of a poisoned tree. On first discovering a poisoned tree, some people see only its danger. Their imm...
Touched by Pain of Life
Jack Kornfield
To live in the present demands an ongoing and unwavering commitment. As we follow a spiritual path, we are required to stop the war not once but many times. Over and over we feel the familiar tug of...
Beauty of True Simplicity
Jack Kornfield
The clutter of our lives binds us to the precious simplicity that surrounds us and within us. Too of ten we become possessed and imprisoned by the chains of our own accumulations. We live in fear of t...
Right Away is the Opposite of Now
Jacob Needleman
Some years ago, I was walking downtown San Francisco with a great friend and a learned Tibetan scholar. I asked him about one of the most striking ways that the Tibetans express the uniqueness of the ...
Mistake of Immense Proportion
Jacob Needleman
Since the beginning of recorded history, man has been haunted by the intimation that he lives in a world of mere appearances. In every teaching and spiritual philosophy of the past we find the idea th...
Why Are We Running Out of Time?
Jacob Needleman
Technology itself is not the cause of our problem of time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause -- the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner b...
A 9-Year-Old's Hidden Self
Jacob Needleman
The quality and strength of Lobsang's inner being was also brought home to me through an event that took place in my home. After one of his weekends working with our translation group, he stayed...
The Problem of Time
Jacob Needleman
It is necessary to realize that technology itself is not the cause of our problem of [not having enough] time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause -- the result of an unseen acce...
Time: A Mystery & Problem
Jacob Needleman
The question of our relationship to time is both a mystery and a problem. It calls to us from the deepest recesses of the human heart. And it bedevils us on all the surfaces of our everyday life. At...
Unlocking a New Sphere of Reality
Jacques Lusseyran
Being attentive unlocks a sphere of reality that no one suspects. If, for instance, I walked along a path without being attentive, completely immersed in myself, I did not even know whether trees grew...
My Freedom Is In Your Hands
Jacques Verduin
What if this virus had a hidden agenda other than spreading fear about how it might compromise our health? What if, hidden in its drive to be contagious there was another message, urging to be he...
Divine Darkness
Jaggi Vasudev
The word Shiva literally means that which is not. That which is, is existence; that which is, is creation. That which is not is Shiva. If you open your eyes and look around, if your vision is for s...
To Rule Or To Serve
Jaggi Vasudev
We have to perform action, so let us do it whole-heartedly and let us choose the form of action that we want to do. Now the choice is just this-- either to rule or to serve. [...] Every moment, a...
Giving and Receiving
Jaggi Vasudev
Giving and receiving is the basis of all transactions. No interaction can take place without these two. Nowadays, we are constantly trying to elevate one to a place of sanctity and the other to subord...
Make Your Life Into a Giving
Jaggi Vasudeva
Make your life into a giving. When I say a giving, it is not to be understood as an act. Giving as an act is a deception because, after all, what can you give? Everything that we have, including this ...
Ourselves We're Helping, Ourselves We're Healing
James Carse
I am touched by another when the distance between us is reduced to zero. I am touched only if I respond from my own center -- that is, spontaneously, originally. But you do not touch me except from yo...
Garden Teaches Us To Travel
James Carse
If indifference to nature leads to the machine, the indifference of nature leads to the garden. All culture has the form of gardening: the encouragement of spontaneity in others by way of one's ow...
Zen Of Archery
James Clear
In the 1920s, a German professor named Eugen Herrigel moved to Japan and began training in the martial art of archery, with a legendary archer named Awa Kenzo. Kenzo was convinced that beginners shoul...
Witnessing: A Form of Compassion
James O'dea
At this time a whole new configuration of science, spirituality and health is in movement. Many of us have come to enjoy fresh insights from quantum physics. How extraordinary that when we looked do...
Spontaneous Resonance
James O'dea
A friend recently described her spontaneous reaction to a police officer beating a black youth. The cracking sound of a blow to the youth instantaneously ignited a mighty “No!” as she surg...
New Year Shift
James O'dea
[A New Year] is upon us, and it will be a year when you and I and conscious people everywhere will need to advance the transformation of our institutions, communities, nations and the world. That tran...
