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ethics and philosophy

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

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In his “eight-point platform,” formulated together with George Sessions in 1984 while the two were camping in Death Valley, California, Arne Naess offers a convenient overview of deep-ecological principles. It runs as follows:

The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.

Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.

Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.

The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

From: Devall, Bill, and George Sessions, eds. 1985. Deep Ecology. Living As If Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith.

"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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The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

Wendell Berry

"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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Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and more potent hope becomes.
Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness, the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on all of us. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope's power. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Chris Hedges

"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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A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

"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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Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize
so that just by being,
just by shimmering at the meadow's edge
or floating lazily on a pond,
I could be doing the work of the world
while standing silent in the sun.

~Robin Wall Kimmerer
(1953 to pres., plant ecologist,
teacher of environmental science)

"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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Silence belongs to all of us—
it is who we are, it is what we are.
If we are to experience and embody
authentic peace and love,
if we are going to bring true healing
to our wildly violent and endangered world,
we are going to have to learn
to live within this essence
which joins us together
as brothers and sisters.

~Robert Rabbin
(author, self-awareness facilitator,
speaker, 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

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Perhaps the most radical act
of resistance
in the face of adversity
is to live joyfully.

~Ari Honarvar
(writer, visual artist,
Founder of Rumi with A View)

"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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Compassion is not a social facade.
Compassion is not a sham
designed to mask our essential self–centeredness.
Compassion is the emotion that links us
to those outside ourselves.
It is the capacity for outreach.
It enables us, it drives us,
to go beyond ourselves to the beating pulse
of the rest of the world.
Compassion, then, is a dimension
of what it means to be fully human.

~Joan Chittister
(1936 to pres., Benedictine nun, theologian, author)

"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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When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch.
That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.
Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.

Fred Rogers

"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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When the power of love overcomes the love of power,
the world will know peace.

Jimi Hendrix

"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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Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.,
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

"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

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This reminds me of a characteristic quote from Peace Pilgrim. I wonder—it perhaps was influenced by the MLK one?

“This is the way of peace: overcome evil with good,
And falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

https://www.peacepilgrim.org/translations

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

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Judith Browning

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Human beings are not our enemy.
Our enemy is not the other person.
Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice
in us and in the other person.
When we are armed with compassion and understanding,
we fight not against other people,
but against the tendency to invade,
to dominate, and to exploit.

~Thich Nhat Hanh
(1926 to 2022, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist 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

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I live surrounded by these other worlds,
not fully understanding why
our culture had to cut off all the inner worlds
from our consciousness,
why we have to live in such a bleak environment
in which even our dreams are censored.
And what does it mean to this present liminal time
when we no longer have angels to guide us,
nature spirits to help bring us back into balance
with the natural world and its patterns of biodiversity?

~Llewellyn Vaughan-Leej
(1953 to pres., Sufi Mystic)

"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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Sharing is the essence of teaching.
It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization . . .
Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self,
trapped in a soundproof chamber,
reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.

Bill Moyers

"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

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Judith Browning wrote:Sharing is the essence of teaching.
It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization . . .
Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self,
trapped in a soundproof chamber,
reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.

Bill Moyers

I wouldn’t say that this has been my experience exactly. There is certainly the benefit to sharing and teaching, and I hope that none of the following implies otherwise, as it relates to an excess. In my experience too much sharing of, too much reliance upon information between people doesn’t result in creativity, but in dogmatism, repetition and homogeneity. I feel like the characterization of “the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber,
reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility” is more characteristic of when people are far too reliant on words and ideas from others, out of touch with their own personal reality. In solitude we are able to touch a deeper source, the underlying reality of nature out of which knowledge of what is unknown comes to perception. From that we begin to see life itself rather than the narrow echo of human understanding.

