Thursday Thirteen No. 23: Words to Live By if You Find the Time

I subscribe to way too much online stuff. Although everything I receive is worthwhile reading, I don't always get to it. So I save all the bits and pieces in files that I seldom open. (Does that make me a virtual packrat or a real one? )

The other day I decided to spend some time with the items that I had plopped into my "Hindu Wisdom" folder. Here are 13 gems, the best of which I highlighted to make skimming easier:

1. Bearing and nurturing, creating but not owning, giving without demanding, this is harmony (Tao Te Ching).

2. Love alone will abide thee (Tamil proverb).

3. Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself, I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy (Mahatma Gandhi).

4. Ignorance is the failure to discriminate between the permanent and the impermanent (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 2:5).

5. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite (Vivekananda).

6. Adversity and prosperity never cease to exist. The adornment of great men's minds is to remain unswervingly just under both (Tirukkural 12:115).

7. The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience (Mahatma Gandhi).

8. Inwardly give up the idea "I am the doer," yet outwardly engage in all activities. This is how to live in the world, completely free from the least trace of ego (Maharamayana).

9. To everyone of us there must come a time when the whole universe will be found to have been a dream, when we find the soul is infinitely better than the surroundings. It is only a question of time, and time is nothing in the infinite (Sai Baba).

10. Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? (Sai Baba)

11. The fool tries to control his mind. How can he ever succeed? Mastery always comes naturally to the man who is wise and who loves himself (Ashtavakra Gita 18:41).

12. Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 3:54).

13. Do not disparage men who appear small, for there are those, seemingly insignificant, who are like the linchpin of a mighty chariot (Tirukkural 67:667).

Thursday Thirteen