We are full of rhythms. . . our pulse, our gestures, our digestive tracts, the lunar and seasonal cycles.
Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
As Shantideva says, suffering has many good qualities because it purifies our negative karma, increases our renunciation and compassion, reduces our pride, and helps us to overcome our bad mental habits. If we think in this way we will feel that difficult circumstances are our best friends. When our mind is balanced in this way it becomes as stable as Mount Meru, and nothing can cause it to shake.
In her smile, Idris sees how little of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its cruelty, its boundless brutality.
He that shuns trifles must shun the world.
The benefits of Mouna (Silence) are incalculable.