Reading Archives (Author)
Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much. I...
Too Many Names
Pablo Neruda
Monday is tangled up with Tuesday and the week with the year: time can’t be cut with your tired scissors, and all the names of the day are rubbed out by the waters of the night. No one ca...
Sunrise in Laos
Pam Houston
I am a mountain girl, and my first love in Asia are the monasteries tucked between the snow-covered razor ridges of the high Himalayas. But I've been drawn south into these humid lowlands by the repor...
All We Can Do Is Share Ourselves
Panache Desai
So many of us believe that we have to do something. We have to take action in order to make a difference in the world. We must have a higher purpose, a mission, a profound calling. And while action ce...
Pilgrim In The Open Shore
Pancho Ramos Stierle
Today the clouds and ocean are indistinguishable the horizon vanished with the incessant rhythm this breathing feels synchronized with the larger lungs of Mother Earth and even with the galactic ...
Love Your Path
Paolo Coelho
1. The path begins at a crossroads. There you can stop and think what direction you want to take. But don’t spend too much time thinking or you’ll never leave the spot. Ask yourself the cl...
Happy Birthday, Dear Sister
Parag Shah
Happy Birthday, Dear Sister. Welcome to the festival of this world. I pray in silence on this day, That you are bestowed with the gift of Nothingness! That Nothingness which is full of space, ...
True and Native State of Being
Paramhansa Yogananda
Simplicity is not grinding poverty: It is not the polar opposite of wealth. To live simply is to pursue a quiet path of moderation. In a life of balance between opposite extremes lies inner happines...
Stand In the Tragic Gap
Parker Palmer
The bad news is that violence is found at every level of our lives. The good news is that we can choose nonviolence at every level as well. But what does it mean, in specifics, to act nonviolently? Th...
The Practice Of Soft Eyes
Parker Palmer
In a sacred landscape, with its complexities and convolutions, surprise is a constant companion: it lies just around the bend or hidden in the next valley, and though it sometimes startles us, it ofte...
A Life On The Ground
Parker Palmer
Question: ... the idea of having “a life on the ground”. Can you expand on what that means to you? That brings back a really important moment in my journey with depression, and in ...
My Misgivings About Advice
Parker Palmer
My misgivings about advice began with my first experience of clinical depression thirty-five years ago. The people who tried to support me had good intentions. But, for the most part, what they d...
A Circle of Trust
Parker Palmer
Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In t...
That Friend Walking Behind Me
Parker Palmer
Imagine that for many years a friend had been walking a block behind me, calling my name, trying to get my attention because he wanted to tell me some hard but healing truths about myself. But I -- af...
Habits Of The Heart
Parker Palmer
“Habits of the heart” (a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville) are deeply ingrained ways of seeing, being, and responding to life that involve our minds, our emotions, our self-images, o...
Two Types Of Heartbreaks
Parker Palmer
A disciple asks the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answer...
Organic Gift
Parker Palmer
Years ago, I heard Dorothy Day speak. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her long-term commitment to living among the poor on New York's Lower East Side - had made her one of my heroes. So i...
Knowing When to Improvise
Patricia Ryan Madson
A successful life involves both planning and improvising. Sometimes we actually do need a script. Those scripts that are working well for us (positive habits, for example) should be preserved and trea...
Cultivating Affirmation
Patricia Ryan Madson
This is going to sound crazy. Say yes to everything. Accept all offers. Go along with the plan. Support someone else's dream. Say "yes"; "right"; "sure"; "I will"; "okay"; "of course"; "YES!" Cultivat...
Substituting Presence for Preparation
Patricia Ryan Madson
Give up planning. Clear your mind instead of filling it. Don't spend your energy on preparing for the future. Redirect it to the present moment. Instead of packing, show up empty-handed but alert,...
Visionmaking Should be a Daily Activity
Patrick O'Neill
One of the most important responsibilities of every leader is to envision the future. Visionmaking should be a daily activity ... and deal with practices of inventing the fu...
Is It Really Worth It?
Patty De Llosa
It’s been difficult to accept that I’m often a battleground for several sides of myself, which seem to act in opposition to one another. Is there any solution to feeling so divided? Krishn...
Mighty in Contradiction: Love Powerfully
Patty De Llosa
As we see more deeply into our inner drives and defenses, we discover that the choices we are faced with aren’t all black and white. Life teaches us that our decisions aren't necessarily base...
Making a New Start
Patty De Llosa
Making a new start isn’t starting ‘again.’ There’s no ‘again’ about it. New is new. But by now I’ve learned how quickly I slip back into the old, so making ...
Inner World of Moods
Patty de Llosa
“Give me a place to stand on," said the Greek mathematician Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” He was talking about his invention of using pulleys and levers to raise ...
I Am Nothing
Paul Buchheit
What will you do if you're too tough to be a good woman, too sensitive to be a good man, too selfish to be a good husband, too lazy to be a good employee, too shy to be a good friend, too caring to be...
