If you’re gonna dream, dream big

May all places throughout the world
Become homes of happiness,
Gardens of wish-fulfilling trees;
May the whole ground
Become completely pure:
As level as the palm of a hand,
And as smooth as lapis lazuli.
May we hear the sweetest of sounds
Issuing forth from birds and trees.
And, O God, bless the business of creatures on and in the ground;
And that beautiful light coming from space above:
Bathe us in its glow,
Coming through those clouds of offerings
With their timely rains,
And every day a plentiful harvest.

-  adapted from a prayer by Shantideva, 8th century Buddhist scholar, as published in Guide to the Bodhisattva’s way of life : how to enjoy a life of great meaning and altruism, trans. Neil Elliot

Found at home

I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.

But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.

- a poem by Lalla. A Sufi mystic, she lived in Kashmir, India during the first part of the 1300′s.