Beth Chapman > Beth's Quotes

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“It is after days of
Soaking in these downpours
That the land can drink in
The bounty,
That the bejeweled trees can
Accept nature’s offering.
While the dewy greens are
Very pretty, and the
Running streams make the most
Gentle trickling sounds
There is no healing until the
Water is absorbed.”
― Nicole Grace, Bodhisattva: How to Be Free, Teachings to Guide You Home

“In one of the verses of Lal Ded, or Lalla, a fourteenth-century mystic from Kashmir, Lalla says: “At the end of a crazy-moon night the love of God rose. I said “It’s me, Lalla.”
“It’s me, Lalla,” becomes “It’s me…whoever you are,” proclaiming that we no longer stand on the sidelines but are leaping directly into the center of our lives, our truth, our full potential. No one can take that leap for us; and no one has to. This is our journey of faith.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience

“Become the person of no rank. Become the noble soul, and live in this awakened way, not imitating anyone. Whatever the circumstances your life asks of you, respond to them in your own individual Zen-spirited way. Don't waste any time trying to be someone else...We are not here to have someone else's experience. We are here to have our own vivid experience. So please don't cling to yesterday, to what happened, to what didn't happen. And do not judge today by yesterday. Let us just live today to the fullest! Moment after moment, each sitting is the only sitting.”
― Maurine Stuart, Subtle Sound: The Zen Teachings of Maurine Stuart

“Most people guard against going into the fire and so end up in it. Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are cheated with this reversal. The trickery goes further. The voice of the fire tells the truth, sayin I am not fire. I am fountainhead. Come into me and don’t mind the sparks. If you are a friend of the presence, fire is your water.”
― Rumi, A Year With Rumi

“As I often tell my students, the person you’ll have the hardest time opening to and truly loving without reserve is yourself. Once you can do that, you can love the whole universe unconditionally.”
― Adyashanti, Falling Into Grace

“You make my dance daring enough to finish. No more timidity. Let fruit fall, and wind turn my roots up in the air, done with patient waiting.”
― Rumi, A Year With Rumi

“Every part of you has a secret language. Your hands and your feet say what you have done. Every need brings in what’s needed. Pain bears its cure like a child.”
― Rumi, A Year With Rumi

“The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world is free—everybody is free to be as they are. Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.”
― Adyashanti, The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment

“Love flows down. The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes. Is the ground worse for giving in like that? Do not put blankets over the drum. Open completely. Let your spirit ear listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur.”
― Rumi, A Year With Rumi

“Let my soul in its journey into you Never rest anywhere.”
― Andrew Harvey, Light the Flame: 365 Days of Prayer

“I pray for the gift of silence, Of emptiness and solitude, Where everything I touch is turned into prayer:”
― Andrew Harvey, Light the Flame: 365 Days of Prayer

“I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things”
― tagore