Powder snow skiing is not fun. It is life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. What we experience in powder is the original human self, which lies deeply inside each of us, still undamaged in spite of what our present culture tries to do to us. Once experienced, this kind of living is recognized as the only way to live — fully aware of the earth and the sky and the gods and you, the mortal, playing among them.
I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.
Anxiety is the experience of growth itself. In any endeavor, how do you feel when you go from one stage to the next? The answer: You feel anxious. Anxiety that is denied makes us ill; anxiety that is fully confronted and fully lived through converts itself into joy, security, strength, centeredness, and character. The practical formula: Go where the pain is.
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
Practise wonder today - be present, begin again, know nothing, and allow everything to surprise you, inspire you, excite you, entertain you, teach you. Be fully open to life, today, and let yourself live wonder-fully.
We won't fully experience joy until we've answered life's biggest question: Why am I here?
Life consists of two sides ... light and dark. Joy and sorrow. Without a balance, one cannot fully experience a full and well-rounded life.
When I first started, my message was about joy, but I didn't really have the vocabulary and life experience to fully deliver it.
Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. History is universal experience, the experience not of another, but of many others under manifold conditions.
A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
Instead of answering your question directly I shall quote from the Indian poet Tagore: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy/ I awoke and saw that life was service/I acted and behold, service was joy.” In fact, through my work I discover life, people, and everything which happens around us.
Without the suitable conditions life could not exist. But both life and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. We know not its origin; we know not its end. And the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own. Wonder was the motive that led people to philosophy ... wonder is a kind of desire in knowledge. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.
Powder snow skiing is not fun. It's life, fully lived - life lived in a blaze of reality.
All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.
Generosity brings happiness at every stage of its expression. We experience joy in forming the intention to be generous. We experience joy in the actual act of giving something. And we experience joy in remembering the fact that we have given.