You don’t have to like
those who seem different from you,
but you would be happier
if you did.

Your anger is only a shield
that covers your fear,
the urge to be rid of
all who seem to threaten
your sense of identity.

But it is YOU
who built this wall around you,
brick by brick,
borrowing ignorance and prejudice
from those around you,
until you see yourself only
as this wall that separates you
from the rest of humanity.

What if you refrained
from pushing away
all that you don’t understand?

And what if you refrained
from allowing your inner fears
to drive your outer behavior?

What if you began to relax your grip
on how you have shaped yourself,
and, bit by bit, shifted your focus
from how they are different from you,
to how you have made yourself
different from them?

Everything in this universe
(and perhaps beyond)
is interdependent.

There is no “thing”
that has its own existence,
apart from all others.

And there is nothing
which is not impermanent,
that can exist outside of
a constant state of change.

All that we see are the forms
that matter, energy, and thought
give rise to, in the flow of time.

Each thing we perceive
is the sum of smaller parts,
each made of smaller parts still,
going all the way down.

Each form we know
was born from an earlier form,
itself born from one earlier still,
going all the way down.

If we look for a first cause,
it is as if our Earth
were carried on the back
of a giant turtle,
itself on the back
of another giant turtle,
and so on, and so on,
all the way down.

Without these turtles,
do we have a place to stand on,
or do we need one,
as we look out,
as the eyes of the universe,
from nowhere,
into everything?

You can fool some of the people
all of the time,
and you can fool all of the people
some of the time,
but the more you fool yourself,
the more you, yourself,
become the fool.

The world is always new,
regardless of how we see it.

Facing the familiar,
we tend to see
what we have already seen,
like a blur of fading photos,
the differences between them
unseen, inconsequential.

What we miss
is the flow of time,
the ceaseless changes
that animate everything,
the constant shifting
of all around us
and inside us.

Why do we long
for these static, frozen images,
while life, in it’s full glory,
dances so dynamically
around us?

There is no such thing
as an asshole,
unless we are all assholes.

We are what we are labelled,
by ourselves and by others,
or we are pure spirit,
hidden beneath our labels.

In the world of ego,
we are separated
by our struggles to be right,
combatting all those others
who, by their very differences,
seem always to be wrong.

But in the world of spirit,
right and wrong
are only fever visions;
our separation,
just a bad dream.

Beyond these delusions,
we are the same,
in our suffering and our joy,
or we are nothing at all
but smoke,
dissipating with the wind.

Love can be
like cool, clear water,
when it isn’t muddied
by need.

Relax your hold
on what you want to keep,
and revel in the flow,
as objects of love
come and go,
and what remains
is love itself.

All the love
we find outside ourselves
is only a mirror
of the love we are made of.

When we look back,
and see our own reflection,
then there is an end
to our search for completeness.

We may all
be assholes,
and yet we are all
luminous beings!

In the land of ego,
we are always struggling
to be right,
combatting
all those Others
who are always wrong.

In the land of Spirit,
there is no right and wrong,
there is no separation.

We are the same,
in our suffering
and our joy,
or we are nothing
but smoke,
dissipating
in the wind of time.

There are always reasons for gratitude,
though they are not always easy to find.

In the worst of times,
there is at least this breath,
this next moment of life,
and the ever-present promise of change,
that “this, too, shall pass”.

And there are other times,
when joy seems absent,
when we can look out
past our thoughts
and preconceptions,
past our usual awareness,
and find something,
somewhere,
to inspire the joy
of simply being.

The most important thing
about another human being
isn’t who they are;
it is how we know them
to be human.

In the world of identity,
we are only
who we think we are,
or who others think we are.
​
In that world,
we are merely snapshots
in each other’s minds,
images frozen
in a moment of perception,
separated from time,
seen only
through the lense
of our own identities.
​
But, stripped of these images,
we are all the same,
siblings in one great family,
drifting down a river
of shared experience.

The “each” of us dissolves,
as we look beneath appearances.
​
All of us were born
from the same place,
and we are all bound
for the same place.

We are always,
each and all of us,
sharing our suffering
and our joy.
​

​

It’s nice to believe
that we were sent here
to learn.

Or, perhaps,
we simply landed here,
with an opportunity
to learn.

Whatever its source,
to accept this gift
is to give our own lives meaning.

To reject it
is to ride the wheel of suffering,
longing for redemption,
until we die.