be kind & smile!

Rushing into action, one fails. Trying to grasp things, we lose them. Forcing a project to completion, will ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the wise take action by letting things take their course. Remain as calm at the end as at the beginning. Attached to nothing, there is nothing to lose. The wisest desire is non-desire. Learn to unlearn. Simply remind people of who they have always been. Caring about nothing but the Tao, one thereby cares for all things.

Unhappiness comes from limited ways of thinking. Happiness flows from the openness of our hearts.

Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an "unbroken wilderness" But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found the need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty, for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He (God) had made. Forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise his wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature's softening influence.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Gossip dies when it hits a wise person's ear.

What you hastily say today, could be said in a much more articulate and wise way tomorrow.