Quotes from Roland Merullo

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: It is built on our thoughts, it is made from our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with evil thought, pain follows him, just like the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the cart. If a person speaks or acts with pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves...

Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others, or for soaking in self-pity, or for a sharp anger that knifes up through the surface whenever something reminds them of what happened long ago.

When you have known someone your whole life you don't need a lot of warm-up time to get into a big argument. All the fore-play has been done years ago, and so the battle sits in your memory like stove gas awaiting the match. A wrong word, a careless allusion, and the old fire is suddenly raging.

A fair portion of my anger had returned, but alongside it ran the memory of those few seconds on the yoga mat in the death pose. I felt as if I had been shown a kind of essential secret, something so subtle and quiet and small(and yet so important)that I could gone my entire adult life and never even imagined such a thing existed.

it occurred to me that the modern spiritual leaders of my tradition were always somber, self-important men, thickly coated in others' idea of who they were supposed to be.

My father he always say that the oil is already inside the student, already there from all time. The teacher only has a match and makes it light, and then the student isn't a student anymore, just a friend, going the same way down the dark road but seeing now by himself.