Joanna Macy Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Joanna Macy's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author Joanna Macy's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 39 quotes on this page collected since May 2, 1929! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing - resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.

  • We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don't ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don't apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time.

  • The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe... All is registered in the 'boundless heart' of the bodhisattva. Through our deepest and innermost reponses to our world - to hunger and torture and the threat of annihilation - we touch that boundless heart.

  • This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, because these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings.

    Joanna Macy, Norbert Gahbler (2006). “Pass it On: Five Stories That Can Change the World”, p.105, Parallax Press
  • In the early Buddhist view, then, a persons identity resides not in an enduring self but in his actions (karma)- that is in the choices that shape these actions. Because the dispositions formed by previous choices can be modified in turn by present behaviour, this identity as choice-maker is fluid, its experience alterable. While it is affected by the past, it can also break free of the past.

  • The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.

    Joanna Macy (1983). “Despair and personal power in the nuclear age”, New Society Pub
  • Qualities like love and compassion are not just abstract virtues that are the property of saints and adepts. Anyone can develop these qualities in themselves by doing spiritual practices. As the Buddha said, Come and see.

  • It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to evolutionary and psychological transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells.

  • We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again - and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.

  • Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, a rare combination of mystic, poet, scholar, and activist. His luminous presence and the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives.

  • Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say ‘It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.’

  • Walk boldly through your life with an open, broken heart.

  • It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast true nature.

    "World as Lover, World as Self". Book by Joanna Macy, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1991.
  • Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.

    Joanna Macy (2007). “World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent times”, p.106, Parallax Press
  • Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts.

  • We are making choices that will affect whether beings thousands of generations from now will be able to be born sound of mind and body.

    "On being" with Krista Tippett, onbeing.org. August 11, 2016.
  • Out of this darkness a new world can arise, not to be constructed by our minds so much as to emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see clearly how it's going to turn out, we are still called to let the future into our imagination. We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished in our hearts.

  • You don't need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.

  • The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization.

  • The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity. As your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.

    Joanna Macy (2013). “Greening of the Self”, p.7, Parallax Press
  • Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us.

    Joanna Macy (2007). “World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent times”, p.72, Parallax Press
  • The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

  • Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art....It is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world.

  • Clothe yourself in your authority. You speak not only as yourself or for yourself. You will speak and act with the courage and endurance that has been yours through the long, beautiful aeons of your life story.

  • There are the holding actions, the changing actions, and the vision of the future - what we want to see happen for the Earth. All are essential.

  • The wave of the future is on the local level. Don't waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. But come into where you're almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.

  • There's a song that wants to sing itself through us. We just got to be available. Maybe the song that is to be sung through us is the most beautiful requiem for an irreplaceable planet or maybe it's a song of joyous rebirth as we create a new culture that doesn't destroy its world. But in any case, there's absolutely no excuse for our making our passionate love for our world dependent on what we think of its degree of health, whether we think it's going to go on forever. Those are just thoughts anyway. But this moment you're alive, so you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.

    "A Wild Love for the World". "On Being" with Krista Tippett, onbeing.org. September 16, 2010.
  • The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further.

  • The future is not out there in front of us, but inside us.

    Joanna Macy (1983). “Despair and personal power in the nuclear age”, New Society Pub
  • No magic bullet, not even the Internet, can save us from population explosion, deforestation, climate disruption, poison by pollution, and wholesale extinction of plant and animal species. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 39 quotes from the Author Joanna Macy, starting from May 2, 1929! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Joanna Macy quotes about: Compassion Healing Heart Home Peace Suffering Universe