|
04-05-08
Like it or not, if you look at your own mind you will discover it is void and groundless, as insubstantial as empty space.
-- Padma Sambhava
03-05-08
If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.
-- Zen Master Lin-Chi
12-05-07
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. Teach him how to build a fire and he'll be warm for a lifetime. Set him on fire and he'll never bother you again.
-- Unknown
09-05-07
The true meaning of the precepts is not just that one should refrain from drinking alcohol, but also from getting drunk on nirvana.
-- Bassui Tokusho
07-05-07
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality.
To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
-- Hsin Hsin Ming
06-05-07
If we don't change the direction we are going, we are likely to end up where we are heading.
-- Ho Sik Pak
05-05-07
The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
-- Muhammad
04-05-07
Things are not what they appear to be, nor are they otherwise.
-- Surangama Sutra
03-05-07
Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
-- Allan Watts
02-05-07
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
-- Aitken Roshi
01-05-07
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
-- Confucius
12-05-06
Just think of the trees: they let the birds perch and fly, with no intention to call them when they come and no longing for their return when they fly away. If people's hearts can be like the trees, they will not be off the Way.
-- Langya
11-05-06
Only that which cannot be lost in a shipwreck is yours.
-- Al Ghazzali
10-05-06
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
09-05-06
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-- Albert Einstein
08-05-06
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
07-05-06
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-- Albert Einstein
06-05-06
Despise no man and consider nothing impossible, for there is no man who doesn't have his hour and there is no thing that doesn't have its place.
-- The Talmud
05-05-06
Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.
-- The Talmud
04-05-06
Sheep follow sheep.
-- The Talmud
03-05-06
Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.
-- The Bhagavad Gita
02-05-06
Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.
-- The Talmud
01-05-06:
However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?
-- The Buddha
12-05-05:
When one can see eternity in things that pass away and infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge.
-- The Bhagavad Gita
11-05-05:
Be of an exceedingly humble spirit, for the end of man is the worm.
-- The Talmud
10-05-05:
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
-- William Shakespeare
9-05-05:
To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
-- William Blake
8-05-05:
The path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses.
-- Aldous Huxley
7-05-05:
It has often occurred to me that a seeker after truth has to be silent.
-- Gandhi
6-10-05:
Things may come to those who wait. But only the things left by those who hustle.
-- Abraham Lincoln
5-05-05:
You can't simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
-- Albert Einstein
4-05-05:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
-- Krishnamurti
3-05-05:
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain
2-02-05:
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-- Winston Churchill
1-02-05:
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-- Confucius
12-00-04:
The obstacle is the path.
-- Zen Proverb
11-02-04:
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-- Buddha
10-04-04:
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
-- Pablo Casals
08-30-04:
I am neither the doer nor the enjoyer.
Actions have I none, now or then.
I have no body, nor am I bodiless.
How can there be mine and not mine?
I have no flaws like attachment,
Nor any suffering arising from embodiment.
Know me to be the singular Self,
As vast as space itself.
-- AVADHUTA-GITA (Translated from the original Sanskrit by Georg Feuerstein).
08-01-04:
There is no peace in the Himalayas, and there is no noise in the world; everything is within you. If you are at peace with yourself, you can find peace anywhere in the world, and if you are not at peace with yourself, you will never find peace in isolation in the mountains.
-- Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati (from his book, Yoga Sadhana Panorama, 1997)
06-30-04:
If you put fifty zeros after a one, you have a large sum. But erase the one and nothing remains. It is the one that makes the many.
-- Sri Ramakrishna (from LIVING WISDOM: VEDANTA IN THE WEST)
05-28-04:
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
-- Joseph Campbell
05-01-04:
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance
-- Socrates
04-24-04:
There is no fire like passion.
There is no grasping like ill will.
There is no snare like delusion.
There is no river like craving.
-- Dhammapada (Translated from the original Pali by Georg Feuerstein)
04-17-04:
Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden
-- D. T. Suzuki
04-10-04:
The sense of I and mine does not extend beyond the gross physical eye and the tip of the nose.
