Love

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love

Love have no other desire but to fulfill itself

Marriage

Let there be spaces in your togetherness

Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping

Children

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts

You may house their bodies but not their souls

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you

Giving

You give but little when you give your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding

Work

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earths furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, and to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret

When you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another

Work is love made visible

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy

Joy & sorrow

It is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy

Freedom

You can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound

Reason & passion

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else he held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction

Rest in reason and move in passion

Teaching

If the teacher is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind

Friendship

Your friend is your needs answered

Without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain

Talking

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; and when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered

There are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand

Good & evil

You are good when you are one with yourself

When you are not one with yourself you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good, you are only loitering and sluggard

The truly good ask not the naked, “where is your garnet?”

Pleasure

Pleasure is a freedom song, but not freedom

Some of your elders remember you pleasures with regret like wronging committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer

Oftentimes is denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being. Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow? Even your body knows it’s heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived

To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam

To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency

You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind. It is a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether