December
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
Thursday, April 30, 2015
April 30
It seems
that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And
the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life.
But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud
that they have reached such a great height that they cease to care about the
meaning of existence.
The
real purpose of our existence is to understand this limitless life existing in
this world.
A
person may not know the purpose of his life, but he should know how to live. A
worker at a big plant may not necessarily know the purpose of his labor, but if
he is a good worker, he should know how to do well what he should do.
Every
living being has sensory organs which reveal to it its place in the world. For
a human, the primary sense is the intellect. If you do not know your place in
the world, the meaning of your life, you should know that there is something to
blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which
you directed your intellect.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
April 29
A
person can fulfill his purpose in life equally as well in illness as in health.
If we
meditate upon the existence of life after death, then all illnesses would seem
to be taking us closer to the movement from one life to another, a transfer
more desirable than undesirable. During these pains we can understand and explain
for ourselves what will happen to us, and prepare for the new state of our next
existence.
Usually
people think that it is possible to serve God and humanity only when you are
healthy. This is not true. Very often it is to the contrary. Christ served God
and all mankind when he suffered on the cross, and even then he forgave those
who killed him. Every person can do likewise. You cannot say which state is
better, a healthy or ill state, in the service of God and humankind.
For
yourself, and for yourself only, it is necessary to have health and power. But
to serve God it is not necessary, and sometimes even the opposite is true.
Very
often, when I have dealt with terminally ill people, I have learned that the
most important thing is not hiding the approaching death from the patient, but
on the contrary, explaining to him his own divine, spiritual nature, which
grows in him and which cannot be destroyed by death.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
April 28
Work is the necessary condition of
happiness. First, favorite and
free work; secondly, the physical work which arouses your appetite and afterward
gives you tranquil and sound sleep.
Manual
labor does not exclude intellectual activity, but improves its quality and even
helps it.
Constant idleness should be included in the tortures
of hell, but it is, on
the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise.
— Charles De
Montesquieu
When a
person sets to work, even if it is the
most unqualified, primitive, simple work, the human soul calms down.
As soon as a person starts to work, all the demons leave him and cannot
approach him. A man becomes a man.
— Thomas Carlyle
Work
is necessary. If you want a good disposition of your spirit, work until you
become tired. But not too much. Not until you become exhausted. A good
spiritual disposition can be destroyed by excessive work as well as by
idleness.
Monday, April 27, 2015
April 27
A bad mood is often the reason for blaming
others; but very often blaming others causes bad feelings in us: the more we
blame others, the worse we feel.
One of our most common and widespread prejudices
is that every person has a fixed, special characteristic, that there are kind
people and evil, clever people and stupid people, and cold or hot people. But
people are not like this; we can say about a person only that he is more often
kind than evil, more often clever than stupid, more often cold than hot. We always
divide people like this, but it is no less wrong.
If there is animosity between two people,
both are to blame. Any number you multiply by zero, however big, will equal
zero. If there is animosity, then, it is the animosity of two people toward each
other, and it exists in both of them.
Try to understand and remember that a person always tries to do what is best after such mistakes. If you remember this, then you
will never be useless by anybody, you will never reproach anybody, and you will
never be an enemy to anybody.
— After Epictetus
If you are living with another person, make
an agreement that as soon as
either of you starts to blame the other, you will end the argument.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
April 26
The understanding of the existence of God is
accessible to everybody; the complete understanding of the essence of God is
not accessible to any person.
All the nations
of the world name and respect God. Different people give him different names,
and put different clothes on him; but there is only one God under all these
different manifestations.
— Jean
Jacques Rousseau
Faith in God is
as natural to men as their ability to walk on two feet. This faith can be
modified, and it can even disappear in some individuals; but as a rule, it is
necessary for intellectual life in society.
— After
George Lichtenberg
There are some statements which cannot he fathomed: God exists or he does
not exist; the soul exists in the body, or we do not have a soul; the world was
created or the world was not created.
— Blaise Pascal
Live in
God, live together with God, by understanding Him in
you, and do not try to define Him with
words.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
April 25
A person can
understand himself as a material or a spiritual being. When you understand
yourself as a spiritual being, then you are free.
What is
"love of God," if it is not the effort to add part of yourself to the
higher creative flow of energy in this world? Divine force exists in everything,
but the greatest manifestation of it in this world is in humanity, and in order
to put it to work, one must understand it and accept it.
If a person does
not believe himself capable of doing the best things in the world, then he
starts to create the worst things.
I know that the
sky knows everything, and that its laws are constant. I know that it sees everything,
it gets into everything, and it is present in everything. The heavens can get
into the depths of all human hearts in the same way that the daylight can
lighten a dark room. We should try to reflect this heavenly light.
— Chinese
Wisdom
Friday, April 24, 2015
April 24
In any struggle
true bravery lies within those who know that God is their ally.
Whatever happens,
do not lose faith. Nothing bad can happen to you as a human being.
These things I
have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall
have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
— John
16:33
Everything is
indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be
destroyed by any force.
