Zen Wisdom
When you handle rice, water or anything else, have the affectionate and caring concern of a parent raising a child.
— Zen Master Dogen
Zen Wisdom
When you handle rice, water or anything else, have the affectionate and caring concern of a parent raising a child.
— Zen Master Dogen
Catholic Wisdom
The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God's saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way.
- Thomas Merton in When the Trees Say Nothing
Psychological Wisdom
Imagine a world without pleasure. Life would appear colorless and humorless. A baby’s smile would go unappreciated. Foods would be tasteless.
— Robert Ornstein and David Sobel in Healthy Pleasures
Buddhist Wisdom
Nothing lasts, nothing can be counted on, everything changes. That is another way of saying that we can’t control anything in our world.
Everything is continually slipping away.
─ Lewis Richmond in Work as a Spiritual Practice
Literary Wisdom
It is good to renew one’s wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has made children of us all.
─ Ray Bradbury, American science fiction writer and screenwriter
Native American Wisdom
Beauty, in our eyes, is always fresh and living, even as God, the Great Mystery, dresses the world anew at each season of the year.
— Ohiyesa in The Wisdom of the Native Americans edited by Kent Nerburn
Mystical Wisdom
Our task is to offer ourselves up to God like a clean, smooth canvas and not bother ourselves about what God may choose to paint on it, but, at every moment, feel only the stroke of his brush.
— Jean Pierre de Caussade in Teachings of the Christian Mystics by Andrew Harvey
Philosophical Wisdom
Justice not only sees the place of everything, it feels the place of everything. Justice is that which knows what to do to restore things to their right place and knows when and how to do it.
— Jacob Needleman in The American Soul
Literary Wisdom
We walk though forests of physical things
. . . That look on us with affectionate looks.
─ Charles Baudelaire, French poet
Within all the spiritual traditions, short and sweet wisdom abounds: from mantras and blessings to 12-step slogans and proverbs, and more. As philosopher George Santayana once said: "To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired." In this blog, I will take up the quest for small seeds of spiritual wisdom, which can be found everywhere if we keep our eyes and ears open. More