Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.
The clouds roll on. Silent as sleepwalkers the clouds keep coming from infinity bank behind bank and line after line, and change colors on the earth.
He is much stronger than I think I am. He is mischievous, outgoing, ready to soar through the clouds, while I often feel like the cloud itself.
You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.
When I'm asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.
The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.
In samadhi, in the highest form of meditation, the same thing happens: the mind stops functioning. . . but you are conscious. That is the only difference, but the difference that makes the difference. One is fully alert, luminous. One is there witnessing, watching, but there is no cloud of thought. The sky is utterly empty: as far as you can see you cannot see any content.
Happiness and sorrow are twins, let them come and go like clouds.
The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair, In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.
The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.
Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage.
I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a light brume. It seemed to be fog, and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground, but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that rose from below and those that come down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.
The more your meditation goes deep, the less and less you will feel the burden of the mind. The more and more meditation goes deep, the less and less you will be a mind. Thoughts will become rare, and ultimately they cease. That doesn't mean you become unthinking; it only means that your consciousness becomes clear, transparent, without thoughts moving continuously as clouds. Whenever you need to think you can think; but now thought becomes an instrument to you, not an obsession as it is presently. Thoughts are an obsession without meditation.
Scrape the grey sky clean. Realize every grey cloud is a smoke screen to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not the sun and moon are still there, and always there is light.
I can feel it. . . the chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud.
As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found- in himself.
If you learn to trust God when the sun is shining, it is easier to trust Him on the day when there are dark and lowering clouds in the sky and you are in one of life's storms.
All I have to say is, Love one another - that is the height of all philosophy. It is beyond all religions. It is the secret of joy - the fountain of Perpetual Youth - the only rainbow on life's dark cloud.