34 Quotes by Stephen Cope

The fundamental experience of human suffering is the experience of alienation from the self, from the source – from God.

Frost was intuitively aware of an important principle: In the cultivation of dharma, there is nothing more important than understanding what conditions are needed, and relentlessly creating them.

Initiations are opportunities for us to grow larger. They are death channels. And they are birth channels. They allow us the opportunity to integrate more of our self – more possibility, more reality, more sensation, more feeling. They require everything we’ve got. They destroy us to re-create us.

Am I living fully right now? Am I bringing forth everything I can bring forth? Am I digging down into that ineffable inner treasure-house that I know is in there? That trove of genius? Am I living my life’s calling? Am I willing to go to any lengths to offer my genius to the world?

We derive the greatest pleasure and fulfillment when all our faculties are drawn together into our life’s work. In this state of absorption, we experience extraordinary satisfaction. We human beings are attracted to the experience of intense involvement. The outcome of this involvement, says Hokusai, is sublime. “By ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature.” Hokusai’s lesson, finally, is that a life of passion for dharma is a fulfilled.

Susan never denied the existence of God. But her beliefs were secularized and lodged in the world around her. When she was once asked, “Do you pray?” she responded, “I pray every single second of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me.

What Frost makes clear in his poem is that the act of choosing is the most important thing. The act of moving forward is what matters. He might have chosen either teaching or poetry. But he had to choose one or the other. He looked long down each path. He understood the loss involved – the cutting off of possibilities. He saw clearly that options once discarded are usually gone forever. Way leads on to way. But Krishsna writes: Concerning one’s dharma, one should not vacillate!

Our true self remains deeply hidden, incognito, submerged beneath a web of mistaken identities.

Just let go of all the rest of the day, now. Let all of your worries roll off your shoulders; let’s just enjoy being home in the body for the next hour and a half.