Neil deGrasse Tyson on how death helps us live more fully:
“We fear death because we are born knowing only life…
“It is the knowledge that I am going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive. The urgency of accomplishment. The need to express love now, not later. If we lived forever, why ever even get out of bed in the morning? Because you always have tomorrow. That’s not the kind of life I want to lead.”
“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the moment.”
– Unknown (attributed incorrectly to Lao Tzu, but still a brilliant idea)
“When we speak of meditation, it is important for you to know that this is not some weird cryptic activity, as our popular culture might have it. It does not involve becoming some kind of zombie, vegetable, self-absorbed narcissist, navel gazer, “space cadet,” cultist, devotee, mystic, or Eastern philosopher. Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life.”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn, from “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life”
“There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
– Martha Graham
“To me, spirituality means “no matter what.” One stays on the path, one commits to love, one does one’s work; one follows one’s dream…no matter what.”
—Yehuda Berg
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
—Albert Einstein
“It’s a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.”
—Jonathan Haidt
“The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science.”
—Albert Einstein
“It’s a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.”
—Jonathan Haidt
“The root of ‘spirit’ is the Latin spirare, to breathe. Whatever lives on the breath, then, must have its spiritual dimension.”
—Jane Hirshfield
Living in the Dash 