(via binnyyy)
(via binnyyy)
This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes
and in every motion and joint of your body.
—Walt Whitman from the preface to Leaves of Grass
Is that a girl or a boy? And you smile because today maybe you might just pass. But then you see their eyes register no facial hair, no knot in your throat, no bulge in your pants. They say it again, louder, tauntingly.
Is that a girl or a boy. This time they know the answer and they just want to see you squirm.
And you do.
And they snicker.
“IT” performed by Kavindu “Kavi” Ade.There are no words for the emotions that this video causes.
I cry every time I watch this.
(via freeelove)
“And what is a friend? More than a father, more than a brother: a traveling companion, with him, you can conquer the impossible, even if you must lose it later. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. It is a friend that you communicate the awakening of a desire, the birth of a vision or a terror, the anguish of seeing the sun disappear or of finding that order and justice are no more. That’s what you can talk about with a friend. (…)
What is death, when you come down to it? The closing of a parenthesis, and nothing more? And what about life? In the mouth of a philosopher, these questions may have a false ring, but asked during adolescence or friendship, they have the power to change being: a look burns and ordinary gestures tend to transcend themselves.
What is a friend? Someone who for the first time makes you aware of your loneliness and his, and helps you to escape so you in turn can help him. Thanks to him who you can hold your tongue without shame and talk freely without risk. That’s it.” —
Elie Wiesel, Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor (b. 1928), The Gates of the Forest: A Novel, Schocken, 1995.
(via amiquote)
(via parkstepp)
(via binnyyy)
If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death — or shall I say, death implies life — you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. So, say in Hindu mythology, they say that the world is the drama of God. God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, Satcitananda. Which means sat, that which is, chit, that which is consciousness; that which is ananda is bliss. In other words, what exists, reality itself is gorgeous, it is the fullness of total joy.
—Alan Watts — (via mysticmementos)(via mysticmementos)
(via exotikkka)
All these consequences — for others, for the world, and for ourselves — are our personal responsibility. Sooner or later, because of the unity of life, they will come back to us. Someone who is always angry, to take a simple example, is bound to provoke anger from others. More subtly, a man whose factory pollutes the environment will eventually have to breathe air and drink water which he has helped to poison.
These are illustrations of what Hinduism and Buddhism call the law of karma. Karma means something done, whether as cause or effect. Actions in harmony with dharma bring good karma and add to health and happiness. Selfish actions, at odds with the rest of life, bring unfavourable karma and pain.
In this view, no divine agency is needed to punish or reward us; we punish and reward ourselves. This was not regarded as a tenet of religion but as a law of nature, as universal as the law of gravity. No one has stated it more clearly than St. Paul: ‘As you sow, so shall you reap. With whatever measure you mete out to others, with the same measure it shall be meted out to you.’ —Eknath Easwaran (via adecentfellow) — (via mysticmementos)
(via mysticmementos)
The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.
—Leo Buscaglia (via nirvikalpa)
— (via mysticmementos)(via mysticmementos)
