Harmony Quote

“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love him as they love their cow – for the milk and cheese and the profits it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort”

– Meister Eckhart

The external world, so fascinating, so infinite in its variety, has us firmly in hand and thoroughly mesmerised. Lasting happiness is almost ours – over there – just ahead of us, right around the next corner. When we round that corner and find that it has eluded us, something in us says, “Keep running! It’s just around the corner.” Finally our life becomes a continuous pilgrimage around corners. Such is human credulity that even after rounding a thousand corners, we still say, “The thousand and first, that is the corner.”

If we believe that happiness arises only when some external condition is fulfilled, we consign ourselves to a perpetual state of discontent. For even when our expectations are fulfilled, sooner or later the little voice inside starts again. “More! More!” It is this habit, this almost mechanical fixation of the mind, that keeps us forever chasing rainbows, until at last we begin to suspect that the kingdom of heaven is within.

(From ‘Words To Live By’ by Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation,

copyright 2005; reprinted by permission of Nilgiri Press, P.O. Box 256, Tomales, Ca 94971, www.bmcm.org.)