I remember hearing something from Malidoma Patrice Somé about how the different medicine societies in his tribe would keep their secrets fiercely hidden, because it was the secrecy that made them powerful. Some secrets would leak out, naturally—it was about having a balance between exposed and hidden. I tend to agree that keeping secrets allows the secrets to stay connected with the original source in Nature, rather than being de-mystified and de-natured by human knowledge and words. It is a balance between the two extremes, and utter secrecy about everything might hurt more than it helps. Will have to find the quote…

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

Judith Browning

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thank you Maieshe.....
When I first read Bill Moyers' quote I was relating that idea to permies and the sharing of knowledge here to 'help change the world'...my very narrow take on his words I'm afraid.

I always appreciate your well said in depth thinking...causing me some brain exercise this sunday morning

"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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3208

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“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”

- Denis Waitly

"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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You have to remember one life, one death–this one!
To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death,
whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity.

Stephen Levine,
A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

"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: 10035

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If the sight of the blue skies
fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields
has the power to move you,
if the simple things of nature
have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.

~Eleanora Duse
(1858 to 1924, Italian actress)

"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: 10035

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Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.

Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

"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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We are overdosed on data
and underfed on the mysterious.
Our brains inflate
while our souls wither.
Constant interference by interpreting and explaining
can distance us from life itself.
God woos us into the wildness of unknowing
where we are tempted by deeper senses.

~Nancy Hiles
(director of Iona Center, in Healdsburg, CA,
an ecumenical center for the nurture of contemplative living)

"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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Living gratefully
is not something we aspire to one day.
It is what we do.
When we practice,
this doing shapes who we are,
who we are becoming,
and the life we lead,
transforming our way of being.

~Joe Primo
(CEO of Grateful Living and Good Grief)

"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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Within us and around us there is an invisible world;
this is where each of us comes from...
When you cross over from the invisible into this physical world,
you bring with you a sense of belonging to the invisible
that you can never lose or finally cancel...
When you enter the world,
you come to live on the threshold
between the visible and the invisible...
Because the invisible cannot be seen
or glimpsed with the human eye,
it belongs largely to the unknown.
Still there are occasional moments
when the invisible seems to become faintly perceptible...
Now you belong fully neither to the visible nor to the invisible.
This is precisely what kindles and rekindles
all your longing and your hunger to belong.
You are both artist and pilgrim of the threshold.

~John O'Donohue
(1958 to 2008, Irish poet, author,
priest, and Hegelian 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

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The moment we choose to love
we begin to move against domination,
against oppression.
The moment we choose to love
we begin to move towards freedom,
to act in ways that liberate
ourselves and others.

~bell hooks
(AKA Gloria Jean Watkins,
1952 to 2021., feminist, author, social activist)

"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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The most important project at this moment in history is to reclaim a social connection to the human persona, to move away from dehumanizing and otherizing in the direction of co-humanizing.

Gudjon Bergmann

"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

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Sometimes you have trouble deciding which quote.

‘If you build your house where the wind can blow it over, then let it go to pieces while you worry about how to spell Marmalade, what is likely to happen? Of course. Anyone knows that. Yet when Owl's house falls down, what does he have to say about it?
"Pooh," said Owl severely, "did you do that?"
"No," said Pooh humbly. "I don't think so."
"Then who did?"
"I think it was the wind," said Piglet. "I think your house has blown down."
"Oh, is that it? I thought it was Pooh."
"No," said Pooh.’

-Benjamin Hoff (and A. A. Milne), the Tao of Pooh

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

Judith Browning

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sometimes I wish we could give a post smiles and hearts and flowers in addition to thumbs up!

so here's to your 'tao of pooh'' Maieshe...

💜🏵️🥰🌼💜👍🌻

"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

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Thank you for the additional varied signs!

On the topic of eastern philosophy there is another quote that I love. It has many different versions but the one I remember goes something like, “Don’t look at my finger, look at the moon.” Different versions seem to originate from the Lankavatara Sutra, or Confucius. I don’t know if they came up with them independently or ended up getting mixed together or what.

