mortality

It is nothing less than fantastic the way mathematical odds add up. For instance take the possibility of making a mistake in making a telephone call. Most local exchanges require seven digits, which is accomplished in four or five seconds. The phone has ten digits on it. The mathematical formula of possibilities is ten to the seventh power, which is 10,000,000, or it is 9,999,999 to 1 that you would enter a wrong number if you didn't know what you were doing. Add the four digits to get a long distance number and it becomes 100,000,000,000. Mortality, which fortunately lasts for most of us many times that four or five seconds that it takes to place a telephone call, is also full of chances to make mistakes. Fortunately, too, the path through mortality is well marked, and we can, with exercising care, get to where we all desire to be at the end of mortality.

Once upon a time a cat who prided herself on her wit and wisdom was prowling about the barn in search of food and saw a tail protruding from a hole. "There is the conclusion of a rat," she said. Then she crept stealthily toward it until within striking distance, when she made a jump and reached it with her claws. Alas! it was not the appendage of a rat, but the tail of a snake, who immediately turned and gave her a mortal bite. And if such a story has a moral, it surely must be that it is indeed dangerous to jump at conclusions.

Shall any of us repine that it is our lot to live in perilous and sacrificial days? Rather I say we are glad that we live in this time of mortal struggle and are doing our share to put to flight the powers of darkness. Our children and grandchildren will be proud that this country saved freedom for itself by helping to preserve it for the world.

Remember, the wisdom of God may appear as foolishness to men, but the greatest single lesson we can learn in mortality is that when God speaks and a man obeys, that man will always be right.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.

There is zero, and there is eternity, and there is mortality, but there is no ultimate.

It means that no blue ribbon is forever. Someday - if the world doesn't explode itself in the meantime - someone will run a two-minute mile in the Olympics. It may take a hundred years or a thousand, but it will happen. Because there is no ultimate blue ribbon. There is zero, and there is eternity, and there is mortality, but there is no ultimate.

When the mortal mind is dead, the mind of Tao can live. . . . When the mind of Tao lives, no thoughts can arise. When no thoughts arise, one returns to Earlier Heaven.

To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

Trees have from time immemorial been closely associated with magic. These stout members of the vegetable kingdom may stand for as long as a thousand years, and tower far above our mortal heads. As such they are symbols and keepers of unlimited power, longevity, and timelessness. An untouched forest, studded with trees of all ages, sizes and types, is more than a mysterious, magical place - it is one of the energy reservoirs of nature. Within its boundaries stand ancient and new sentinels, guardians of the universal force which has manifested on the the Earth. . . .