— Marcus
Tullius Cicero
Only a person who renounces his personality becomes
truly powerful. As soon as one denies his personality, it is not he but God who
acts through him.
Once upon a time, a Roman Empress lost her precious
jewelry. It was announced across the empire, that whoever found her lost stones
before thirty days would receive a big reward, but any who returned the jewelry
after thirty days would he executed. Samuel, a Jewish rabbi, found the precious
stones, but he returned them after thirty days had passed "Have you been
abroad'?" the Roman empress asked him. "No, I was at home."
"Maybe you did not know what was proclaimed?" "No, I knew,"
said Samuel. "Then why did you not return these things before the expiry
of the thirty days? Now you have to be executed." "I wanted to show
you that I returned your lost jewelry, not because of fear of your punishment,
but because of fear of God."
Thursday, April 23, 2015
April 23
Real goodness is always simple. Simplicity is so
attractive and so profitable that it is strange that so few people lead truly
simple lives.
Do not seek
happiness elsewhere. Give thanks to God, who made necessary things simple, and
complicated things unnecessary.
— Gregory
Skovoroda
Most of our
spending is done to forward our efforts to look like others.
— Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple
way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think — you
cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great
and true things are always simple and humble.
No one looks less simple than those people who
artificially strive to seem so. Artificial simplicity is the most unpleasant of
all artificial things.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
April 22
The greatest knowledge is self-knowledge. He who
understands himself will understand God.
Jesus cried and
said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the world,
that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And if any man
hear my words, and believe not I judge him not: for I came not to judge the
world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words,
hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge
him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent
me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I
know that this commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore,
even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
— John
12:44-50
Without purity of
soul, how can you say, I will glorify God? That light, like a morning star,
which lives in the heart of every person, this light is our salvation.
— Wabana
Purana Indian Wisdom
A person can
transform his personality, his inner self, from the domain of suffering, and
subduing into the domain which is always steady and joyful, that is, the domain
of understanding his spiritual and divine essence.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
April 21
In the future, the order of the social life of the
Christian world will be changed by the replacement of violence and its fears
with love and blessing.
Thus I command
you, to love one another.
— John
15:17-19
It is a mistake to think that there are times when
you can safely address a person without love. You can work with objects without
love — cutting wood, baking bricks, making iron — but you cannot work with
people without love. In the same way as you cannot work with bees without being
cautious, you cannot work with people without being mindful of their humanity.
It is the quality of people as it is of bees: if you are not very cautious with
them, then you harm both yourself and them. It cannot be otherwise, because
mutual love is the major law of our existence.
Until I can see
that the major commandment of Christ — love your enemies is being fulfilled, I
will continue to believe that many people are not real Christians, but only
pretend to be Christians.
— Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing
The worst mistake
which was ever made in this world was the separation of political science from
ethics.
— Percy
Bysshe Shelley
You should live
so that it is possible to create the kingdom of love on earth. You should live a
life based not on violence but on love.
Monday, April 20, 2015
April 20
For a person who leads a spiritual life, self-sacrifice
brings a bliss that far transcends the pleasure a person who lives by the
self-indulgent satisfaction of his animal passions.
He who is kind
does good for other people. And if a person suffers while he does kind deeds,
he becomes an even better person.
— Jean
De La Bruyere
He that loveth
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
— Matthew
10:37
There is no
higher blessing for a person than to do charitable work for the benefit and
well-being of others.
— Lucy
Malory
Just as fire blows out candles, good deeds for the
benefit of others destroy a selfish life.
The dark spot in the sunlight that falls on us is
the shadow created by our own personalities. We live for ourselves only when we
live for others. It may seem strange, but try it, and you will see it from your
own experience.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
April 19
A man who does not understand the benefit of
suffering does not live a clever and true life.
Mankind has never
achieved greatness but through suffering.
— Robert
De Lamennais
Without suffering, spiritual growth cannot happen.
Suffering often accompanies death, but suffering is also a useful, beneficial
condition of life. It is said that God loves those who experience suffering.
Religion gives a
person the understanding of the meaning of his existence and his destination.
— Anatole
France
A person who
lives a spiritual life cannot help but see that suffering brings him closer to
God. Seen in this light, suffering loses its bitter side and becomes bliss.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
April 18
What
is important is not the quantity of your knowledge, but its quality. You can
know many things without knowing that which is most important.
Ignorance
in itself is neither shameful nor harmful. Nobody can know everything. But
pretending that you know what you actually do not know is both shameful and
harmful.
There are two types of ignorance, the pure,
natural ignorance into which all people are born, and the ignorance of the
so-called wise. You will see that many among those who call themselves scholars
do not know real life, and they despise simple people and simple things.
— Blaise Pascal
The truth should often overcome thousands of
obstacles, until it is accepted.
— George Lightenberg
The scholar who thinks but does not create
is like the cloud which does not give rain.
— Eastern Wisdom
Vague and complex terminology was created by
false scholars. Real, truthful knowledge does not need vague terms.
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