All that you and I have to do is to put up our sails and let the wind of grace carry us across the sea of life to the other shore. But most of us are firmly stuck on this shore. Our sail is torn and our boat is overloaded with excess baggage: our likes and dislikes, our habits and opinions, all the resentments and hostilities which we have acquired. ~ Eknath Easwaran

In our modern world, most of the emphasis is on separateness, on the leaf rather than the tree. Daily we receive the message, “Find your joy in your own way; live your life in your own way; find your fulfillment in your own way.” This drive for personal satisfaction is based on a cruel fiction: that the leaf can prosper without the living tree. In reality, none of us are separate; we are all part of the same creation, drawing our strength, happiness, and fulfillment from the cosmic tree. — Eknath Easwaran

What we are all looking for, even though we are searching in the most improbable places, is infinite wisdom, infinite joy, infinite love. In other words, we are trying to discover our real nature. At the very core of our being is a spark of purity, of perfection, of divinity. When we learn to identify less and less with that which is subject to change and more and more with this core of perfection, we are gradually moving closer to this supreme goal. — Eknath Easwaran

The glory of the human being is our ability to remake ourselves. The Buddha is very rightly called the Compassionate One because he holds out hope for everybody. He doesn’t say our past has been dark, therefore our chances are dim. He says whatever our past, whatever our present, the sky is bright for us because we can remake ourselves. ~ Eknath Easwaran