ON TALKING from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking.

And he answered, saying:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.

The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;

For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered when the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

¶p

Wisdom of life

I say: Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle. –Sun Tzu

From Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write, find out whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. 

Unending Love by Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another
We have played alongside millions of lovers shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell – 
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours
And the song of every poet past and forever.

Bryan Appleyard

We tell stories to ourselves; of our journey from birth to death, friends, families, who we are and who we want to be. Or public stories about history and politics, about our country, our race or our religion. At each moment of our lives these stories place us in space and time. They console us, making our lives meaningful by placing us in something bigger than ourselves. May be the story is just that we are in love, that we have to feed the cat or educate the children. Or may be it is about a lifelong struggle for salvation or liberation. Either way-however large or small the story- the human impulse is to make sense of each moment by referring it to a larger narrative. We need to live in a world not of our own making. 

Introduction to Daily Meditations by Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

The poetry of trees

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness. Kahlil Gibran

On Writing

If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avante-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigour, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.RAY BRADBURY

I

I am the taste of pure water and the radiance of the sun and moon. I am the sacred word and the sound heard in air, and the courage of human beings. I am the sweet fragrance in the earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature and the striving of the spiritual aspirant.

The Bhagavat Gita

Laurence Sterne on Writing

There are two sorts of eloquence; the one indeed scarce deserves the name of it, which consists chiefly in laboured and polished periods, an over-curious and artificial arrangement of figures, tinselled over with a gaudy embellishment of words, . . . The other sort of eloquence is quite the reverse to this, and which may be said to be the true characteristic of the holy Scriptures; where the eloquence does not arise from a laboured and far-fetched elocution, but from a surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty.

Ray Bradbury on Creativity

Creativity is a continual surprise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To give of one's self; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - This is to have succeeded.

On the death of the Beloved

By John O’Donohue

Though we need to weep your loss, 
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts, 
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being; 
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart. 
Your mind always sparkled 
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief, 
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names; 
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath, 
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes, 
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face, 
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory, 
Where we would grow lonely without you. 
You would want us to find you in presence, 
Beside us when beauty brightens, 
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth, 
Darkest winter has turned to spring; 
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart. 
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation, 
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind, 
And where we will never lose you again.