Nature is impartial; it cannot be flattered by prayers. It does not grant any special favours on request. - Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera
Prayer is the sign of your weakness. Rely on your inner strength. You will be the winner. - Amit Ray
Prayer is the stimulant of the feeble. - Abraham Miller
Bad karma is the spiritual debt one has accumulated for one's mistakes from all previous lives and this life. It includes killing, harming, taking advantage, cheating, stealing, and more. On Mother Earth, when you buy a house, you take out a mortgage from a bank. This mortgage is your debt to the bank. You pay every month for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years to clear your financial debt. In the spiritual realm, if you have bad karma, you may have to pay for many lifetimes to clear your spiritual debt. - Zhi Gang Sha
Debts that must be paid ... that sums up the concept of karma. But I would add that karma is not a burden that you have to carry. It is also an opportunity to learn, a chance to practice love and forgiveness, a chance to learn lessons that are valuable to us. Karma offers us the chance to wipe our dirty slate clean, to erase the wrong doings of the past. - J. P. Vaswani
Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening? - Kahlil Gibran
All that affliction of the darkest kind ever can work to the true soul is to awaken it up to spiritual things, to open the clear eye, to make the spiritual reality the more real. If you rightly comprehend it, it only strikes that which is round about you, it only removes that which is outward and physical, but it leaves you all the same a greater and a better man for your trial. - E.H. Chapin
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. - William Henry Channing
I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men. - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. - Herman Melville
Did you Know …
… that your heart emits electromagnetic fields that change according to your emotions?
… the human heart’s magnetic field can be measured up to several feet away from the body?
… that positive emotions create physiological benefits in your body?
… that you can boost your immune system by conjuring positive emotions?
… that negative emotions can create a nervous system chaos, but positive emotions do the opposite?
… that the heart has a system of neurons that have both short and long-term memory, and their signals sent to the brain can affect our emotional experiences?
… in fetal development the heart forms and starts beating before the brain is developed?
… a mother’s brainwaves can synchronize to her baby’s heartbeats?
… the heart sends more information to the brain than vice versa?
… that positive emotions help the brain in creativity and innovative problem solving?
… positive emotions can increase the brain’s ability to make good decisions?
These facts were brought to you by the Institute of HeartMath Research Center where on-going research is being conducted to help explain the connection and the role of the heart in our emotion-based experiences.
A king asked a sage to explain the Truth. In response the sage asked the king how he would convey the taste of a mango to someone who had never eaten anything sweet.
No matter how hard the king tried, he could not adequately describe the flavour of the fruit, and, in frustration, he demanded of the sage, "Tell me then, how would you describe it?"
The sage picked up a mango and handed it to the king saying "This is very sweet. Try eating it!"
Monks, even if a monk should take hold of the edge of my outer garment and should walk close behind me, step by step, yet if he should be covetous, strongly attracted by pleasures of the senses, malevolent in thought, of corrupt mind, an purposed, templative, scatter-brained, his sense-faculties uncontrolled, then he is far from me and I am far from him.
Monks, if a monk should be staying even a hundred miles away, yet if he is not covetous, not strongly attracted by the pleasures of the sense, not malevolent in thought, not of corrupt mind and purpose, his recollection firmly set, attentive, contemplative, his thought be one-pointed, restrained in his sense-faculties, then he is near me and I am near him. - The Buddha
Nevertheless, my friend, I do not say that without reaching the world's end, an end of suffering cannot be made. For, my friend, in this fathom – long body with its sense impressions and its thoughts and ideas, I do declare to you, are the world and the origin of the world and the cessation of the world and likewise the way that leads to its cessation. - The Buddha
Scientist discovers what meditation does to you gut and brain.
Click on the link to read the article.
