Wisdom

We hope and pray these words may help all those who pass this way.

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The disciples asked: “On what day will the kingdom come?” Jesus said: “It cometh not with observation. They will not say: Lo, here! or Lo, there! But the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the Earth, and men do not see it.”

– The Gospel of Thomas

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“But life is short and truth works far and lives long: Let us speak the truth.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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“This is the noble Eightfold way: namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This monks, is the Middle Path, of which the Taghagata has gained enlightenment, which produces insight and knowledge, and tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana.”

– Buddha

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“Sincerity is the way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men. He who possesses sincerity, is he who, without an effort, hit what is right, and apprehends, without the exercise of thought; he is the sage who naturally and easily embodies the right way. He who attains sincerity, is he who chooses what is good, and firmly holds it fast.”

– Confucius

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“I believe in the doctrine of non-violence as a weapon of the weak. I believe in the doctrine of non-violence as a weapon of the strongest. I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.”

– Mohandes Gandhi

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“Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal… Thoughts create a new Heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.”

– Paracelsus

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“The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them that they may be one as we are one. I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.”

– John: 22-23

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“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing the attempt.”

–William Shakespeare

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“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.”

–John Ruskin

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“And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.”

– Black Elk

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“Here is the test to find out whether your mission on Earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”

– Richard Bach

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The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

–Lord Alfred Tennyson

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“A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”

– Crazy Horse

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“A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.”

– Albert Schweitzer

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“If Christ were to appear on Earth he would on all hands be denounced as a mistaken, misguided man, insane and crazed.”

– Henry David Thoreau

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“All men know in their very earliest years that beside the good of their animal personality, there is another, a better, a good in life, which is not only independent of the gratification of the appetites of the animal personality, but on the contrary, the greater the renunciation of the welfare of the animal personality the greater the good becomes. This feeling is known to all. This feeling is love.”

– Leo Tolstoy

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“Ahimsa (infinite love) is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the summum bonum. (n. the greatest or supreme good of life) It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within reach of the coward. It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving force. It is the special attribute of the soul.”

– Mohandes Gandhi

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“We are born with a purpose in life and we have to fulfill that purpose. Some of our young men go out when they are twelve or thirteen years old and pray and fast at a certain sacred place. They learn their purpose in life… Now we hear of the new young people talking about finding their identity, their place in life, and they are very wise to do that, if they can do it. Some of them have, I think, and they are trying to make things better for other people-which is our only purpose in life-to share with others.”

– Rolling Thunder/Cherokee

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“But the world does move, and its motive power under God is the fearless thought and speech of those who dare to be in advance of their time-who are sneered at and shunned through their days of struggle as lunatics, dreamers, impracticable and visionaries; men of crotchets, vagaries and isms.”

– Horace Greeley

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“It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this Earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka (God) who is everything; then he knows the world which is real.”

– Black Elk

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“There are two ways that you can live your life: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein

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“We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be united, and to love one another. We never quarrel about religion.”

– Red Jacket

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“The one who has conquered himself is a far greater hero than he who has defeated a thousand times a thousand men.”

– Sayings of the Buddha

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“I am poor and naked, but I am chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to teach our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”

– Red Cloud

“All the philosophers of the world who had a religion have said in all ages: “There is but one God; and one must be just”. That, then is the universal religion established in all ages and throughout mankind. The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ therefore false.”

– Voltaire

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“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

– Albert Camus

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“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize. A blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child-our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

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“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash-at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness”, the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.”

– Thomas Merton

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“Upon suffering beyond suffering: The red nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations; a world longing for light again. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred tree of life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.”

– Crazy Horse

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“In order to swim one takes off all one’s clothes—in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one’s inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness, etc., before one is sufficiently naked.”

– Soren Kierkegaard

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“I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we say.”

– Geronimo

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“The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character; so watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from Love born out of concern for all beings… As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.”

– Sayings of the Buddha

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“I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understanding, that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on Earth for people to see.”

– Black Elk

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“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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“I hope the great heavenly father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes his blessing, that we may go forth in peace, and live in peace all our days, and that he will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above this Earth.”

– Red Cloud

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“All the happiness there is in this world comes from thinking about others, and all the suffering comes from preoccupation with yourself.”

– Shantideva

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“We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that in the hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts; if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home.”

– Chief Joseph

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His disciples asked him, and said unto him: “Wilt thou that we fast? And how shall we pray? Shall we give alms? And what rules shall we observe in eating?” Jesus said: “Do not lie; and that which you hate, do not do. For all things are revealed before Heaven. For there is nothing hidden which will not be made manifest, and there is nothing covered which shall remain without being uncovered.”

– The Gospel of Thomas

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“When we speak of Mitakuye Oyasin (we are all related), we know always that the growing and moving things of the Earth, the winged, the four-legged, and the two-legged are all children of the Earth, and they, too, want to live. So we say Mitakuye Oyasin.”

– Black Elk

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“Greater Love hath no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

– Jesus Christ

“The most common trait of all indigenous peoples is a reverence for the life-giving Earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic. The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.”

– Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson

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“The harmony of natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

– Albert Einstein

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“This we know-the Earth does not belong to man-man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites a family. All things are connected.”

– Chief Joseph

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“And now we say “Amen”: for Christ has come to dwell in the abode you set for him before time was, in calm eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone.”

– A Course in Miracles

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“We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy-and when he has conquered it, he moves on.”

– Chief Seattle

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“Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the whole world… I know of but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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“Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.”

– Chief Seattle

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“Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”

– Anais Nin

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“It does not matter where his body lies; there the grass is growing… But where his spirit lies, that would be a good place to be.”

– Black Elk speaking on Crazy Horse

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“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”

– Lewis Mumford

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“Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.”

– Sitting Bull

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“Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun. Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and the power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world, uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to join with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him.”

– A Course In Miracles

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“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.”

– Chief Joseph

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“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional Love will have the final say in reality.”

– Martin Luther King

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“Great men are they who see the spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

– Chief Joseph

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“Man is a very strange animal. In much of the world half the children go to bed hungry and we spend a trillion on rubbish-steel, iron, tanks. We are all criminals. It is sad that man is not intelligent enough to solve problems without killing. The present world crisis can be solved only by a general human revolution against outdated concepts. Man is not a blood-thirsty animal, and war is only due to the greed and lust for power of relatively small groups, the conspiracy of the few against the many.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgi

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“Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, an enriching faith in a supreme power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.”

– Black Elk

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“The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called Love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

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“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”

– Chief Joseph

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“To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin… Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.”

– Thomas Aquinas

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“I have found the paradox, that if you Love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more Love… Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning to Love.”

– Mother Teresa

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“The only thing we can know is that we know nothing, and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.”

– Leo Tolstoy

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“The ultimate lesson that all of us have to learn is Unconditional Love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”

– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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“There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.”

– Black Elk

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“Even the least among you can do all that I have done, and greater things.”

– Jesus Christ

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Thank you.