 |
 The Human Heart
LIFE...And in the end, it is not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln
KINDNESS...Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa
GLORY...The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.
- Nelson Mandela
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoidance of danger is no safer in the long run than out right exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller
PERCEPTION...The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched...but are felt in the heart.
- Helen Keller
|
One day God got tired of people. They were always pestering him, asking for things. So he said, “I’m going away to hide for a while.” Se he gathered all his advisers and said, “Where should I hide? Where’s the best place for me to hide?”
Some said, “Hide on the highest mountain peak on earth.”
Others said, “No, hide at the bottom of the sea; they’d never find you there.”
Others, “Hide on the other side of the moon; that’s the best place. How are they going to find you there?”
The god turned to his most intelligent angel and asked him, “Where do you advise me to hide?”
The intelligent angel smiled and said, “Go hide yourself in the human heart. That’s the only place where they never go.”
- Hindu origin
|
| |
 |
Back to top |
 Divine Grace (The "always already")
The Fisher King
The story begins with the king as a boy having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he could become king. And while he's spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision.
Out of the fire appears the Holy Grail, the symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be the keeper of the Grail so that it may heal the hearts of men."
But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life of power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment, not like a boy, but invincible, like God. So he reached into the fire to take the Grail, and the Grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.
Now as this boy grew older this wound grew deeper until one day life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love. Or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die.
One day, a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. But being a fool, he was simple minded and he didn't see a king, he only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to sooth my throat."
So the fool took a cup from beside his bed and filled it with water and handed it to the king. And as the king began to drink he realized that his wound was healed. He looked at his hands and there was the Holy Grail, that which he'd sought his whole life. He turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How could you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" The fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."
- from the movie The Fisher King |
| |
|
Back to top |
 Death
Life beyond the body
frees us to embody the Beyond
Life beyond the mind
frees us to know the Unknown
Life beyond Death
frees us to die into the Undying
Dying to live are we
Reaching for What we never left
but only dreamt we did
The dream dies
leaving nothing in its wake
but us
- Robert Augustus Masters, in Darkness Shining Wild
The great message of the universe is not that you survive. It is that you are awakened in to a process in which nothing ultimately survives. We are always seeking to know in order to protect ourselves. We want to save ourselves and continue. And we cannot.
- Adi Da
We die, and we do not die.
- Shunryu Suzuki
The truly transformative death comes usually unbidden if not unwelcome, of itself, happening to us and in spite of us.
- John Weir Perry
|
With the arising of overwhelming fear the mind has no time to be distracted.
- The Tibetan Book of the Dead
They say that I am dying but I am not going away. Where could I go? I am here.
- Ramana Maharshi, just before his death.
Death is perfectly safe…Death, like birth, is not an emergency but an emergence.
- Stephen Levine
I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there
when it happens.
- Woody Allen
This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movement of a dance.
A life time is like a flash of lightening in the sky.
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
- the Buddha
|
Do not let these accounts of near-death experience, which are so inspiring, lull you into believing that all you have to do in order to dwell in such states of peace and bliss is to die. It is not, and could not be, that simple.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
The Being of Light engulfed me, and as it did I began to experience my whole life, feeling and seeing everything that had happened to me.
- Dannion Brinkley, recounting his near-Death experience
You are asking for truth, but in fact you merely seek comfort, which you want to last forever.
- Sri Nisargadatta
When death comes you will welcome it like an old friend.
- Dilgo Khyentse |
At every moment, whatever happens now is for the best. It appear painful and ugly, a suffering bitter and meaningless, yet considering the past and the future it is for the best, as the only way out of a disastrous situation.
- Sri Nisargadatta
In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.
- Sri Nisargadatta
A great sadhu in India had cancer and wrote me (before he gave his body to an operation that he knew was to be fatal):
“All is right that seems most wrong.”
- Sunyata
 |
| |
|
More to come... |
All writings by Kurt Treftz (unless otherwise quoted), copyrighted 2006 (or otherwise dated). All rights reserved. These writings may be shared on only a non-commercial basis unless specific permission has been granted otherwise. |
| Back to top |
| |
|
Wisdom Gallery – Quotes from various