“You never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.” Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2008) 89.
“The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove …” Albert Einstein, quoted in “Death of a Genius” by William Miller, Life magazine, May 2, 1955, 64.
“The minute I heard my first love story …” Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1995) 106. Permission to reprint granted by the translator.
“Devotion is easy and natural …” Krishna Kumar Sah, “Bhakti” (Malibu, CA: Love Serve Remember Foundation, 2011). Permission to reprint granted by the author.
“I will set You on my breath …” Rumi, Whispers of the Beloved, translated by Mafi Maryam and Azima Melita Kolin. (London: Thorsons, 1999) 99.
“My heart was split, and a flower appeared … ” from “Odes of Solomon,” The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell. (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) 24–25. Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“Let me always feel you present …” Psalm 19, “The Book of Psalms,” The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell. (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“In his mind Hanuman had already crossed the sea …” Ramayana, William Buck. (The Regents of the University of California: University of California Press, 2013). 182–184, 348–349. Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“Hanuman, ever the humble servant, responds, ‘Save me, save me from the tentacles of egoism!’” from Śrī Rāmacaritamānasa (Gorakhpur, India: Gita Press, n.d.), Descent V (Sundara Kānda), verse 32, 795.
“The Great Way is not difficult …” Seng-t’san, the third Chinese patriarch of Zen, The Hsin Hsin Ming, Verses on the Faith-Mind translated by Richard B. Clarke (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2001). Permission to reprint granted by the translator.
“The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo …” Terry Dobson, an American Aikido master (1937–1992), in “A Kind Word Turneth Away Wrath.” This story has been widely reprinted and anthologized, but rights are unclear. It was said to have been printed in Reader's Digest in the 1970s and it is included in the anthology The Awakened Warrior, edited by Rick Fields (Tarcher, 1994) and in Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).
“Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat …” Kabir, from Kabir: Ecstatic Poems translated by Robert Bly. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“I’d like to make more mistakes next time …” Nadine Strain, from the poem “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” This oft-reprinted essay is usually rendered as a poem, and the author's name given as Nadine Stair. But Kentucky journalist Byron Crawford, in his 1994 essay collection Kentucky Stories, writes that it was originally published as an essay in Family Circle magazine in March, 1978. The magazine misspelled the author's name: it should have been Nadine Strain. Strain was a resident of Louisville, Kentucky.
“Sometimes, … I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon…” Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life In The Woods (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1981). 117–118.
In a November 20, 1849, letter Thoreau wrote to Harrison Blake Concord, “I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.”
“But this: that one can contain …” Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell. (New York: Vintage Books, 1982, 1985, 2009) 27. Permission to reprint granted by the translator and publisher.
“Don’t prolong the past …” Patrul Rinpoche from “On Meditation: Pithy and Powerful Words from Famed Teachers,” Shambhala Sun magazine, March 2003.
“Consider the possibility that the resistance to the pain and the fear pain may evoke …” Stephen Levine, Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings (New York: Anchor Books, 1991). Permission to reprint granted by the author.
“Love and death are magnificent gifts, which many of us leave unopened.” This line by Rilke is commonly translated as, “Love and death are the greatest gifts that are given to us, but mostly they are passed on unopened.” In a personal communication, translator Stephen Mitchell told me, “I did some searching on the Internet and found this quote in German, though not the source: ‘Die Liebe und der Tod sind grandiose Geschenke, die viele von uns ungeöffnet lassen.’ The translation should say, ‘Love and death are magnificent gifts, which many of us leave unopened.’ Rilke doesn't say that they are the great gifts, and he doesn't say ‘great’; nor does he say that we ‘pass them on.’ How could we pass on death? Death is given to us, not by us. The same for love. It's a gift that we can't pass on; we either open it or not, and that opening too is a gift. As is the not-opening.”
“Death is an illusion we all seem to buy into …” Stephen Levine, Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings (New York: Anchor Books, 1991). Permission to reprint granted by the author.
“It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died…” Lama Anagorika Govinda in the foreword to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz (London: Oxford University Press, 1927). Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“Empty your mind of all thoughts …” Lao-Tzu, #16 from Tao Te Ching, A New English Version, with Foreword and Notes translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“I am without form, without limit …” Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) from the poem “I am That.” Accessed online.
“Since the day when I met with my Lord …” Kabir, One Hundred Poems of Kabir, Poem XLI, I. 76. “Santo, sahaj samādh bhālī (O Sadhu! the simple union is the best),” translated by Rabindranath Tagore, (Madras: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1970) 48–49.
“How did the rose ever open its heart …” Hafiz, Love Poems from God, Twelve Sacred Voices From The East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002) 161. Permission to reprint granted by the translator.
“Don’t go outside your house to see flowers …” Kabir, from the poem “A Place to Sit,” Kabir: Ecstatic Poems translated by Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
“When you are with someone you love very much …” Swami Chetananda from Songs from the Center of the Well, (Portland, OR: Rudra Press, 1983). Permission to reprint granted by the author and The Movement Center, Inc.
“People do not know what the Name of God can do …” Swami Ramdas, Ramdas Speaks, Vol 5. (Anandashram, Kerala: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, India).
“Devotion to God who is seated in the hearts of us all is the one path …” Swami Ramdas, Glimpses of Divine Vision, (Mangalore, India: Sharada Press, 1944).
“What we’re singing is the repetition of the Divine Names …” Krishna Das, transcribed from a Maui retreat, December 2010. Permission to reprint granted by Krishna Das.
“The Self is the heart, self-luminous …” Ramana Maharshi, Maharshi’s Gospel, 13th ed. (Tiruvannamalai, India: Sri Ramanashram, 2002) 16.
“The intense desire for God-realization is itself the way to it.” Anandamayi Ma Matri Darshan, Shri Anandamayi Ma, translated by Atmananda Mangalam (Germany: Verlag S. Schang, 1983).
“Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same …” Sri Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings by F. Max Müller (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2002) 138.
“A jar kept in water is full of water inside and outside …,” Ibid, 141.
“[T]he saint is a mirror …,” Paltu Sahib, 19th century Indian saint from Ayodhya, quoted in Sarmad (Jewish Saint of India) by I.A. Ezekiel (Punjab, India: Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1966).