Sunday, February 28, 2010

Simplicity


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

C. W. Ceram

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Ignorance


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Ignorance … is not a passive state of absence – a simple lack of information: it is an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information.

Shoshana Felman, Psychoanalysis and Education

Friday, February 26, 2010

Friend


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Existential Illiteracy


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

To insist on describing ourselves as something we are not is to embrace existential illiteracy.

John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Religion & Politics


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Those who think religion and politics are not connected don't know much about politics, nor about religion.

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Being Happy


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know:
The only ones among you who will be really happy
Are those ones who will have sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer

Monday, February 22, 2010

Hiddennes


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Hiddenness is rarely sought, often imposed, and almost always, if assumed with humility and thanks, a sure path to wisdom.

Philip Zaleski forward to The Best Spiritual Writing 2010, edited by Philip Zaleski

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Compassion


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The true expression of nonviolence is compassion.  Some people seem to  think that compassion is just a passive emotional response instead of rational stimulus to action.  To experience genuine comapssion is to develop a feeling of closeness to others combined with a sense of responsibility for their welfare.

Dalai Lama, quoted by Don Cheadle in Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond

Saturday, February 20, 2010

History of the Hunt


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Until the lions produce their own historians, the history of the hunt will glorify only the hunter.

Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile


Friday, February 19, 2010

Subjectivity


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Subjectivity is not something that we wear like a badge of honour that can be taken out and paraded around. It is constantly with us, a garment that cannot be removed.

Alan Peshkin, In Search of Subjectivity

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Taste of Liberation


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so do all of the teachings of Buddha have but one taste, the taste of liberation.

Buddhist teaching shared by Jack Kornfield, "The Wise Heart" in The Best Buddhist Writing 2009

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Room for improvement!


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

You are perfect just the way you are.  And ... there is still room for improvement!

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen master

Monday, February 15, 2010

Year of the Tiger


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? ...

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The Tyger, Songs of Innocence & of Experience, William Blake

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Love


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Love is that flame that once kindled burns everything, and only the mystery and the journey remain.

Angeles Arrien

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Eternity


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.

Wendell Berry, XIII, Sabbaths 2005


Friday, February 12, 2010

Rewriting & rerighting


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Every issue has been approached by indigenous peoples with a view to rewriting and rerighting our position in history. Indigenous peoples want to tell our own stories, write our own versions, in our own ways, for our own purposes. It is not simply about giving an oral account or a genealogical naming of the land and the events which raged over it, but a very powerful need to give testimony to and restore a spirit, to bring back into existence a world fragmented and dying.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Evening Prayer


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The camel, at the close of day,
Kneels down upon the sandy plain
To have his burden lifted off
And rest again.
My soul, thou too should to thy knees
When daylight draweth to a close,
And let thy Master lift the load
And grant repose.

Anonymous


Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Artist


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The artist doesn't see things as they are, but as one is.

Anonymous

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Ideology


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The dominant group in any nation state often resorts to nostalgia, to mental or cultural ellipses, and to general forgetfulness in search of meanings and definitions that serve its own ideological needs of the moment.

Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett Jr., and Robert E. Hogan, Introduction to Memory and Cultural Politics

Monday, February 8, 2010

Lessen your load


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

The driver knows how much the ox can carry, and keep the ox from being overloaded. You know your way and your state of mind. Do not carry too much.

Zen saying

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Stories


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Stories go in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. It helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside and between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. Part of finding is getting lost, and when you are lost you start to open up and listen.

T. Tafoya, “Finding Harmony: Balancing Traditional Values with Western Science in Therapy.” Canadian Journal of Native Education

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Your Daily Life


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Your daily life is nothing else but an expression of your spiritual condition.

Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment


Like my Dad, I am a fighter and I am going to beat this.  ...  I am feeling good.

Jack Layton's remark at a press conference in Toronto on Friday, February 5, 2010, about his prostate cancer

Friday, February 5, 2010

Seeing with the heart


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
What is essential is invisible to the eye.

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Reaching Out


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Mountains can never reach each other, despite their bigness. But humans can.

Afghan Proverb

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Literacy


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the Book once the heart is opened and it has learnt to read.

Saadi of Shiraz, quoted in Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson


Monday, February 1, 2010

Becoming Political


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Originally uploaded by rchoephoto

We all become political when we realize that our lives are not bounded by the perimeters of self, family, and home, and when we feel and act from that realization.  A person is more than an individual, more than a self.

Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life