This jewelled chain on my neck.

It decks me only to mock me, this
jewelled chain of mine.
It bruises me when on my neck, it
strangles me when I struggle to tear
it off.
It grips my throat, it chokes my
singing.
Could I but offer it to your hand,
my Lord, I would be saved.
Take it from me, and in exchange
bind me to you with a garland, for I
am ashamed to stand before you with
this jewelled chain on my neck.


Rabindranath

Food for spiritual journey

He who wants to cross the spiritual sea is long-suffering, humble, vigilant and selfcontrolled.
If he impetuously embarks on it without these four virtues, he agitates his heart, but cannot cross.

 Stillness helps us by making evil inoperative. If it also takes to itself these four virtues in prayer, it is the most direct support in attaining dispassion.


Afflictions that come to us are the result of our own sins. But if we accept them patiently through prayer, we shall again find blessings.


The intellect cannot be still unless the body is still also; and the wall between them cannot be demolished without stillness and prayer.

The flesh with its desire is opposed to the spirit, and the spirit opposed to the flesh,and those who live in the spirit will not carry out the desire of the flesh 


Whatever we do without prayer and without hope in God turns out afterwards to be harmful and defective.


There is a sin which is always ‘unto death’ (1Jn 5:16): the sin for which we do not, repent. For this sin even a saint’s prayers will not be heard.


The sign of sincere love is to forgive wrongs done to us. It was with such love that the Lord loved the world.

We cannot with all our heart forgive someone who does us wrong unless we possess real knowledge. For this knowledge shows us that we deserve all we experience.


A passion which we allow to grow active within us through our own choice afterwards forces itself upon us against our will.


Saint Mark the Ascetic

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed
up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I
fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of
spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I
am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than
there; for there is no reason why here rather than there,
why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By
whose order and direction have this place and time been
alloted to me? 

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

How many kingdoms know us not?


Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why
my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand?
What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for
choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of
those from which there is no more reason to choose one
than another, trying nothing else?


The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the
play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head,
and that is the end for ever.

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow men.
Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not
aid us; we shall die alone. We should therefore act as if
we were alone, and in that case should we build fine houses,
etc.?

 We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if
we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more
than the search for truth.

Pascal