Cloudscape

Messier registered hundreds of planetary nebula in order not to be distracted by them in his search for comets. Today, planetary nebula prove to be even more beautiful to us than any comet as yet observed.

Perhaps we can learn from this: anything can become beautiful, if only we look close enough.

Craving and fear can be converted into love through detachment. Do not therefore resist them, as they can precede love. Instead, allow them to grow into love.

We resist suffering merely because suffering is per definition that which we resist, nothing more and nothing less. Suffering, then, is but resistance and otherwise nothing but an illusion. Pain itself is not an illusion, but if one will not resist it, one will not suffer from it. Do not resign yourself, but do not resist either.

It is in your emptiness that you can most purify your life. If emptiness comes over you, then, use it to do so.

When losing something, people often try to represent what they lost as being of less worth than it used to be to them. This may lessen their sorrow for what they lost, but this is no good way of saying goodbye. Instead, remember of what worth it was to you, but also see the worth of its loss, and what that loss may have brought you instead.  You will then find that it may have brought you more silence where before there had been disorder.

Attention is as much a place in one's mind as one's location is a place in one's world. One must therefore remember to accept not only where one is in the world but also where one is in one's mind. Accept where your attention is as long as it is there where it is, as you should accept where your location is as long as you are there.

If your senses are focussed on sensations you experience as negative, learn to love them, and so too if your mind is focussed on emotions you experience as negative, accept them as well.

After no time will time ever be aught but this moment; and after no time will this moment ever be again.

The only thing that you can perfect is your awareness of the perfection in and of the universe. To be fully aware of all perfection in the universe would, however, require infinite consciousness.

In absolutely everything you do, be, intensely, mindfully, wholeheartedly creative, even if what you are doing at a given moment is no more than enjoying, for even in the way one enjoys one can be thusly creative. Without really needing to achieve anything, let everything you do every moment be as beautiful as possible, as though it were a work of art — not only in your actions but also your experience. In this way, one may grow through every moment, and every moment will contribute to one's constant growth. In this way, one can both experience and improve at the same time, at all times.

In considering the possibility of life on other planets, we must note that the earth has had far more advantages than just having seas and the right temperature:

1) The protosphere, the nebulous disk from which the solar system arose, formed of matter from a heavier star which contained a wide variety of heavier materials.

2) The Earth was formed of a mass which contained a wide variety of elements

3) The Earth was protected from the impact of heavier asteroids by the proximity of the gas giant Jupiter, the vacuum cleaner of the solar system
4) Meanwhile, smaller asteroids and comets, having less gravitational attraction to Jupiter, were let through into the innermost solar system, providing water, organic materials and minerals.
5) By an amazing stroke of fortune, our planet has a stable moon, which is highly exceptional for terrestrial planets. Usually, natural satellites of planets our size either collide with the planet or rapidly drift away from them. By causing oceanic tides, the moon brings many advantages to the Earth's biology and in particular to its evolution. Without it, it may have taken far longer for life to migrate onto coastal areas and later inland, and for all we know it might never have happened had some of the first sea animals not been swept away to the shore.
6) The Earth has a magnetosphere which repels cosmic radiation and solar mass ejections which would otherwise almost fully sterilize the planet.
7) The Earth has an ozone layer which offers a protection against UV rays. However, as ozone is relatively likely to form in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, this is linked to the probability of high atmospheric oxygen.
8) In addition to having water at all, the Earth has actual oceans,
9) The Earth has plate tectonics, which furthers biodiversification compartmentalizing the earth into many separate as well as non-separate areas, thereby allowing the biosphere to experiment with evolution in different environments; adding to the variety of the terrain will add to the variety of the life-forms inhabiting it.