The Cauldron Of Time
James O'dea
We who live and breathe in a body see the Creator’s signature as living gold: the gold of a magnificent sunlight splashed on the active rivers of our hearts’ generosity, pouring molten ...
A Higher Level Of Conscious Engagement
James O'dea
We live in an age of spiritual smorgasbord: People are mixing concepts, aphorisms, and insights from a broad variety of mystical and faith traditions. A blend of notions culled from many spiritual pat...
The Only True Voyage
James P. Carse
A garden is a place where growth is found. It has its own source of change. One does not bring change to a garden, but comes to a garden prepared for change, and therefore prepared to change. It is po...
An Ode To Low Expectations
James Parker
o there i was, staring at my mug of tea. It was 1993. I was sitting over a plate of eggs in the New Piccadilly Café in Soho, London. Things were not going well. As a man, as a person, as a u...
Mysterious Coincidences
James Redfield
"This is hard to explain," she said. "But the priest put it this way. He said the First Insight occurs when we become conscious of the coincidences in our lives." She leaned toward me. "Have you eve...
Our Greatest Mistake
James Redfield
Our greatest mistake, in my opinion is to think that human spirituality is somehow already understood and established. If history tells us anything, it is that human culture and knowledge are constant...
The Eagle And The Chicken
Jamie Glenn
A fable is told about an eagle that thought he was a chicken. When the eagle was very small, he fell from the safety of his nest. A chicken farmer found the eagle, brought him to the farm, and raised ...
To Be On A Spiritual Path
Jan Phillips
"To be on a spiritual path means to live mindfully, paying attention to the signs along the road and being conscious of our body — the vehicle we are traveling in — and of the needs a...
Blessing For The Longest Night
Jan Richardson
All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night. It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling...
Dropping Out, Like The Buddha
Jane Brunette
In an age where being super busy is a badge of honor and accomplishing tasks the greatest virtue, where some activists promote rallies by quoting Martin Luther King saying, ”For evil to succeed,...
Shaped by a Silky Attention
Jane Hirshfield
A request for concentration isn't always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements ove...
Looking With Head, Heart, and Hands
Jane Rosen
When I speak of seeing, I feel that the mind is open and in a relationship to the hands working, which opens a feeling of being more fully alive. That is what I call seeing. More than one part of you...
Living Lessons of Biomimicry
Janine Benyus
Biomimics are men and women who are exploring nature’s masterpieces -- photosynthesis, self-assembly, natural selection, and more–and then copying these designs and manufacturing processes...
Opening the Door to a New Humanity
Janis Roze
Over six billion different worldviews are walking on our earth. Every individual I-universe has one. Together we create and carry the vibrating, advancing, struggling humanity's creation – a moving,...
House of 1000 mirrors
Japanese Folktale
Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up ...
Practice Over Parables
Jason Garner
A Zen teacher once told me something interesting. We were meditating together at my home when my dog began to bark. He sensed my agitation and said in his rich Tasmanian accent, “Don’t be ...
Sympathy, Empathy And Compassion
Jay Litvin
Pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion. Each is received at various times by one in distress. They are the responses engendered by our misfortunes from those we encounter. And each feels different when r...
Being A Social Artist
Jean Houston
Let us explore the nature and development of our call to service in ways that link inner and outer realities, universal plans and passionate commitment. Let us ask what to do, where to go, how to take...
Only Stillness Can Change Us
Jean Klein
Your real self, your true nature is what is closest to you: it is yourself. Each step taken to reach it moves you further away from there. Attention is not inside nor outside, so you can never go to m...
Silence
Jean Klein
Silence is our real nature. What we are fundamentally is only silence. Silence is free from beginning and end. It was before the beginning of all things. It is causeless. Its greatness lies in the ...
Seeing Is Not Thinking
Jeanne de Salzmann
The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a ne...
Seeing is an Act
Jeanne de Salzmann
The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing -- the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirel...
Your Life Cannot Go Wrong
Jeff Foster
In reality, your world is set up so that nothing happens to you, but everything happens for you - for your awakening, for your growth, for your inspiration, for your exploration - even if you forget t...
