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ethics and philosophy

my thoughts are sometimes better expressed by others.....

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Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

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To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe,
to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it,
lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it
is a wonder beyond words.

Joanna Macy
American environmental activist, author and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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We create transformative,
resilient new realities
by becoming transformed,
resilient people.

Krista Tippett
(1960 to pres., journalist, author, and entrepreneur)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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You’re traveling on a journey
through another dimension.
A dimension not only of sight and sound
but of mind.
It is a dimension as vast as space
and as timeless as infinity.
It is the middle ground
between light and shadow,
between science and superstition,
and it lies between
the pit of man’s fears
and the summit of his knowledge.
A journey into a wondrous land
whose boundaries are that of imagination.
There’s the signpost up ahead-
your next stop:
The Twilight Zone!

Rod Serling
(1924-1975, writer and philosopher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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The art of soulmaking
is taking our lives in our hands and—
with all the love and discernment we can muster—
gently whittling away the parts
that don’t resemble the True Self.

Sue Monk Kidd
(1948 to pres., writer, feminist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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The most valuable learning is
not about memorizing facts and figures.
It is not about higher grade point averages
and accumulating degrees.
It is about life itself,
and its impact is on the heart.

Rodney Smith
(1947 to pres, Buddhist teacher, from Lessons from the Dying)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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It is good, every once in a while,
to let ourselves be stupefied by gratitude,
to cast upon ourselves a spell against indifference
by moving through the world with an inner bow
at every littlest thing that prevailed over the odds
of otherwise in order to exist.

Maria Popova

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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We are responsible
For the condition of the Earth.
We are the ones who are responsible
and we can change those conditions.
If we wake up,
it is possible to change the energy.
It is possible to change everything.

Hunbatz Men (Mayan Elder)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 1 week ago

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When we find our voice,
right speech leads to right action.
We all have something useful to say,
if only we have the wisdom
to know how and when to say it.

David Ryushin Bodney
(Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP, Professor of Law,
member of the Upaya Sangha of Tucson)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 1 week ago

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The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for.
And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

Barbara Kingsolver
Animal Dreams

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 1 week ago

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In some religions, prayer is undertaken,
not with the intention of influencing a deity,
nor with any hope of prayers being directly answered,
but in order to produce a harmonious state of mind.
Prayer and meditation facilitate integration
by allowing time
for previously unrelated thoughts and feelings to interact.
Human beings easily become alienated
from their own deepest needs and feelings.
Learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact
with one's own inner world
are all facilitated by solitude.

Anthony Storr
(1920 to 2001, British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

David Nightingale

Posts: 74

Location: Pierce County WA, Northwest and Sound

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posted 1 week ago

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A post by Pearl Sutton 7 years ago has taken me to a broad smile. Pearl’s post on “Brushcutting”, blended seamlessly with Sir Terry Pratchett’s Lady Sybil Rampkin-Vimes. “Do no harm, but take no shit”. This Pearl had painted across the front of her tractor. A context of rural illumination I greatly miss. While life can be hard we try all, in our way to advance our common equity. This is real strength. This lightens my heart. Thanks Pearl.

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal,
until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede,
and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.
An individual human existence should be like a river —
small at first, narrowly contained within its banks,
and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls.
Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede,
the waters flow more quietly, and in the end,
without any visible break, they become merged in the sea,
and painlessly lose their individual being.

Bertrand Russell
(18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970),
English philosopher, logician, and social reformer)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 1 week ago

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Neither by nature,
nor contrary to nature
do the virtues arise in us;
rather we are adapted by nature to receive them,
and are made perfect by habit.
The virtues we get by first exercising them.
So too we become just by doing just acts,
temperate by doing temperate acts,
brave by doing brave acts.

Aristotle
(384BCE to 322BCE Greek philosopher,
Book II of Nichomachean Ethics)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 1 week ago

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To restore the land
one must live and work in a place.
To work in a place
is to work with others.
People who work together in a place
become a community,
and a community, in time,
grows a culture.
To work on behalf of the wild
is to restore culture.

Gary Snyder
(1930 to pres, American Poet and Buddhist Teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless
mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it,
no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy
and hidden heart of it,
because in the last analysis,
all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace.

Frederick Buechner
(1926 to pres, American author and theologian)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 6 days ago

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Any time we want life to be different than it is
we are caught in impatience.
We lose our sense of humor
and self-pity, despair, and blame seep into the heart.
Gentle forbearance includes the spirit of forgiveness.
When we feel conflict with others,
understanding their suffering is the first step
in being able to communicate, forgive, and begin again.
The practice of forgiveness happens
when we are able to realize the underlying cause of our anger and impatience,
and this allows us to distinguish
between someone’s unskillful behavior
and essential goodness.
Serenity and calm develop
as we learn to accept imperfection
in others and ourselves.

~ Michele McDonald
(Vipassana meditation teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 5 days ago

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The heart stands for that center of our being
at which we are truly "together."
Together with ourselves, not split up into intellect,
will, emotions, into mind and body.
Together with all other creatures,
for the heart is that realm
where I am paradoxically not only most intimately myself,
but most intimately united with all.
In order to listen with my heart,
I must return again and again to my heart
through a process of centering,
through taking things to heart.
Listening with my heart
I will find meaning.

Brother David Steindl-Rast
(1926 to pres., author, scholar, Benedictine monk)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 4 days ago

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"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 3 days ago

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Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing like the ones
in the old stories…

you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests…
…Requests to stop what
you are doing right now
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life.

David Whyte
(1955 to pres., Anglo-Irish poet and philosopher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 2 days ago

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We can remind each other
of our freedom and our possibility.
We are so deeply interwoven
in the energy field of consciousness itself,
and when you know it,
whatever you do
becomes benevolent in some really deep way.

Jack Kornfield
(1945 to pres., psychologist, writer, Theravada Buddhist teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

M Ljin

gardener

Posts: 3053

Location: Zone 4b/5a

1818

I like...

posted 1 day ago

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I'm not saying I'm a Pollyanna, because I don't have a lot of faith in humanity, but I have a faith in humans.

-Rhiannon Giddens, folk singer & musician

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/21/nx-s1-5976700/rhiannon-giddens-hope-is-the-thing-with-wings

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.
Never our fault, always our responsibility

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Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

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I wish for a world
where we have a passion for compassion.

Carlos Santana
(1947 to pres., guitarist)
Samba Pa Ti Live in Mexico:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdwCIld3kE

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 10799

Location: a temperate, clay/loam spot on planet earth, the universe

4007

posted 5 hours ago

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Being authentic is the only pathway
to the deepest form of freedom.
It means opening to Spirit,
mustering courage
to move through the challenging process
of our life's conditioning.
We may encounter surprises
and ultimately experience astounding revelations
when we uphold our vision to live authentically.

Regina J. Dekker

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young