The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

~ Alan Watts 

Humans of NY are saying

"She's compassionate."

"Tell me about a time she was compassionate."

He took a couple minutes, then said, haltingly:

– "It's not about a time. She's compassionate toward who I am. Every time."

The Conclusion of Walden

Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find

a thousand regions in your mind

Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be

expert in home-cosmography.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Instructions for living a life: 

Pay attention. Be astonished. 

Tell about it.

~ Mary Oliver

Where should one use perfume?

– a young woman asked. 

Wherever one wants to be kissed.

~ Coco Chanel

Swim out of your little pond.

~ Rumi

Falling in love each and single day

Look at the cherry blossoms!

Their color and scent fall with them

Are gone forever;

Yet mindless

The spring comes again.

~ Ikkyu

Perfect happiness is 

the absence of striving for happiness.

~ Chuang Tzu

When I reach the place of my dreams

I will thank my failures and tears; 

They too, kept me going.

~ Dodinsky

Now love breathes

Just act

The worthies of old all had

means of emancipating people. 

What I teach people just requires 

you not to take on the confusion of others. 

If you need to act, then act, 

without any further hesitation or doubt.

~ Linji 

in the real world

the pure world

no separation exists

why wait

for another time

and another meeting

the teaching

on Vulture Peak

is here today

who else

are you looking for

to preserve the Way?

~ Musō Soseki (1275-1351)

My life seems like a hallucination

My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. 

A strong wind would make me think 

that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth,  to some land i had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. 

Hold tight, I would tell myself, 

but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

~ Murakami

The REAL You

Our fundamental self is not something just inside the skin,

It's everything around us with which we connect.

~ Alan Watts