Love without Conditions
Paul Ferrini
You will find all kinds of methods to teach you “how to be”. But, as long as there is a method, you will be “doing”. I am telling you to drop all your methods.&n...
Equanimity: An Invisible Inheritance
Paul Fleischman
Gratitude isn’t merely an extra, an outflow of meditation. The deep peace of meditation gushes up from the realization that an infinite series of events have crystallized into this moment of equanim...
A Paradoxical Struggle
Paul Fleischman
The life of peace is like an international flight permitting only one handbag. You'll have to leave behind some of your cherished shoes and appliances. The international traveler, the hiker, and the...
Death is Life's Door
Paul Fleischman
(Note from the Editors: 'Sitting' here refers to seated meditation) Sitting enabled me to see, and compelled me to acknowledge, the role that death had already played, and still continues t...
Wonder of the Universe is Wondering In Us
Paul Fleischman
The universe is very big and very old. It was only discovered by us in the twentieth century. When you look up at the night stars you aren’t seeing it. Our Milky Way galaxy alone has billions of...
Why I Sit
Paul Fleischman
This morning, the first thing I did was to sit for an hour. I have done that regularly for twenty years, and have spent many evenings, days and weeks doing the same. I would like to know myself. It ...
The Endurance to Observe
Paul Fleischman
There is little I have heard from others -- and it is my daily business to listen -- that I have not seen in myself as I sit. But I also know the necessity of work, training and restraint. Dependence,...
I Am Interested In My Mind
Paul Fleischman
I am interested in my mind, and in my body. Previous to my having cultivated the habit of sitting, I had thought about myself and had used my body as a tool in the world, to grip a pen or to chop fire...
Sense Of Self Is An Essential Skill Of Mind
Paul Fleischman
Many articles in the Western press have confused the Buddha’s idea of “anatta,” the absence of an eternal soul, with the idea that meditation should rid you of your ordinary sense of...
The Listening Mind
Paul Gorman
Reckoning, judging, evaluating, leaping in, taking it personally, being bored -- the helping act has many number of invitations to reactiveness and distraction. Partly we are agitated because we so i...
Service
Paul Gorman & Ram Dass
Separateness and unity. How interesting that these root causes, revealed in the expereience of helping, turn out to be what most spiritual traditions define as the fundamental issue of life itself. ...
When Science Is The Arbiter Of Metaphysics
Paul Kalanithi
Although I had been raised in a devout Christian family, where prayer and Scripture readings were a nightly ritual, I, like most scientific types, came to believe in the possibility of a material conc...
If You Really Pay Attention
Paula Underwood
When I was a little bitty kiddy, about five, my Dad began a process … anytime somebody came and said something to us, my dad would say, "You remember what he said, honey girl?” ...
Two Drops Of Oil
Paulo Coelho
A merchant sent his son to learn the Secret of Happiness from the wisest of men. The young man wandered through the desert for forty days until he reached a beautiful castle at the top of a mountain. ...
Courage to Try the Impossible
Paulo Coelho
"You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow." The boy continued to listen to his hea...
A Portrait in Patience
Pavithra Mehta
Patience they said was a virtue. Only I wasn't ever quite sure why. I always saw her as a rather plain-faced girl with a sweet smile. Too sweet. She was wont to sit in a straight-backed chair. Legs c...
Live Like The Roar In A Lion's Throat
Pavithra Mehta
Do you live in your days like a forgotten ticket stub in someone's jacket? As if the show were behind you? As if you went out one evening to watch your life, and decided halfway through that it wa...
Practically Preposterous
Pavithra Mehta
"Well, I was just inventing a new way of getting over a gate -- would you like to hear it?" "Very much indeed," Alice said politely. "I'll tell you how I...
A Strange Predicament
Pavithra Mehta
When I stop to consider the facts they astonish me. There you are, couched in your own skin, and Here I am in mine. No matter how close We must each do our own living. Your heart cannot be persuad...
Freedom of Simplicity
Peace Pilgrim
Some seem to think my life dedicated to simplicity and service is austere and joyless, but these do not know the freedom of simplicity. I know enough about food to nourish my body properly, and I ha...
Living to Give
Peace Pilgrim
In my early life I made two very important discoveries. In the first place I discovered that making money was easy. And in the second place I discovered that making money and spending it foolishly wa...
Beatitudes
Peace Pilgrim
Blessed are they who give without expecting even thanks in return, for they shall be abundantly rewarded. Blessed are they who translate every good thing that they know into action, for even highe...
Four Purifications
Peace Pilgrim
Then I discovered that there were some purifications required of me. The first one is such a simple thing: it is purification of the body. This has to do with your physical living habits. Do you eat ...
The Four Relinquishments
Peace Pilgrim
Once you've made the first relinquishment, you have found inner peace because it's the relinquishment of self-will. You can work on this by refraining from doing any not-good thing you may be motivate...
From Peace: 12 Reflections On The Path
Peace Pilgrim
There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path. You can't get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone. Just take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few ...
