Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

~Thomas Merton

Healing Together

Bits and pieces from President Obama's speech at the Together We Thrive tribute in Tucson last evening:

"Let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

"It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds."

"We have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy...and be willing to challenge old assumptions."

"I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."

"We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives."

"What matters is not wealth, or status, or power or fame, but how well we have loved."

Wisdom of Einstein

 
 

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."  ~Albert Einstein
 

You Spot It, You Got It

"The faults we criticize in others are only our own projected onto them; if they were not, they would not bother us, and we would not even notice them." ~from Advice from a Spiritual Friend by two Tibetan lamas, Geshe Rabten and Geshe Dhargyey

"None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves." ~Oscar Wilde

"And passion can dissolve into nondual compassion..." ~Ken Wilber

A Law of Nature

"People do what they do. That's what they do. And that is it."

~from Pass the Jelly by Gary Crowley

It's nice to be able to count on something.  Byron Katie often says that she can trust people completely to do what they do and she's never disappointed:

"Everyone and everything is doing its job perfectly - no mistake."