Sabbath, Quiet, Rest

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence.... and that is activism and overwork.
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.
The frenzy of out activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
   - Thomas Merton

There is more to life than merely increasing its speed.
   - Gandhi

Better is one hand full of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.
   - Ecclesiastes 4:6

If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die
   - Lao Tzu
    Tao Te Ching

Be content with what you have;
      rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
      the whole world belongs to you.
   - Lao Tzu
    Tao Te Ching

If a country is governed wisely...
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood.
   - Lao Tzu
    Tao Te Ching

You want it. You want it bad. Sometimes so much it hurts. you can taste it. You feel like you would do anything to get it. Go further than they'd suspect. Twist your soul and crush what's in your way. Then you get it. And something happens. You become the object of your desire. And it feels incredible.
   - Advertisement for perfume, Macy's window
   (quoted by Wayne Muller in "Sabbath"

An old man used to stand in the street on market days, to be pointed out as an idiot. No matter how often people offered him a large and a small coin, he always chose the smaller piece.

One day a kindly man said to him, "Mullah, you should take the bigger coin. Then you will have more money and people will no longer be able to make a laughing stock of you."

"That might be true," said the old man, "but if I always take the larger piece people will stop offering me money to prove that I am more idiotic than they are. Then I would have no money at all."
   - Sufi Tale

In pursuit of knowledge,
      every day something is acquired.
In pursuit of wisdom,
      every day something is dropped.
   - Lao Tzu
    Tao Te Ching

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
   - Lao Tzu
    Tao Te Ching

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God.
   - Annie Dillard