Life Is Full But Not Overcrowded
Peace Pilgrim
In my mid life, I began to realize that it's as though we have two selves or two natures or two wills with two different viewpoints. Because the viewpoints were so different, I felt a struggle in ...
Staying Small To Stay Safe
Peggy Dulany
Somewhere along the line of human evolution, fears caused many of us (especially those who lost their link to the natural environment and came to live in crowded, stressful living conditions) to shrin...
To Be Continually Thrown Out Of The Nest
Pema Chodron
We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that's death. Seeking security or p...
Cool Loneliness
Pema Chodron
As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resoluti...
The Shenpa Syndrome
Pema Chodron
Someone criticizes you. They criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar smell. Once yo...
The Trick is to Keep Seeing
Pema Chodron
(The Tibetan word shenpa) is usually translated “attachment,” but a more descriptive translation might be “hooked.” When shenpa hooks us, we’re likely to get stuck. We co...
You Can't Get There From Here
Pema Chodron
When you sit down to meditate, you can bring to your practice the notion of the threefold purity: not being caught up with ideas about yourself, not being caught up with ideas about the practice, and ...
Learning to Stay
Pema Chodron
In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that...
Start Where You Are
Pema Chodron
We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves--the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities t...
Reaching Underneath Our Protective Shell
Pema Chodron
There's a slogan in the Mahayana teachings that says, "Drive all blames onto oneself." The essence of this slogan is, "When it hurts so bad, it's because I am hanging on so tigh...
Laziness As Our Personal Teacher
Pema Chodron
The path of awakening is a process. It’s a process of gradually learning to become intimate with our so-called obstacles. So rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could look into our l...
We Are Swimming in Miracles
Peter Kalmus
Chicago. I remember in high school, I went for a walk. I was going to a friend's house and I was walking past all these houses; it was the evening, sort of dark. In every house, there were blue fl...
The Simplest Meditation: Waiting
Peter Russell
For most of us waiting is not easy, often a bore. Waiting for a bus or train, we look for something to do to pass the time. Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, we idle away the minutes thumbing ...
Not Resisting Resistance
Peter Russell
The building where I used to run a meditation group was on the same street as a fire station; one could almost guarantee that sometime during the meditation a fire engine would come rushing past, sire...
Learning to 'Presence'
Peter Senge
When any of us acts in a state of fear or anxiety, our actions are likely to revert to what is most habitual: our most instinctual behaviors dominate, ultimately reducing us to our “fight &ndash...
What the Vision Does
Peter Senge
If your deeper intention is an inseparable part of how you are, it is not capable of attachment. You can seek to accomplish your intention. You live out your intention. It is like t...
Appreciating the Symphony of Experience
Peter Senge
In the movie 'The Truman Show', actor Jim Carey plays a man whose entire life is a television show, broadcast to millions, unknown to Truman himself. From his point of view, he is just living his lif...
Nowness Connects Everything
Phil Jackson
[Meditation] is what I do to start every day. It's a discipline and a setting of priorities. I'm not going to allow my mind to create situations, expectations and attitudes that may or may not be tru...
Zen Alarm Clock
Philip Toshio Sudo
Much as you want to roll over and go back to sleep, we have to start the day sometime. Whatever serves to stir us from our slumber -- the alarm clock, the light from outside, the dogs cold nose -- r...
Letter to A Friend in A Hurry
Pierre Pradervand
You are at a crossroads, sensing there are less worldly paths you can follow, paths that feed on profound inner peace, a more encompassing joy, ever-renewed freshness of vision and inspiration, a more...
The Gentle Art of Blessing
Pierre Pradervand
On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth, for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the very texture of the ...
Integrity Is A Quality Of Being
Pierre Pradervand
Integrity is a quality of being. It means holding on at all times to your highest sense of truth and your own vision, whatever the cost may be. It consists in resonating with the most intimate fiber o...
We Are Contextual Beings
Pir Aga Mir
Here is one of my central inquiries: If our spiritual and religious practices are not expanding our circle of empathy, compassion, love and care, what is their purpose? If they are not preparing us fo...
An Inborn Sense of Meaningfulness
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
As ordinary consciousness is gradually freed from the perspectives of everyday existence – thoughts, ideas, circumstances, emotions, physical events – the transcendent dimension begins to ...
Greatest Of All Religions
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Hazrat Inayat Khan said, "A study of life is the greatest of all religions, and there is no greater or more interesting study." There are two ways in which we may attain control over our ...
Autobiography in Five Chapters
Portia Nelson
1) I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost ... I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. 2) I walk down the same street. There...
Waiting To Be Found
Prem Rawat
Before a war begins outside, it starts inside. The war on the inside is more dangerous because it is a fire that may never be put out. Wars are being fought because peace is not being found within, ...
Something Worked
Prem Rawat
The next time you see a tree, observe and take note of this, if you can. That tree represents so much that was right. So much that is right. Somewhere, a seed fell to the ground, and that seed was r...