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Quote by Paul Oxton

“Whenever we encounter wild animals in nature, we must only ever show kindness and compassion.”

Quote by Paul Oxton

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Paul Oxton

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“However they arrive, asylum seekers, immigrants, and refugees reach with outstretched hands toward safer, more promising shores. Welcoming these wayfarers rekindles our humanity and heals our broken parts. Only within the cords that bind us together do we find answers to age-old questions about despair and enmity, fear and alienation, justice and hope.”

InspirationalJusticeCompassionImmigrantsRefugeesHumanities
Book:How to Make a Life: A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted
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“To talk of the size of a thought is odd, perhaps, but to say that someone is thinking big thoughts is not without meaning. "I want you all to come to my birthday party" is a bigger thought than "I want only some of you to come." Bodhicitta is theoretically the biggest thought anyone can think because of the number of beings involved, what it wants them to have, and the length of time it must last before its motivating power dies out. Since the duration of a thought is a variable of the aim, in the sense that the actions motivated by a thought cease when the aim is attained, one can conceive of thoughts that last longer and longer. Bodhicitta necessarily lasts until the last living being reaches the state free of suffering, because it is only then that the aim is finally achieved. This explains the prayer of Samantabhadra at the end of the Gandavyūha section of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, which the Dalai Lama often invokes: "For as long as space endures may I remain to work for the benefit of living beings.”

MotivationSufferingCompassionThoughtsDurationBiggestAimsBodhicittaLongest
Book:Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea: Verses in Praise of Bodhicitta
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“There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong. God looks down at people in that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn’t say, “You idiots.” When we look at people who have brought trouble into their lives by their own foolishness, we say things like “Serves them right” or we mock them on social media: “What kind of imbecile says something like this?” When we see people of the other political party defeated, we just gloat. This is all a way of detaching ourselves from them. We distance ourselves from them partly out of pride and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to be ours. God doesn’t do that. Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their condition makes us sad; it affects us. That is deeply uncomfortable, but it is the character of compassion. (121)”

CompassionJonah
Author:Timothy Keller
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