When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an admirable machine. Therefore there is in the world an admirable intelligence, wherever it may be. Yes. This argument is old, but none the worse for that. from Voltaire’s Philosophical …
It is almost as hard for friends to meet as for the morning and evening stars. Tonight then is a rare event, joining in the candlelight two men who were young not long ago, but now are turning grey at the temples. To find that half our friends are dead shocks us, burns our hearts …
Build therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, it will unfold in all of its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. From Emerson, Nature.
I explore too, with pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which eternity is made. Henry David Thoreau.
Perform each action as if it were your last, without willfulness, or any passionate aversion to what reason approves, without hypocrisy or selfishness, or discontent with the decrees of Providence. You will then see how few things are necessary to master a smooth-flowing life. Marcus Aurelius.
The spiritual journey, if it requires anything at all, requires flexibility.
If you are curious as to why I own this classic Land Rover I call “Elsa,” you can read my very personal reasons here. The article is called El Segundo. But if you’d like to know a host of other reasons, more general, that perhaps you might be able to relate to, then watch this …
He looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. The world was beautiful, strange and mysterious. Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, sky and river, woods and mountains, all beautiful, all mysterious and enchanting, and in the midst of it, he, Siddhartha, the awakened one, on the way …