Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The power of aspiration

Today I stumbled upon a quotation I saved to my computer a long time ago. It's by the same person who wrote that wonderful book, The Little Prince. Here it is:

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The longing for the immensity of the sea is our aspiration for wisdom and inner liberation. The tasks of building the ship are the the exercises, the practices, of mindtraining and meditation. If we genuinely "long for the endless immensity of the sea" we will not mind the discipline involved in actually training our mind.

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