Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

~ Stanley Kunitz

"Nightline anchor Dan Harris embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable."

"If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal, that word might be a word that you think is illogical or unnecessary, but that word that we're using, that word is real."

~ Anne Curzan

Transcendence isn't an escape plan, but an engagement strategy: liberation through intimacy. Transcending the self and the world begins with deeply accepting the self and the world. It grows naturally out of countless direct experiences of life as it is being lived and an intimate familiarity with how its composition constantly fluctuates.

Picturing stories is making reductions. Through reductions, we create meaning. 

These reductions are the world as we see it – they are what we see when we read, and they are what we see when we read the world. 

~ Peter Mendelsund

You are a traveler,
you know the open, hostile smiles
of those stuck in their lives.
Make a fire.

~ Stephen Dunn

Sooner or later, I thought, 
the wind would begin to make sense 
if I listened hard 
and took notes religiously.

~ Don Thompson

A son and his father, I knew
from their looks, the son with his
right hand on the handrail,
the father, left hand on the left,
and in the middle they were
holding hands

~ Ted Kooser

"Contemplating impermanence can be a liberating experience, one that brings both sobriety and joy."

~ Sakyong Mipham

"One of the beautiful things about the early twilight at this time of year, as it fades into the dark of the long nights, is that you can just surrender yourself to it. Allow the twilight to remind you that it is a time of consideration and renewal. Know full well that in this world the darkness and the light are one. There is no new dawn without the night; their seeming separateness disguises a unity that reflects the unity of life, an unfathomable dance of opposites. This paradox is the very essence of what it is to be alive—joy and pain, sickness and health, light and dark, wonder and fear."

~ Phillip Moffitt

"This simple act of acceptance – which may only last a few seconds – offers a taste of that open space of essence love, an acceptance of the warmth that is your basic nature, the heart of your own being."

~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

"The reason that we have the impression that the world is a violent place is that that's what news is about. News is about stuff that happens, not about stuff that doesn't happen, and all the parts of the world that are free of war, that are free of terrorist attacks just don't get reported to us and so we forget about them. We're getting better and better at reporting the violent events that do occur. Something blows up, you can be sure you'll hear about it, but we don't appreciate how much of the world at any given time is at peace."

~ Steven Pinker

"Mindfulness is more like the large hadron collider in that it’s a real tool for making some fundamental discoveries about the nature of the mind." 

~ Sam Harris

"Will Storr says once you realize how difficult it is to identify your own incorrect beliefs you can better empathize with people on the fringe, because they are stuck in the same predicament." ~ David McRaney

"What is this addiction? We have destabilized much of the world with our addiction. We’ve created a drug economy in Afghanistan, in Thailand, in Bolivia and we’ve caused turmoil in Guatemala and now we have elevated thugs in Mexico to the status of billionaires with our despair. And yet, we are an optimistic people."

~ Richard Rodriguez

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"Dad has had a series of loses that you just don't get over. He lost Mom. He lost his sight. He can't walk. His hearing is going. He's afraid his mind is almost gone...I was so happy Dad had something wonderful this morning."

~ Stephen Tobolowsky

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter
the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

~ John O'Donohue