Somehow I'm Always Held
Jeff Foster
In my short time on this planet, I have known great sorrow, plunged into the depths of oceanic despair, been thrown so deeply into my loneliness that I thought I would never return. I have tasted t...
A Walk in the Rain
Jeff Foster
As the story goes, I was walking through the rain on a cold Autumn evening in Oxford. The sky was getting dark; I was wrapped up warm in my new coat. And suddenly and without warning, the search for s...
Compassion: an Objective Form of Empathy
Jeff Weiner
As the Dalai Lama explains, if you are walking along a trail and come along a person who is being crushed by a boulder, an empathetic reaction would result in you feeling the same sense of crushing su...
This is the True Ride
Jennifer Welwood
My friends, let’s grow up. Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here. Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice. Look: Everything that can be ...
Difference Between Eah and Oh!
Jerry Wennstrom
After walking some distance, stopping for a cup of tea, and winding my way back to the apartment, I happened upon an older, homeless man in an alley. He was surrounded by several overstuffed plastic b...
My Stroke of Insight
Jill Bolte Taylor
One of the greatest lessons I learned was how to feel the physical component of emotion. Joy was a feeling in my body. Peace was a feeling in my body. I thought it was interesting that I could feel wh...
Honor the Seed
Jim Ewing
Honor the seed. The words seem so simple. This is knowledge that was passed down to me from my father. Yet, today, those simple words — and sentiments — are so forgotten. My father, a b...
Wherever you are Be there
Jim Rohn
One of the major reasons why we fail to find happiness or to create unique lifestyle is because we have not yet mastered the art of being. While we are home our thoughts are still absorbed with solv...
Spiritual Life Begins Within The Heart
Joan Chittister
The truth is that we spend our lives in the centrifuge of paradox. What seems certainly true on the one hand seems just as false on the other. Life is made up of incongruities: Life ends in death; wha...
Compulsion To Closure
Joan Tollifson
Somewhere recently, I heard or read the phrase, “compulsion to closure.” I can’t recall how it was used by whoever said it, but it feels like a great description of our human difficu...
The Three Narratives
Joanna Macy
When we come together for this work, at the outset we discern three stories or versions of reality that are shaping our world so that we can see them more clearly and choose which one we want to get b...
Being Acted Through
Joanna Macy
Here's a discovery we can make along our ecological Pilgrim's Progress: the discovery of what can happen through us. If we are the rocks dancing, then that which evolved us from those rocks ca...
The Shambhala Warrior
Joanna Macy
[A Tibetan Legend] "There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in...
I Create My Day
Joe Dispenza
"I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to s...
A Heart Wide Open
Joel and Michelle Levy
"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the...
The Rich Experience of A Quiet Mind
John Coleman
Entertainments, in whatever form one cares to take them, are necessary and indeed vital to happiness in the ordinary sense of the word. Both the body and the mind need rest and the batteries have to b...
The Power of Art
John F. Kennedy
Strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who ...
When Someone Deeply Listens To You
John Fox
When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water. When it balances on top of the brim, you are...
Four Stages Of Groundedness
John J. Prendergast
The ground is both a metaphor and a felt sense. As a metaphor, it means to be in touch with reality. As a felt sense, it refers to feeling our center of gravity low in the belly and experiencing a dee...
From Sincerity to Authenticity
John O'Donohue
One of the most vulnerable living forms in creation is human. At this moment, there are people in a doctor's office getting news that will change their lives forever. [...] There are people having acc...
For the Traveler
John O'Donohue
Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New places that have never seen you Will startle a little at your ent...
May Your Cup Always Overflow
John Paul Moore
I've never made a fortune, And I'll never make one now But it really doesn't matter 'Cause I'm happy anyhow. As I go along my journey I'm reaping better than I've so...
Letter on the Kitchen Table
John Ptacek
Dear Ego, I’m breaking up with you. No more circular discussions, no more eleventh hour recriminations. We’re through. This is not an emotional decision. Actually, it doesn’t feel ...
