Humility Really Cannot be Considered a Virtue
Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Ego and pride are closely related, almost synonymous effects born of the same cause, ignorance of the relationship of the individualized sense of I with the world. (...) Although, graced by free will,...
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...
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...
The Gift of New Eyes
Rachel Naomi Remen
Many years ago, I had just given a talk on the messages, both positive and negative, that we convey to our patients without our awareness; sometimes with words but often with just our tone of voice, o...
Love Like Water
Mark Nepo
Water in its clear softness fills whatever hole it finds. It is not skeptical or distrusting. It does not say this gully is too deep or that field is too open. Like water, the miracle of love is that ...
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 ...
True Splendor of Science
Alan Watts
The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it ma...
Choosing Suffering over Safety
Bonnie Rose
“Can you walk, sweetheart?” I say these words to our dog Stella who is dying. It’s time for breakfast and if she walks from our bed to the kitchen, maybe that will be a sign. Maybe s...
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...
The Pleasure of Serving
Gabriela Mistral
All of nature is a yearning for service: The cloud serves, and the wind, and the furrow. Where there is a tree to plant, you be the one. Where there is a mistake to undo, let it be you. You be...
The Surrender Experiment
Michael Singer
Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life&rsqu...
Effects of Adversity
Eranda Jayawickreme
Adversity may help people distinguish between events they can really control by changing their environment versus uncontrollable events. While they cannot change the environment in the latter case, th...