What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out. Therefore all you need is to understand the one breath that makes up the world.
Stephen MitchellIt is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do an others; when you do your duty, you are naturally free from sin.
Stephen Mitchell[Jesus] teaches that just as the sun gives light to both wicked and good, and the rain brings nourishment to righteous and unrighteous, God's compassion embraces all people. There are no pre-conditions for it, nothing we need to do first, nothing we have to believe. When we are ready to receive it, it is already there. And the more we live in its presence, the more effortlessly if flows through us, until we find that we no longer need external rules or Bibles or Messiahs.
Stephen MitchellEducation is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death.
Stephen MitchellThe physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, the whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.
Stephen Mitchell