Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair. She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed. Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." – Bob Dylan, "Shelter From the Storm"

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy confides to the alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night. "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." –Paraphrased from "The Alchemist"

"We try so hard to hang on to the teachings and "get it," but actually the truth sinks in like rain into very hard earth. The rain is very gentle, and we soften up slowly at our own speed. But when that happens, something has fundamentally changed in us. That hard earth has softened. It doesn't seem to happen by trying to get it or capture it. It happens by letting go; it happens by relaxing your mind, and it happens by the aspiration and the longing to want to communicate with yourself and others. Each of us finds our own way..." -Pema Chodron, from "Start Where You Are"

"Mandala of Avalokiteshvara (Nyingma) surrounded by the 100 peaceful and wrathful deities of the Bardo"

16. Distinguish clearly these bitter yet fertile human truths, flesh of our flesh, and admit them heroically: (a) the mind of man can perceive appearances only, and never the essence of things; (b) and not all appearances but only the appearances of matter; (c) and more narrowly still: not even these appearances of matter, but only relationships between them; (d) and these relationships are not real and independent of man, for even these are his creations; (e) and they are not the only ones humanly possible, but simply the most convenient for his practical and perceptive needs.
17. Within these limitations the mind is the legal and absolute monarch. No other power reigns within its kingdom.
18. I recognize these limitations, I accept them with resignation, bravery, and love, and I struggle at ease in their closure, as though I were free.
19. I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body.
20. In sudden dreadful moments a thought flashes through me: "This is all a cruel and futile game, without beginning, without end, without meaning." But again I yoke myself swiftly to the wheels of necessity, and all the universe begins to revolve around me once more.
21. Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.
22. This is how, with clarity and austerity, you may determine the omnipotence of the mind amid appearances and the incapacity of the mind beyond appearances - before you set out for salvation. You may not otherwise be saved.
-–Nikos Kazantzakis, from “The Saviors of God”