Spiritual Discipline

In our spiritual development we are often required to pull up roots many times and to close chapters in our lives until we are no longer attached to any material things and can love all people without any attachment to them. - Unknown

If you practice spiritual discipline for some time in a solitary place, you will find that your mind has become strong, and then you can live in any place or society without being in the least affected by it. When the plant is tender, it should be hedged around. But when it has grown big, not even cows and goats can injure it. Spiritual practices in a solitary place are essential. - Sarada Devi 

Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve. Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigour, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then, you will achieve your destiny. - Krishna 

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. - William Henry Channing

Food For Thought

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we

call the future. - Alan Watts

When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one - then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and canceling them out, one against the other, I take the course indicated by what remains. - Benjamin Franklin

The man who is slipshod and thoughtless in his daily speech, whose vocabulary is a collection of anemic commonplaces, whose repetitions of phrases and extravagance of interjections act but as feeble disguises to his lack of ideas, will never be brilliant on an occasion when he longs to outshine the stars. Living at one's best is constant preparation for instant use. - William Jordan

Life …

Life ...

… doesn’t cheat. It doesn’t pay in counterfeit coin. It doesn’t lock up shop and go home when pay-day comes. It pays every man exactly what he has earned. The age-old law that a man gets what he earns hasn’t been suspended. When we take that truth home and believe it, we’ve turned a big corner on the high road that runs straight through to success. - Basil S. Walsh 

… can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. - Annie Besant

… has to be an incessant process of repair and reconstruction, of discarding evil and developing goodness. In the journey of life, if you want to travel without fear, you must have the ticket of a good conscience. 

…will give you what you attract with your thoughts. Think, act and talk negatively, and your world will be negative. Think, act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results. - Michael LeBeuf 

… isn’t like a book. Life isn’t logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess. - Charles Colton 

… has a self-correcting mechanism – things that we once thought were terrible have a way of becoming stepping stones for new discoveries. - Raymond Soh

… does not consist either of wallowing in the past or of peering anxiously at the future. Life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now – this day – this hour. - Charles Macomb Flandrau

… satisfaction occurs most often when people are engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying. 

… that is free of attachment lives in the moment and makes no demand that the moment last. Life’s concern is not with the future but with the present. 

Good Sales

              An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings on display at that time. 

              “I have good news and bad news,” the owner replied. “The good news is that a gentleman enquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all fifteen of your paintings.” 

              “That’s wonderful!” the artist exclaimed. “What’s the bad news?”

              “The guy was your doctor.”

If ...

If all good people were clever
And clever people were good
The world would be nice than ever,
We thought that it possible could.

But somehow it’s seldom or never,
The two hit it off as it should
The good are so harsh to the clever
The clever so rude to the good.

- Elizabeth Wordsworth

Death

This might read like an article on Death, but it is actually a collection of quotes and excerpts put together. 

Avoiding talking, or thinking about death is not going to make it go away. We all come face to face with death at some point in our life, and the sooner we understand death, the better. 

People fear death and they live in some measure of denial, pretending that death is something that happens to other people. We don’t think about death enough, for if we do, we will know that there is nothing to fear about death, and perhaps we will be more appreciative of life then.

Death is the greatest of life’s teachers. It is only the ignorant and those who are afraid to live who fear it. The wise accept Death as their intimate friend and most gracious teacher. To be fully active an fully functioning as a person we must make death a life long friend.

             The most intensive contemplation of death will soften the hardest of hearts and pull down the barriers of caste, creed, race, pride and hatred for all of us are subject to the common destiny of death. Pride by birth, position, health and power, all must give way to inevitable death. 

              This contemplation would destroy all love for sense-pleasure and gives balance and a healthy sense of proportion to misguided senses of values. Truly this reflection would give strength, steadiness and direction to the erratic human mind which is constantly wandering without an aim. 

It is not death that we should fear. Rather it is the possibility of a life unlived that is the real tragedy. Perhaps the closer we come to understanding this, the more easily we will come to accept death, and the more fully we will learn to live here and now. - Leo Buscaglia

The single most important thing I've ever learned was that I'm going to die. For once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically - to promote a cause you believe in.

One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. - Joseph Campbell 

Happiness And Contentment

           No man can reach the state of perfect happiness unless he brings his coveting heart and mind under complete or proper control. So long as he seeks his happiness in the satisfaction of his desires for material gains, he will never find it. 

           In the first place he cannot obtain everything he wishes for. This is quite clear from our daily experience. What we can obtain is limited by certain conditions, which may be different according to different individuals and societies and under different circumstances. Some of us have more, others less, and a few may have a lot; still there is a certain limit to what we can obtain; and none of us can expect to obtain everything we wish for. 

           We can never be satisfied with things which we secure; for our covetousness constantly increases. Whenever we secure one thing which we desired, we tend to crave for yet the bigger and greater things in life. This goes on without end, for there is, indeed, no end to this desire. So long as we do not do away with covetousness, which is the root of the evil in this case, we shall find no rest. 

           A contented man will never complain of his poor conditions. Instead he adjusts his budget to conform with his condition. A dissatisfied man will find dissatisfaction even in heaps of riches. 

- K. Sri Dhammananda 

Success

Not in time, place, or circumstances, but in the man lies success. - Charles B. Rouss

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do. - Roy L. Smith

The man who has done his level best... is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure. - B. C. Forbes 

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. - Vernon Howard

The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success. - Irving Berlin

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. - Donald Kendall

The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success. - Orison Swett Marden

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. - Theodore Roosevelt

The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed. - Nelson Boswell

Three sentences for getting success: Know more than other, Work more than other; Expect less than other. - William Shakespeare

The basic success orientation is having an optimistic attitude. - John DePasquale

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing. - Abraham Lincoln

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do. - Thomas Edison

The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be. - Og Mandino

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself. - Napoleon Hill

Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen. - Phillip Adams

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much. - Unknown

Love one another but ...

Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not of one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone; Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. 

- Kahlil Gibran

Proverbs

These are short and concise.

Never give a child a sword. - Unknown

A wicked book cannot repent. - Unknown

Great hate follows great love. - Unknown

The watched pot never boils. - Unknown

Rome was not built in a day. - Unknown

Strike while the iron is hot. - Unknown

A miss is as good as a mile. - Unknown

Charm is more than beauty. - Unknown

A good deed is never lost.- Unknown

It is never too late to mend. - Unknown

Let bygones be bygones. - Unknown

Kindness begets kindness. - Unknown

A lazy man works twice. - Unknown

The sea refuses no river. - Unknown

Whatever will be will be. - Unknown

Charity begins at home. - Unknown

Once bitten twice shy. - Unknown

Better bend than break. - Unknown

Look before you leap.- Unknown

Pity is akin to love. - Unknown

Unity is strength. - Unknown