Processing Anger With An Open Heart
John Robbins and Ann Mortifee
Anger is an intense and primal expression of the life force, a burning flame that cannot be ignored. It is the psyche’s alarm system, demanding that attention be given to a limit or boundary of ...
Well-Knotted Rope
John Templeton
There is a scene in the marvelous movie Lost Horizons, in which a group of travelers become stranded in the Himalayas. They are met miraculously by a guide who provides them with warm clothing. The...
Parliament Of Subconscious Minds
John Yates
You may object to the idea that your sense of being a self is a mere construct. After all, it feels very real. How can we reconcile this powerful sense of self with the idea that we're just a coll...
Reclaim Your Chicken
Jon Bernie
Being does not require thought. Be fully attentive, gently attentive. Trust the natural ease of awareness. Make no effort. No trying, no doing, no defensiveness. Just gazing and seeing without resista...
Strong Enough To Be Weak
Jon Kabat-Zinn
If you are a strong-willed and accomplished person, you may often give the impression that you are invulnerable to feeling inadequate or insecure or hurt. This can be very isolating and ultimately ...
Voluntary Simplicity
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The impulse frequently arises in me to squeeze another this or another that into this moment. Just this phone call, just stopping off here on my way there. Never mind that it might be in t...
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness is considered the heart of meditation but its essence is universal and of deep practical benefit to all. In essence, mindfulness is about wakefulness. Our minds are such that we are ...
Shifting Your Relationship With Pain
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Have you ever noticed that your awareness of pain is not in pain even when you are? I'm sure you have. It is a very common experience, especially in childhood, one we usually don't examine or talk abo...
Painting the Inner Sistine Chapel
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Just as we need scaffolding to build a building, just as scaffolding was needed for Michelangelo and his apprentices to paint the frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so we need a certain kin...
Being Connected Within
Jon Kabat-Zinn
With our mobile phones and wireless palm devices, we are now able to be so connected that we can be in touch with anyone and everyone at any time, and do business anywhere. But have you noticed that, ...
We Are Weavers
Jon Madian
we are weavers woven into and from an ancient ever renewing fabric on an invisible loom more subtle than breath at one turn we pull to add to our own design to sing each life'...
Indigenous Perception in a Modern Body
Jon Young
I was similar to other suburban kids and was moving towards more involvement in sports when I happened to meet a person on a street corner who changed the direction of my life. He was a tracker who h...
Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.
Jonathan Franzen
When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wro...
Between Gift And Privilege
Jonathan Harris
I’ve been wondering: What makes something a gift? What is the difference between a gift and a privilege? What does it mean to be gifted? How can we help one another disc...
A New Energy Grid
Jonathan Harris
In a ceremony a couple years ago, I received a powerful teaching. I was invited to think of some things for which I felt grateful. Various people, items, and situations quickly came to mind. I was inv...
The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell
MOYERS: Why myths? Why should we care about myths? What do they have to do with my life? CAMPBELL: My first response would be, "Go on, live your life, it's a good life--you don't need mytholog...
Don't Side With Yourself
Joseph Goldstein
Through mindfulness, our hearts become spacious enough to hold the painful emotions, to feel the suffering of them, and to let them go. But it takes practice—and perhaps several different practi...
Remember
Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she...
Reality Of Actual Contact With Oneself
Judith Blackstone
The reality of actual contact with oneself is, at the same time, actual contact with our environment. It is a very interesting aspect of our nature that to heal the split between body and mi...
Inhabiting The Body
Judith Blackstone
To live within the body is to be in contact with the internal space of the body. To inhabit our hands, for example, means that we are in contact with the whole internal space of our hands. To be in co...
We Are Between Stories
Judith Thompson
We live in an exciting time. As cultural historian, Thomas Berry put it: "We are between stories." The old story -- bracketed on the one side by reductionist scientific materialism, and on t...
Fire
Judy Brown
What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail...
10 Principles of The Artist's Way
Julia Cameron
It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a fi...
On Love
Justin Faerman
I see so many people talking about the world's problems but so few talking about the solution to them: Love. It really is that simple despite how complicated we often try to make it. Pretty ...