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Compassion
Sunbeams
November 1980The contrast between that bright blue and white Christmas-tree ornament and the black sky, that infinite universe, and the size and significance of it really comes through. It is so small and so fragile, such a precious little spot in that universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. You realize that everything that means anything to you — all of history and art and death and birth and love, tears and joys, all of it, is on that little blue and white spot out there which you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you have changed, that there is something new, that the relationship is no longer what it was.
Sunbeams
October 1980“I can’t believe that,” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said, in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Sunbeams
December 1979One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self: of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.
A Lady’s Journal: Reclining Morals
Our minds are made up of sentences to be liked by everybody: by the time we grow up we have to take them apart, by paragraph, chapter, and story, to find our own style, ’til finally the mind is random as alphabet soup, ready to make new combinations of feeling and thought.
November 1979Pity: A Lesson In Self-Discovery
I have read that within the veneer of each heart a limp fist of pity is hanging. That is, in all the sadness and confusion of its tangle of veins the heart is the package in which pity is stored, the container in which it is marketed. One might say: I’d like two loaves of bread, a half-pound of bologna, a pint of macaroni salad, and a heart and a half of pity, please.
December 1978Journal
Every single moment of consciousness, of your experience, from the past, present or future is such an incredible storehouse of creativity that is unleashed upon itself, I am awed, my mind is boggled.
March 1977For Want Of
The mss. following, For Want Of originated in my desire to make a simple statement about animals: our egotistical, destructive “categorical separation” of Life, our overtly cruel treatment of animals for often pointless or, at best, ambiguous studies.
September 1976Maitri – Space Awareness
The Life And Death Of The Ego
The Maitri program was developed by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master. The program is designed to nurture compassion through participation in a meditative community.
June 1976What Money Can’t Buy
In order to come together with people that share common interests, we have traveled around the U.S. for the last five months, hitchhiking with very little or no money and carrying only what we could stuff into our pockets. We shared with many people.
May 1974
