O mankind, I bind you together with one objective -
The welfare of man.
Toil together with mutual love and goodwill.
    
 - Rig Veda

You are the original Original; I am your faithful mirror.
That tall cypress and its shadow, might as well be you and me.
And if you are a rose, I am rose-shadow.
All beauties have their followers, but roses have a way of fading,
And I have a way of holding on too tight.
I turn all thorn then, but you come back again,
And make my thorniness fragrant and pink and petalled.
So here is the cup of my heart and a toast.
  To us! Every moment to us!
Why do I reach out anywhere else?
Only your touch works out in the end.
You are my candle, I am your bowl.

- Rumi

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well.
O thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word.

- From ‘Gitanjali’, Rabindranath Tagore

Peace arises from a state of inward freedom from disordering effects and from distorting pressures; it is also a fundamental reconciliation between one person and another.

- From ‘Thoughts for Aspirants’, N. Sri Ram

Many runes the cold has told me,
Many lays the rain has brought me,
0ther songs the winds have sung me;
Many birds from many forests,
0ft have sung me lays in concord;
Waves of sea, and ocean billows,
Music from the many waters
Music from the whole creation,
0ft have been my guide and master.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

  - Martha Graham

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.

   - Albert Einstein

Fonte di Clituno, Italy - G Harrod

When Poems Are Still

It is calm of times now,
poems having disappeared like a mist.
yesterday’s nagging scintillations
that promised a tryst of wordings
now lie content below any saying, any art.

Quite free from poetry is almost any peace
until some brazen poet arrives
to stir up some alphabet soup—
but the very deepest calms, like a sea bottom,
lie mute below all chop of words and wind.

Today let there be rest from poems
and from other twistings of the mind,
for it is calm of times now, free enough
for wordless breath, and breath, and breath.

    - Alan Harris                                                     Lake Trasimeno Italy - G Harrod

Having tasted the sweetness of solitude and of tranquillity, one becomes free from fear and sin while drinking the sweetness of the joy of the Law.

   - Dhammapada

Monte Sibilini Italy - G Harrod

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. 
You talk to your enemies.

- Moshe Dayan 

Forms of service depend upon our creativity, and our creative potential is limitless.

- P.K. Jayaswal, TOS India

It is only when there is realization of our unity with our fellow-beings, and when the only motive is that of giving ourselves in such service as we are capable, that we can fill our lives with rich, helpful and creative action.

- N. Sri Ram

Good timber does not grow under comfortable circumstances; the stronger the wind, the stronger the tree.

- J. Willard Marriott

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Those who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where their eyes scan infinity. But those who would make use of understanding must descend onto the Plains, where Past and Future meet and human beings have need of them.

- From the Book of Sayings of Tsiang Samdup

Grand Tetons USA. G Harrod 2007

Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.

- Les Brown

ON LEANING

Some think they leaned upon a stronger will
when all that happened was this will had shone
a flashlight on some girder, deep and strong,
within their own divinely buttressed soul.

Mistakenly, they felt that this other will
support their own, when really, all are leaning
safe upon the same Eternal Strength
which none of us can own, but all may share.

- Alan Harris

Those who aren't interested in their fellow beings have the greatest difficulties in life and also create the greatest damage to others.

- Alfred Adler.

Harmony is unity in diversity.

- N. Sri Ram