T. Brady

“We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy." If you say this in a voice that communicates your real openness to understand, the other person may cry.

That is a good sign, because it means the door of understanding is opening and everything will be possible again.

Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love. True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“The greatest book in the world, the Mahabharata, tells us we all have to live and die by our karmic cycle. Thus works the perfect reward-and-punishment, cause-and-effect, code of the universe. We live out in our present life what we wrote out in our last. But the great moral thriller also orders us to rage against karma and its despotic dictates. It teaches us to subvert it. To change it. It tells us we also write out our next lives as we live out our present.
The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction.
It is much greater. It is a work of art.
It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral.
It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men.
Not animals, not gods.
It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. It encourages the noblest of men - Yudhishtra, Arjuna, Lord Krishna himself - to lie, so that a greater truth may be served.
It understands the world is powered by desire. And that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress.
But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing. And the only reason for all doing.
And doing is life. Doing is karma.
Thus it forgives even those who desire intemperately. It forgives Duryodhana. The man who desires without pause. The man who precipitates the war to end all wars. It grants him paradise and the admiration of the gods. In the desiring and the doing this most reviled of men fulfils the mandate of man.
You must know the world before you are done with it. You must act on desire before you renounce it. There can be no merit in forgoing the not known.
The greatest book in the world rescues volition from religion and gives it back to man.
Religion is the disciplinarian fantasy of a schoolmaster.
The Mahabharata is the joyous song of life of a maestro.
In its tales within tales it takes religion for a spin and skins it inside out. Leaves it puzzling over its own poisoned follicles.
It gives men the chance to be splendid. Doubt-ridden architects of some small part of their lives. Duryodhanas who can win even as they lose.”
― Tarun J. Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire

“We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're starting to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat , and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we're still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that's only spelling"


It's much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star. (Logan Pearsall Smith)



Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around. (J.R. Moehringer)

You could be standing a few feet away...I could have sat next to you on the subway, or brushed beside you as we went through the turnstiles. But whether or not you are here, you are here- because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist is you weren't here in some way.

At last I had it--the Christmas present I'd wanted all along, but hadn't realized. His words.

The dream was obviously a sign: he was too enticing to resist.

Wow. You must have a lot of faith in me. Which I appreciate. Even if I'm not sure I share it.

I could do this on my own, and not freak out that I had no idea what waited for me on the other side of this night.

Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.


Because I'm So uncool and so afraid.

If there was a clue, that meant the mystery was still intact


I fear you may have outmatched me, because not I find these words have nowhere to go. It's hard to answer a question you haven't been asked. It's hard to show that you tried unless you end up succeeding.

This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of finding eachother.

It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that is humbles the present.

Don't worry. It's your embarrassment at not having the thought that counts.

You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's ahint- ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy- all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know--this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtship. They want to know immediately.

Be careful what you;re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head

You should never wish for wishful thinking”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Consciousness and Healing

To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through. In order to do this, the attitude toward pain has to change. This happens when we accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.”
― Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth