Welcome to my website!

It's 3:23 in the morning and I'm awake because my great, great grandchildren won't let me sleep. My great, great grandchildren ask me in the dreams, "What did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the Earth was unraveling? Surely you did something when the seasons started failing, as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying. Did you fill the streets with protests when democracy was stolen? What did you do once you knew?"

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy... that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day it will begin to happen again on Earth;
That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are lovers,
And women and women who give each other light,
Often get down on their knees
And while so tenderly holding their lovers hand,
With tears in their eyes
Will sincerely speak, saying,
"My dear, how can I be more loving to you; how can I be more kind?"

If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

As long as followers of the Way gather together and meet in harmony can they be expected to prosper and not decline.

As long as followers of the Way care for the vulnerable among them can they be expected to prosper and not decline.

As long as followers of the Way tend the sacred places in their environment can they be expected to prosper and not decline.

For as long as space endures, and/or as long as living beings remain, until then, may I too fight to dispel misery of the world.

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

Do things on your own terms. Do things in your own time. Do things for yourselves. And give everything away.

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born —

May all beings be at ease!

In the woods I came on an old friend fishing

and I asked him a question

and he said Wait

fish were rising in the deep stream

but his line was not stirring

but I waited

it was a question about the sun

about my two eyes

my ears my mouth

my heart the earth with its four seasons

my feet where I was standing

where I was going

it slipped through my hands

as though it were water

into the river

it flowed under the trees

it sank under hulls far away

and was gone without me

then where I stood night fell

I no longer knew what to ask

I could tell that his line had no hook

I understood that I was to stay and eat with him

DARE MIGHTY THINGS

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety or one hundred years at the very most. During that period, we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. If you contribute to the other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

One who has nothing to serve lives unhappily.

I have found my limit a thousand times, and still I press further.

Promise me this day, while the sun shines upon some part of the Earth,
Promise me even as they strike you down with a mountain of hatred and violence and crush you,
Even as they dismember you, remember brother or sister,
humans — men, women — are not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion — invincible, limitless, unconditioned.
And even as you face this, a smile will bloom like a flower,
For when you face the beast of war, with your courage in tact and your eyes kind,
And your smile blooming as a flower,
Those who love you and behold you,
Across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying,
Will bow as well.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each [person's] life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

What good is a fast car, a flashy house, and a gold plated dunny to me? Absolutely no good at all. I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas. Which in essense is gonna help humanity. I wanna have the purest oceans. I wanna be able to drink water straight out of that creek. I wanna stop the ozone layer [from thinning]. I wanna save the world. And you know, money? Money is great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm gonna do with it? I'm gonna buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what? I don't give a rip whose money it is. I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land.

You can dance in the rain or sulk in the rain, it will rain regardless.

Knowing I know nothing
Means I cannot explain
Why some get it easy
And others just get pain
And it makes me wanna curse
As much as it makes me wanna pray
But for some Goddamn reason I get to wake up another day
And that's something bigger than me

Overcome any bitterness because you are not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world, each of us is sharing a part of her heart, and therefor each human being is endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. We are called upon to meet it in compassion instead of self-pity.

We need someone who is unafraid to stand up for the truth no matter what.

The Earth is too small a star and we too brief visitors upon it for anything to matter more than the truth.

If you make laws to keep us suppressed in a wrongful manner, without harming you in any way, we will never obey. Award us what punishment you like, we will put up with it. Send us to prison, and we will live there as in a paradise. Ask us to mount the scaffold, and we will do so laughing. Shower your sufferings upon us, and we will calmly endure all and not hurt a hair of your body or anyone else. We would gladly die before so much as to touch the slightest of you. But so long as there’s life in these bones, we will never comply with the laws that cause harm.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing.

If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

The inturong, and the malabar civet, Hawaiian monk seal, all species of rhino, twelve species of antelope, fifteen species of turtle, twenty-two species of shrews, and all the great apes, the orangoutangs, and gorillas, and the chimps, and six species of whale, and all the species of manatee, and the golden lemur, and the indus and yangtze dolphin, and the woolly spider monkey. These are your brothers and sisters, and they’re saying, ‘Pay attention to me. Don’t just refrain from harm. Remember that we too are part of your web of life, woven into the same single garment of destiny.’

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

May this life be an expression for love and action.

I still believe that standing up for the truth is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to seek pleasure or be happy and avoid pain. The end of life is to follow the sacred truth, come what may.

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

Fragrance remains on the hand that gives the rose.

You'll never walk alone
[..]
Don't be afraid of the dark
In your heart
You're gonna find a way
To carry the weight of the world
On your shoulders
You're gonna find a way home

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part
Oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

No matter how far away you feel you are, how neurotic, how depressed, how anxious, how angry, how sad, the next step is always the same. Surround your immediate experience with your presence and your warmth. And reaffirm the ancient value once made to never abandon yourself. Everything that is arising now is valid, is workable, and whatever we think is in the way, is the way.

If a child were to appear at your door uncertain, afraid, and exhausted from a long journey, if they were anxious, in despair, full of rage, or confused, would you refuse entry to the little one?

Would you tell them to come back once they dissolved their fear, replaced his anger with gratitude, and clarified her confusion? When she healed her anxiety? Mended his broken heart? Transformed her deep feeling of unworthiness? When they first complete some self improvement project? Healed all their past wounds? Or completed some mythical journey of awakening? Would you require these things before you allowed the little one in, held them and provided shelter for her raw vulnerability to rest from an ancient voyage of becoming? Or in your most authoritative spiritual voice would you urge the little one to get over it? Scramble to accept everything the way it is? Return immediately to the present moment? Urgently forgive those who have harmed him? Quickly rid herself of her ego? Or manifest a higher vibration?

Or would you offer sanctuary and safe passage from a long journey, a warm home in which the stories, the emotions, the grief, and the somatic trauma of the little one can be illuminated, contained and held in the tender womb of care and loving kindness, a place of respite for the little one to find some new meaning in a world that has forgotten and let them down?

As you provide a temple of refuge for the tired children of the heart to dwell, the gates to the mandala open and you will see just how relentless love is. It will never stop sending its emissaries here to find you, as the ultimate act of mercy and grace, to remind you of your innocence and your vast majestic wholeness.

The grand pacific lies.. bounded yonder by the blue of the horizon and hither by the yellow sands upon which its restless surf breaks ceaselessly.