Reading Archive (Popular)
Unattainable Goal of Peace
Aung San Suu Kyi
[Nobel Lecture, June 16, 2012] The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether a...
Beyond The Conflict Of Inner Forces
Author Unknown
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.”It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – ...
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...
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?” ...
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...
What to Remember When Waking
David Whyte
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening...
Is the Universe Friendly?
Albert Einstein
"I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. &q...
We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For
Hopi Elders
You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered… Where are you living? Wha...
When Death Comes
Mary Oliver
When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when...
Serving Is Different From Helping And Fixing
Rachel Naomi Remen
In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how ca...
Everything Is A Miracle
Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one e...
The River Cannot Go Back
Kahlil Gibran
It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and village...
Man In The Glass
Bill Parcells
When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day Just go to a mirror and look at yourself And see what that man has to say For it isn't your father, mother...
Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste
Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and cle...
Pale Blue Dot
Carl Sagan
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The ag...
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 ...
To Have Without Holding
Marge Piercy
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the ...
Applying Realization to Relationships
Adyashanti
Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The reve...
Everyday Creativity
Ruth Richards
I’m rather good at maps. I’m also good at using a GPS device. But I forgot the maps and here we were, late afternoon, last day of vacation, my daughter my cousin and I, driving along a two...
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life
Dawna Markova
I will not die an unlived life I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loose...
Live the Questions Now
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive n...
Living from the Heart
Rick Jarow
When we are envious of somebody, it is because they are mirroring a place in us that does not feel abundant. After all, if you feel abundant, if you are overflowing, the symptom of abundance is that a...
A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
John O'Donohue
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight, The light in the mi...
Before You Know What Kindness Really Is
Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved,...
You Were Made For This
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another so...
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...
When You Don't Choose Love You Choose Fear
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler
If we could literally reach into you and remove all your fears – every one of them – how different would your life be? Think about it. If nothing stopped you from following your dreams, yo...
Contemplation Vs. Social Change
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Brother David: You can’t really be a contemplative, unless you also want to change the world. You want to change yourself, and that’s where the struggle comes in. By ch...
The Difference Between Natural and Unnatural
Masanobu Fukuoka
For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community. During those years I was heading in a straight line toward a "do nothing" agric...
Call Me by My True Names
Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, le...
The Japanese Word, Mu
Robert Pirsig
Yes and no…this or that…one or zero. In the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory that store...
My Work is Loving the World
Mary Oliver
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand...
We Were Made for These Times
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. ...
Giving Somebody Your Heart
Anonymous
In every interaction you have with another human being—doesn’t matter who—you always have two main choices. (The keyword is choice.) One choice usually leads to logical (b...
Why Do We Shout In Anger?
Unknown
A saint who was once visiting a river to take a bath found a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other. He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked. 'Why do people ...
A Spiritual Conspiracy
Author Unknown
On the surface of the Earth exactly now there is war and violence and everything looks horrible. But, simultaneously, something quiet, calm and hidden is happening and certain people are being c...
Staying In Your Own Business
Byron Katie
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. For me, the word God means "reality." Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that&rs...
Pablo Neruda's Greatest Lesson from Childhood
Lewis Hyde
Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, u...
Social Intelligence
Daniel Goleman
One day, late for a meeting in midtown Manhattan, I was looking for a shortcut. So I walked into an indoor atrium on the ground floor of a skyscraper, planning to use an exit door I had spotted on the...
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...
The Fallacy of Togetherness
Osho
Make friends with those who are on the path at least as much as you are. If they do not take you forward, at least they do not become a reason to move you backward on your quest. If this is not possib...
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...
Aliveness and Harmony
Christopher Alexander
A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in. [...] To be happy, and to be alive,...
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...
Everything Is Waiting For You
David Whyte
Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel aban...
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...
The Committee of the Mind
Thanissaro Bhikku
There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you's” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less...
Maybe, Said the Farmer
Author Unknown
Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said...