-- Swami Nityananda (From THE VOICE OF THE SELF)
4-03-04:
I am now speaking and eating through so many mouths. I am the Soul of all individual souls. I have infinite mouths, infinite heads, infinite hands and feet. My pure form is spiritual. It is absolute Existence, Intelligence, and Bliss condensed, as it were. It has neither birth nor death, neither sorrow, disease, nor suffering. It is immortal and perfect. I see the indivisible Absolute Brahman within me as well as all around me. You are all like my own parts. The Infinite Brahman is manifesting Itself through so many human forms. Human bodies are like pillowcases of different shapes and various colors, but the cotton wool of the internal Spirit is one.
-- Sri Ramakrishna (From THE GOSPEL OF RAMAKRISHNA)
3-27-2004:
Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
-- George Carlin
3-20-2004:
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
--
Zen Proverb
3-06-2004:
One must know that one is ignorant before one can begin to know.
-- Sri Aurobindo (from the book, A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO INTEGRAL YOGA)
2-28-2004:
Yearning is a part of the beginning of anybody's practice. You have to yearn to grow. You can't want it one day, but not the next, and expect to make any real progress. You have to begin with some steady, inner hunger.
-- Swami Chetanananda (from the book, THE BREATH OF GOD)
2-24-2004:
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.
-- The Upanishads
1-31-2004:
Man is a seeker. He dwells amid shadows and seeks for light.
-- Sri Ananda Acharya (from his book, YOGA OF CONQUEST)
1-24-2004:
The soul-mate is really the Self within. He will find his true
soul-mate when he finds his inner Self, when he yields himself
completely and lovingly up to it.
-- Paul Brunton
1-10-2004:
What is God? In a way, there is no God. Our perception of God usually leads to a misunderstanding that seriously undermines our spiritual development.
God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun. It does not exist, as existence is defined, for It takes up no space and is not bound by time. Jewish mystics often refer to It as Ein Sof , which means Endlessness.
-- Rabbi David A. Cooper from his book, GOD IS A VERB
12-27-2003:
Shun asked Ch'eng, saying, "Can one get Tao so as to have it for one's own?"
"Your very body," replied Ch'eng, "is not your own. How should Tao be?"
"If my body," said Shun, "is not my own, pray whose is it?"
"It is the delegated image of Tao," replied Ch'eng. "Your life is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of Tao. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of Tao . You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. These are the operation of the laws of Tao. How then should you get Tao so as to have it for your own?"
-- Story by Chuang-Tzu, illustrating the Taoist ideal of wu-wei and the Buddhist ideal of non-attachment.
12-06-2003:
Had I not known
that I was dead
already
I would have mourned
my loss of life.
-- Stabbed while bathing, Ota Dokan (1432-86), a scholar of military arts and a poet, was fatally stabbed while bathing. He calmly recited this tanka (a short form of Japanese death-poem) while clutching the murder weapon while it was still sheathed in his body!
11-24-2003:
The difficulty is that man thinks that he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power that does everything and man is the tool. If he accepts that position, he is free from troubles. Otherwise he courts them.
-- Ramana Maharshi
11-09-2003:
My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams - like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
-- Hermann Hesse (from his novel, Demian)
11-02-2003:
A gnani is beyond life and death. What we take to be inevitable - to be born and to die - appears to him but a way of expressing movement in the immovable, change in the changeless, end in the endless. To the gnani it is obvious that nothing is born and nothing dies, nothing lasts and nothing changes, all is as it is - timelessly.
-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
10-25-2003:
There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind. Yoga is not an attribute of the mind, nor is it a state of mind."
-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
10-11-2003:
Once I saw at the gate of the temple a dog biting a dead lion.
Then I lost my fear of the dead and my respect for the living.
-- Gibran [Way of the Seven Days]
10-03-2003:
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world
I hold onto, and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
So I bought some burlap, but I still throw it elegantly
over my left shoulder.
I pulled back my sexual longings,
and now I discover that I'm angry a lot.
I gave up rage, and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving my greed,
and now I am proud of myself.
When the mind wants to break its link with the world
it still holds on to one thing.
Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!
-- Kabir
09-17-2003:
By this one passion you are quite possessed -
You'd best admit no other to a share
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.
-- Goethe: Faust Part 1
09-08-2003:
THE GREAT WAY IS NOT DIFFICULT FOR THOSE THAT HAVE NO PREFERENCE
-- Third Chinese Patriarch
| 