If you practice spiritual discipline for some time in a solitary place, you will find that your mind has become strong, and then you can live in any place or society without being in the least affected by it. When the plant is tender, it should be hedged around. But when it has grown big, not even cows and goats can injure it. Spiritual practices in a solitary place are essential. - Sarada Devi
The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. - Aldous Huxley
One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity. Connect with those around you today. Say, “I love you”, “I’m sorry”, “I appreciate you”, “I’m proud of you”… whatever you’re feeling. Send random texts, write a cute note, embrace your truth and share it… cause a smile today for someone else… and give plenty of hugs. - Steve Maraboli
It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money – for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name. - Pope Francis
God – if he really exist – is good, alive, self-conscious, and governs all things according to his benevolent and holy providence; but the world shows no indications of such a benevolent and holy Providence. This earth appears to be a hell, or at best a planet condemned – a sort of purgatory: it is filled with violence, tyranny and injustice, and yet God, if he exist, is absolute sovereign, and has willed that things should be as they are! – Therefore there is no God. - William Batchelder Greene
It was as if the universe itself stretched out its finger to touch me. And in touching me, singling me out, it only heightened my awareness of my own insignificance. That was somehow very comforting. When you confront the absolute indifference of magnitudes and vistas so overwhelming, the swollen ego of your own self-important suffering is diminished. - Joan D. Vinge
Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass. - Marcus Aurelius
Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity. - Wernher Von Braun
By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one made impure. By oneself only is evil stopped, by oneself is one made pure. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one can purify another.
Just as water cools both good and bad and washes away all impurity and dust, in the same way you should develop thoughts of love to friend and foe alike, and having reached perfection in love, you will attain enlightenment.
No matter how far out on the sea of suffering we’ve sailed, all that is required is to turn toward awakening. It’s never too late, but it takes that turning, and no one can do that for us.
If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.
Student: "Is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?"
Teacher: "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."
Student: "Then what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"
Teacher: "To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."
- Anthony de Mello
Karma is best expressed in popular phrases like, "what goes around, comes around" and "what you sow, you will reap." Karma has also been referred to as having a "boomerang effect" where the thoughts and actions that you send out into the world turn around and come back at you. In the New Testament, Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Karma goes a step further and dictates that "What you do unto others will come back to you." I think Jesus and the Hindus really had the same idea. Think about that the next time you want to say or do something nasty to someone else! - Carmen Harra
As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. - H. P. Blavatsky
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter. - Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory
The mysterious powers of the human mind – and man’s amazing psychic powers – operate under universal laws. These laws operate regardless of anyone’s lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance. - Unknown
All lives are so profoundly and intricately intertwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. - H.R. White
Although each of us obviously inhabits a separate physical body, the laboratory data from a hundred years of parapsychology research strongly indicate that there is no separation in consciousness. - Russell Targ
The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle. - Marcus Aurelius
Never think of any right effort as being fruitless - all right effort bears good fruit, whether we see results or not. - Unknown
I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. I have seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. - Hospitaller
I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in. - Bertrand Russell
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that it's modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. - H. L. Mencken
Disease is simply part of our bodies vibrating out of tune, says pioneering sound therapist Jonathan Goldman. ‘Every organ, bone, tissue and other part of the body has a healthy resonant frequency. When that frequency alters, that part of the body vibrates out of harmony and that is what is termed disease. If it were possible to determine the correct resonant frequency for a healthy organ and then project it into that part which is diseased, the organ should return to its normal frequency and a healing should occur.
Goldman firmly believes that, by creating sounds that are harmonious with the correct frequency of the healthy organ, we could all learn how to heal ourselves, bringing our bodies back into balance. He, along with other sound researchers, have been focusing most of their attention on the sacred chants of varying traditions, believing that the high-frequency harmonics that most of them share, could be having profound effects on both the mind and body.
The fundamental principle of Energy Medicine is that an underlying energy field generates physical, emotional, and mental behaviours or symptoms. If we change the energy field, the physical, emotional, and mental behaviours will also change. - Dr. John Beaulieu, ND, PHD
The key to getting the very best out of life lies in understanding and working with this energy. - Unknown
It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power. - Emma Goldman
Stripped of the opportunities for satire which organised religion cannot help but supply, the case for atheism has very little substance. - Bill Saunders
Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. - Richard Dawkins
Dharma is a Sanskrit word. In Buddhism, it is generally taken to mean the Teachings of The Buddha. There is no equivalent single word translation for dharma in western languages.
