Reading Archive (Popular)

Unattainable Goal of Peace

Aung San Suu Kyi

[Nobel Lecture, June 16, 2012] The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether a...

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1908K reads, 15 comments

He Who Accumulates Cannot Learn

J. Krishnamurti

It seems that communion is a very difficult art. To commune with one another over the many problems that we have requires listening and learning, which are both very difficult to do. Most of us hardly...

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404K reads, 21 comments

Beyond The Conflict Of Inner Forces

Author Unknown

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.”It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – ...

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404K reads, 105 comments

If You Really Pay Attention

Paula Underwood

When I was a little bitty kiddy, about five, my Dad began a process … anytime somebody came and said something to us, my dad would say, "You remember what he said, honey girl?” ...

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385K reads, 108 comments

Keeping Quiet

Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much. I...

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324K reads, 82 comments

Is the Universe Friendly?

Albert Einstein

 "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. &q...

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322K reads, 90 comments

What to Remember When Waking

David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening...

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321K reads, 35 comments

We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

Hopi Elders

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered… Where are you living? Wha...

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288K reads, 193 comments

When Death Comes

Mary Oliver

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when...

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285K reads, 75 comments

Serving Is Different From Helping And Fixing

Rachel Naomi Remen

In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how ca...

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257K reads, 61 comments

Everything Is A Miracle

Albert Einstein

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one e...

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252K reads, 64 comments

Man In The Glass

Bill Parcells

When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day Just go to a mirror and look at yourself And see what that man has to say For it isn't your father, mother...

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244K reads, 25 comments

The River Cannot Go Back

Kahlil Gibran

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and village...

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236K reads, 113 comments

Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste

Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and cle...

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233K reads, 35 comments

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The ag...

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223K reads, 39 comments

Processing Anger With An Open Heart

John Robbins and Ann Mortifee

Anger is an intense and primal expression of the life force, a burning flame that cannot be ignored. It is the psyche’s alarm system, demanding that attention be given to a limit or boundary of ...

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223K reads, 26 comments

To Have Without Holding

Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the ...

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220K reads, 63 comments

Applying Realization to Relationships

Adyashanti

Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The reve...

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211K reads, 17 comments

Everyday Creativity

Ruth Richards

I’m rather good at maps. I’m also good at using a GPS device. But I forgot the maps and here we were, late afternoon, last day of vacation, my daughter my cousin and I, driving along a two...

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210K reads, 50 comments

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loose...

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207K reads, 40 comments

Live the Questions Now

Rainer Maria Rilke

In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive n...

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203K reads, 30 comments

Living from the Heart

Rick Jarow

When we are envious of somebody, it is because they are mirroring a place in us that does not feel abundant. After all, if you feel abundant, if you are overflowing, the symptom of abundance is that a...

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199K reads, 13 comments

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight, The light in the mi...

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197K reads, 31 comments

Before You Know What Kindness Really Is

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved,...

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188K reads, 62 comments

Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.

Jonathan Franzen

When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wro...

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181K reads, 23 comments

When You Don't Choose Love You Choose Fear

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler

If we could literally reach into you and remove all your fears – every one of them – how different would your life be? Think about it. If nothing stopped you from following your dreams, yo...

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180K reads, 57 comments

You Were Made For This

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another so...

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180K reads, 66 comments

Contemplation Vs. Social Change

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Brother David: You can’t really be a contemplative, unless you also want to change the world. You want to change yourself, and that’s where the struggle comes in. By ch...

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179K reads, 15 comments

The Difference Between Natural and Unnatural

Masanobu Fukuoka

For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community.  During those years I was heading in a straight line toward a "do nothing" agric...

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178K reads, 21 comments

Call Me by My True Names

Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, le...

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175K reads, 34 comments

The Japanese Word, Mu

Robert Pirsig

Yes and no…this or that…one or zero. In the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory that store...

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163K reads, 16 comments

My Work is Loving the World

Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -  equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand...

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161K reads, 25 comments

Giving Somebody Your Heart

Anonymous

In every interaction you have with another human being—doesn’t matter who—you always have two main choices. (The keyword is choice.) One choice usually leads to logical (b...

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149K reads, 35 comments

Why Do We Shout In Anger?

Unknown

A saint who was once visiting a river to take a bath found a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other. He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked. 'Why do people ...

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148K reads, 77 comments

A Spiritual Conspiracy

Author Unknown

On the surface of the Earth exactly now there is war and violence and everything looks horrible.  But, simultaneously, something quiet, calm and hidden is happening and certain people are being c...

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148K reads, 55 comments

Staying In Your Own Business

Byron Katie

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. For me, the word God means "reality." Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that&rs...

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146K reads, 86 comments

Pablo Neruda's Greatest Lesson from Childhood

Lewis Hyde

Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, u...

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143K reads, 23 comments

Social Intelligence

Daniel Goleman

One day, late for a meeting in midtown Manhattan, I was looking for a shortcut. So I walked into an indoor atrium on the ground floor of a skyscraper, planning to use an exit door I had spotted on the...

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143K reads, 23 comments

Why Do Social Work?

J. Krishnamurti

Q:  "I want to do social work, but I don't know how to start."   Krishnamurti: I think it is very important to find out not how to start, but why you want to do social work at al...

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141K reads, 26 comments

We Were Made for These Times

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. ...

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140K reads, 47 comments

The Fallacy of Togetherness

Osho

Make friends with those who are on the path at least as much as you are. If they do not take you forward, at least they do not become a reason to move you backward on your quest. If this is not possib...

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132K reads, 30 comments

For the Traveler

John O'Donohue

Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in.   New strangers on other paths await. New places that have never seen you Will startle a little at your ent...

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124K reads, 43 comments

Aliveness and Harmony

Christopher Alexander

A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in. [...] To be happy, and to be alive,...

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119K reads, 57 comments

The Golden Eternity

Jack Kerouac

I have lots of things to share now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Eve...

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118K reads, 27 comments

Everything Is Waiting For You

David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama  as if you were alone. As if life  were a progressive and cunning crime  with no witness to the tiny hidden  transgressions. To feel aban...

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112K reads, 38 comments

Why Are We Running Out of Time?

Jacob Needleman

Technology itself is not the cause of our problem of time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause -- the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner b...

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110K reads, 2 comments

The Committee of the Mind

Thanissaro Bhikku

There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you's” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less...

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108K reads, 10 comments

Maybe, Said the Farmer

Author Unknown

Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said...

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107K reads, 32 comments