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

M Ljin

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I may fill this page if I keep on reading:

Looking back a few years, we see that the first Bisy Backsons [“busy back-soon”] in this part of the world, the Puritans, practically worked themselves to death in the fields without getting much of anything in return for their tremendous efforts. They were actually starving until the wiser inhabitants of the land showed them a few things about working in harmony with the earth's rhythms. Now you plant; now you relax. Now you work the soil; now you leave it alone. The Puritans never really understood the second half, never really believed in it.

And so, after two or three centuries of pushing, pushing, and pushing the once-fertile earth, and a few years of depleting its energy still further with synthetic stimulants, we have apples that taste like card-board, oranges that taste like tennis balls, and pears that taste like sweetened Styrofoam, all products of soil that is not allowed to relax. We're not supposed to complain, but There It Is.

-Benjamin Hoff, ibid.

This reminds me of Alan Watts’ lecture on clothing:

Also of another thread on the Torah commandment for letting the soil rest: https://permies.com/t/192561/Sabbatical-Year

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

M Ljin

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Yes, another one.

"Say, Pooh, why aren't you busy?" I said.
"Because it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"Yes, but—"
"Why ruin it?" he said.
"But you could be doing something Important," I said.
"I am," said Pooh.
"Oh? Doing what?"
"Listening," he said.
"Listening to what?"
"To the birds. And that squirrel over there."
"What are they saying?" I asked.
"That it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"But you know that already," I said.
"Yes, but it's always good to hear that somebody else thinks so, too," he replied.
"Well, you could be spending your time getting Educated by listening to the Radio, instead," I said.
"That thing?"
"Certainly. How else will you know what's going on in the world?" I said.
"By going outside," said Pooh.
"Er ... well...." (Click.) "Now just listen to this, Pooh."
"Thirty thousand people were killed today when five jumbo airliners collided over downtown
Los Angeles..," the Radio announced.
"What does that tell you about the world?"
asked Pooh.
"Hmm. You're right." (Click.)
"What are the birds saying now?" I asked.
"That it's a nice day," said Pooh.

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

Judith Browning

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You are not a separate being.
You belong to the living body of Earth.
You are the Earth,
looking up at the stars.
You are the Earth,
becoming conscious of itself.

~Joanna Macy
(1929-July 19, 2025, environmental activist, author,
scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory,
and deep ecology)

RIP💜

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Macy

"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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“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.
The bamboozle has captured us.
It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.
Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

"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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Being a global citizen means appreciating our shared humanity no matter what nation you call home.

Rohit Bhargava,
Beyond Diversity

"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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The test of our progress is not whether we add more
to the abundance of those who have much;
it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"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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Beneath the surface
of our perceived limitations,
suffering, and unhappiness
lies a pure, clarified nature.
By connecting with this essence,
we can blossom into limitless compassion,
love, and skillful action,
interacting with others and the world
in a more free, open, and fluid way.

~Scott Tusa
(Buddhist monk and 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: 10035

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

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posted 6 months ago

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children.

This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"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: 10035

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

3208

posted 6 months ago

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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful,
calls to each of us to make a new and serious response.
That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning.
"Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?"

Mary Oliver

"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: 10035

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

3208

posted 6 months ago

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Every time in the past when the pendulum has swung toward inhumanity,
it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice again.

John Pavlovitz

"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: 1770

Location: Zone 5

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posted 6 months ago

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My hut is roofed, comfortable,
free of drafts;
my mind, well-centered,
released.
I remain ardent.
So, rain-deva.
Go ahead & rain.

-Subhuti, enlightened disciple of the Buddha

Another ancient Buddhist poem attributed to Vanavaccha:

The color of blue-dark clouds,
glistening,
cooled with the waters
of clear-flowing streams
covered with ladybugs:
Those rocky crags
refresh me.

One can never be too kind to oneself or others.

There is no "i" in denial. Tiny ad:

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