By degrees, little by little, from time to time, a wise person should remove his own impurities as a smith removes the dross from silver.
Direct the mind resolutely towards God, restraining the senses in their various seats, and looking on the state of the body as a matter of indifference. Realise your oneness with God, remaining continually intent on identifying with its nature…for what use is there in other, empty things?
One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
Just as the soft rains fill the streams, pour into the rivers and join together in the oceans, so may the power of every moment of your goodness flow forth to awaken and heal all beings.
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
