“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”

– H. Jackson Browne

“I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the greatest foundation for failure.”

“Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”

– Ali ibn abi Talib

“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.”

– Hugh Downs

Some of my favorite words of wisdom from John Maynard Keynes:

• “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

• “Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.”

• “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

• “It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

“Understand the psychology of the trade: never believe you are smarter than the markets as the markets will always win.”

– George Fontanills

“An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold”

– Chinese proverb

CONCENTRATION: Imagination, song, the soaring spirit. Separate them to know them as aspects of the whole, Join them to know the mystery of totality.

The mind, if focused, can become the most powerful force we know. Yet for most of us, we are lost in the vastness of our own uncharted minds. We play around with different aspects, find certain modes that we can get by with, and leave the rest unexplored. Those who follow Tao do not do this. They want to explore all the dimensions of the mind so that they may find a wholly integral mode of consciousness.

The primary means of exploration is through concentration of the mind. Practitioners first select an aspect and delve into it by daily focus. Only when they have fully understood do they go on. It is like studying. When you are first introduced to a subject, you must put your attention to work in order to master the knowledge. Such concentration leads to absorption, like mixing liquids together in a bottle : Once they are combined, they cannot be distinguished from one another.

With concentration, all the various aspects of the mind can be joined together into one superconscious mode. Sound is the same as sight, taste is the same as smell, touch is the same as thought, and all that we are is identical with the spiritual energy that resides within us. In this high concentration, there is complete union, and we feel the joy of total integration with all our facets.

365 Tao: Daily Meditations
Deng Ming-Dao

“Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy”

– Rudy Giuliani