Sandhi Institute

If you are patient in a moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow

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 loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live
so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came
to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense

Our experience of ourselves as something separate from the rest is a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

If you knew the secret history of those you would like to punish, you would find a sorrow and suffering enough to disarm your hostility.

The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual.  The next Buddha will take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.  This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth.

The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?