Quotes from Stephen Cope

For the Time Being, Annie Dillard. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1999

Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo. HarperCollins: New York

Struggle," says Swami Kripalu, "changes an ordinary human into a spiritually awake person.

The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage: New York, 1989

Yogic practice intentionally re-creates the physical structure

Yogic practice intentionally re-creates the physical structure: the musculoskeletal, neurological, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and immune systems are all literally remade through the regular practice of postures and conscious breathing.

T. S. Eliot said it: "Old men ought to be explorers.")

We cannot really understand another human being without understanding his dharma story. And we cannot understand his dharma story without grasping the importance of his dharma mentors. The more I dug into Keats, the more I discovered that one cannot understand Keats without understanding Shakespeare. Mark apparently discovered the same thing. His second major play would be about Shakespeare.

a heart that is open to the world must be willing to be broken at any time. This brokenness produces the kind of grief that expands the heart so that it can love more and more.

Deep in midlife I had begun to feel the awful burden of wanting to be special; wanting to be better; wanting to experience every possible adventure in this life; wanting to be, as we have sometimes said at Kripalu, an "expanded self." Oh, for God's sake. It is just too damned much work to be an expanded self. Couldn't I just be an ordinary self?

No man can know what power he can rightly call his own unless he presses a little," he wrote. It was time to press.

For the sake of God, boy, let go of all this obsessive worry and fretting. You are powerless over such a mess." (Quote from Father Bede)

If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. Yes. But this saving is not just for you. It is for the common good. If you bring forth what is within you, it will save the world. It will rescue the times. It will save the whole people. Likewise: If you do not bring forth what is within you it will destroy you. But not just you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy the whole people.

The tortured clinging to an earlier expression of The Gift very often precedes the emergence of some new version. We're aware of the dryness at the center, yes, but this aridity is usually not quite enough to propel us forward. We must first get just a whiff of the new. The surprising and intoxicating whiff of a new dharma is quite irresistible.

Whitman began to see that his mere presence, his tenderness, his attention, had an enormous healing effect. He ministered faithfully to Holmes for weeks and Holmes eventually recovered his health completely and rejoined his unit. But as he left the hospital, John Holmes told

I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give I give myself.

The Tao te Ching says, "If you stay in the center and embrace death with your whole heart, you will endure forever.

experience over there. That experience looks very pleasant. Let's go there." The aversive mind, on the other hand, says, "I hate the way it is right now. This is very, very unpleasant. Get me out of here!" The aversive mind pushes away the unpleasant.

Krishna would continue. He would teach Mom that grasping and aversion are twins: They are mirror images of each other. They both involve a rejection of how it is in this moment. The grasping mind says, "I long for that

De Caussade nails this point: "This work in our souls cannot be accomplished by cleverness, intelligence, or any subtlety of mind, but only by completely abandoning ourselves to the divine action, becoming like metal poured into a mold

ambivalence, it turns out, is an unavoidable companion in the search for a new dharma):

aversion has exactly the same deleterious effects on the mind as grasping does. Remember our friends disturbance, obscuration, and separation? Yep. The aversive mind is visited by each of them.

Our bodies are known to end, but the embodied self is enduring, indestructible, and immeasurable; therefore, Arjuna, fight the battle!" The Gift is not for its own sake. It is for the common good. It is for The Times.

When [God] is moving you toward a new consciousness, you need to recognize the winds of change at once, move with them instead of clinging to what is already gone." Wow.