Echoes

But do not ask me where I am going, As I travel in this limitless world, Where every step I take is my home.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

I live my life in widening circles / that reach out across the world.

Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. The two endpoints of everyone's rainbow are birth and death. We all experience both completely alone. And yet, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, much less even seen them in others. It's as if we shelter you from them, afraid that the thought of mortality will somehow wound you. For me it's the opposite: to know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky. Not for others, but for myself, for the trail I know I am leaving.

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.

Even if you're going to live three thousand more years, or thirty thousand, remember that nobody lives longer than they do right now, and that you can't live a longer past either. So the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. The present moment belongs to all alike, though the past is lost to one man and another hasn't yet reached it. You can only lose the present moment.

While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes.

Home is where the heart is.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

The scenes of life are like the pictures in a magic lantern: we see them, one after another, with vivid distinctness; but as soon as one vanishes, it is utterly forgotten; and then the next appears, completely different from what went before — though at bottom it is always the same story.

Coming, going, the waterbirds don't leave a trace don't follow a path.

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

Parents love their children as themselves; for their issue are by virtue of their separate existence a sort of other selves.

Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.' Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise returned?

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

There is a love of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

I have arrived. I am home. In the here, in the now. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate I dwell.