When you listen to the Dharma you must open up your heart and compose yourself in the centre. Don't try to accumulate what you hear or make a painstaking effort to retain what you hear through memory. Just let the Dharma flow into your heart as it reveals itself, and keep yourself continuously open to its flow in the present moment. What is ready to be retained will be so, and it will happen of its own accord, not through any determined effort on your part.
Similarly, when you expound the Dharma, you must not force yourself. It should happen on its own and should flow spontaneously from the present moment and circumstances. People have different levels of receptive ability, and when you're there at that same level it just happens, the Dharma flows. - The Buddha
Meditation will give strength to our purposes. Reason is the strongest when it is most in action. Now meditation stirs up reason into act. Before, it was a standing water, which moves nothing else when itself moves not; but now it is as the speedy stream which bears down all before it. - Henry George Salter
Mind without agitation is meditation. Mind in the present moment is meditation. Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes no mind is meditation. - Sri Ravi Shankar
Sitting silently, one should experience quietly all that is happening around and do nothing else. You are hearing sounds, listen to them silently; a bird is singing, listen to it silently; the breath is moving in and out, go on watching it silently – nothing else has to be done. - Osho
In an evolutionary context, the goal of the spiritual life is not peace; it’s perpetual development. Evolutionary enlightenment is about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it’s not a future that’s going to unfold by itself while we go back to sleep. It’s a future that we forge the hard way through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself. - Andrew Cohen
What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit-breath, life energy, that is why all true paths are essentially one path, because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spiritually does not make up otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive. - Matthew Fox
No piece of evidence – or lack of evidence – can either support or refute faith. Unfortunately, few people realize that. Some people search for proof of spiritual things in the material world. That is foolish and doomed, because nothing material has any bearing on anything spiritual. Spiritual truths can only be learned via spiritual means. - Bob Lonsberry
Though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. - Christopher Hitchens
I don't understand worshipping a god who denigrates women and whose 'true believers' feel it's their right to look down on anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do. - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
In the long run, when we get right down to the fundamental stuff of the universe, we'll find that there's nothing there at all – just no-things moving no-place through no-time. - James Blish
It is our station to live within laws that give us being, but offer of themselves no purpose or promise, no triumph as a species. The universe allows us a place in its systematic workings but only cares for the system itself, not us. - Gregory Benford
It may be – I hope it is – redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable. - William Golding
Excerpts from Buddhist texts.
A man may be an intellectual giant endowed with the power to perceive quickly and express clearly and accurately, but if he pays no attention to his actions and if he is only bent on fulfilling his own longings and inclinations at any cost he is, according to the Buddha, a fool, a man of inferior intelligence and he indeed destroys his own progress here and hereafter. - Unknown
We are the results of what we were. And will be the results of what we are. We must learn to let go of conditions and not try to oppose or resist them. Know your own body, heart, and mind. Be content with little. Don't go and hold on to emotions. - Unknown
Let me not pray to be sheltered form dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom. - Unknown
If you just sit around praying, nothing gets done. - Nora Roberts
If you pray for rain long enough, it does eventually fall. If you pray for flood-waters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. - Steve Allen
It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray. - Aesop
Karma refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). It is a doctrine and tenet of Buddhism. However, one doesn’t need to be a Buddhist to believe in it. The principle of cause and effect is happening everywhere in everyday life.
The doctrine of Karma, which is the great peculiarity of Buddhism and the main source of its moral excellence, is the complement of the doctrine of Transmigration. It is the teaching of Buddha "that there is no such thing as what is commonly called a soul." I quite agree with him in that "the real man is the net result of his merits and demerits; that a man is what he does, and the character of his acts depends upon his intentions." "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - James Platt
Universal law always follows a pattern. Everything that moves or grows has a cycle and trend. It is nature’s law that every natural or man-made growing organism grows to maturity, levels off, and dies – unless there is rebirth through new life, new blood, new ideas, or new activity. - Unknown
A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behaviour means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing – a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit. - Ken Wilber
Everything is vibratory in nature. Vibrations impinge on our outer senses, leading to perception and formation of realities. Perceptions and realities help us to understand the physical world about us. Colour, in its pure form as vibration, is an actuality. Colour, as we perceive it, is a reality. - Rosicrucian Digest
