"Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything."
- Floyd Dell
"To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just."
- Heraclitus
"The tension between reality and what is honorable and right can be truly terrible."
- Sophie
Roshi responded, “That’s the wrong attitude. If they knock you down, you get up. If they knock you down again, get up. No matter how many times they knock you down, get up again. That is how you should go.”
- Source...forgotten...
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
- Albert Einstein
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
- Leo Tolstoy
"Sometimes, after learning to walk, I find my shoes have been tied tog fether."
- Aslynn
"When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half."
- Gracie Allen
"'Let me help.' A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words over 'I love you.'"
- Captain James T. Kirk
The City on the Edge of Forever
"What makes me really pissed off in the kitchen? What makes me explode? Lies.
A chef can overcook a scallop, they can overcook a fillet of beef, they can overcook a turbot. But what they can't do is lie about it. That really upsets me. It's not the fact that they're lying to me; they're lying to the customers, too, and I won't have that."
- Roasting in Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay
"Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love.... The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."
- Mother Teresa
"7 You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is."
- Galatians Chapter 5 Versus 7 thru 10
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
- Beverly Sills
"The most offensive thing you can do is disagree with another's perspective."
- Aslynn
"I am a fucked up mess who happens to be highly functional."
- Sophie
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Three passions have governed my
life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living."
- Bertrand Russell
"My candle burns at both its ends;
It will not last the night;
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities."
- Albert Einstein
"Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions."
- Richard Bach
"One ought, every day at least, to hear
a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible,
to speak a few reasonable words."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Humans cover themselves, and protect themselves, and when someone says, 'You are pushing my buttons,' it is not exactly true. What is true is that you are touching a wound in his mind, and he reacts because it hurts."
"How can you relate with people who are emotionally wounded and sick with fear?"
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
- Chinese Proverb
"Failure is the foundation of truth. It teaches us what isn't true, and that is a great beginning. To fear failure is to fear the possibility of truth."
- Joan Chittister
"Try to love someone who you want to
hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never
expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe
it."
- Margaret Cho
“The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.”
- Rumi
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.
And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
- Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have
others."
- Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
"The difference between a moral man
and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when
it has worked and he has not been caught."
- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956), 'Prejudices: Fourth Series,' 1924
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared
with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which
determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
- Henry David Thoreau
"P. S. R. Parallel Synchronized Randomness. An interesting brain rarity and our subject for today. Two people walk in opposite directions at the same time and then they make the same decision at the same time. Then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it. Basically, in a mathematical world these two little guys will stay looped for the end of time. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe and it's right behind the nose."
- Stephane from the film The Science of Sleep
"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
- Kurt Vonnegut
"O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.”
- Rumi
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."
- Christopher Morley
"Leave what you are doing. Seat yourself. Repose. Set your spine upright. Relax your eyes. Gaze at the horizon without focusing on anything in particular. Sweep the infinite with a mild glance. You are part of the universe, son of the sky, of the earth and of time. Brother of the sun and the moon. Your life is related to everything you see. You are part of it. You have all you need to be happy, so do not search further from yourself."
- From Path of the Warrior by Lucas Estrella Schultz
"I am a shepherd who, with his people, has begun to learn a beautiful and difficult truth: our Christian faith requires that we submerge ourselves in this world."
- Oscar Romero
"Life brings to you exactly what you need. There is perfect justice in hell. There is nothing to blame. We can even say that our suffering is a gift. If you just open your eyes and see what is around you, it's exactly what you need to clean you poison, to heal your wounds, to accept yourself, and to get out of hell."
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"You are always free to love. If your choice is to be in a relationship, and your partner is playing the same game, what a gift! When your relationship is completely out of hell, you will love yourself so much that you don't need each other at all. By your own will, you get together and create beauty. And what the two of you are going to create is a dream of heaven."
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain
you don't have anything to learn from them.
You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past."
- From Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
"Before we love with our heart, we already love with our imagination."
- Louise Colet
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works."
- John Gaule
“…one cannot lodge in ‘if.’”
- Rumi
“Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together.”
- Rumi
"When we're going through klesha withdrawal, it helps to know we're on the right tack. Shantideva remarks that--just as foolish rivals endure physical pain, sleeplessness, and even death--he will go through the anguish of detox to cease being a slave to his kleshas. he will not lose heart and give up because of pain or fear."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
“When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I cannot go to sleep. Praise God for these two insomnias and the difference between them.”
- Rumi
"If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
- Rumi
“I am burning. If anyone lacks tinder, let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.”
- Rumi
"I have the heart of a lion, the memory of an elephant, and the soul of a beekeeper...an interesting combination."
- Aslynn
"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers."
- William James
"Bodhisattvas sometimes have to back off. This doesn't mean giving up. It means finding out what we can do with enthusiasm. This is something we have to experiment with. We discover for ourselves what's too tight and what's too loose; what brings us benefit and what causes further harm."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"If in the teachings it is said
That one who in his thought intends
To give away a little thing but then draws back
Will take rebirth among the hungry ghosts,
How can I expect a happy destiny
If from my heart I summon
Wandering beings to the highest bliss,
But then deceive and let them down?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 4.5 and 4.6 by Shantideva
"If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you always got."
- From Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge by Geoffrey M. Bellman
"...there comes a time...when every lonely little boy must learn how to dance."
- Madame de Pompadour from the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace"
"To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over."
- From the novel Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
"It's Thanksgiving. Some people bake pies. We bake ourselves."
- From the television series That 70's Show
"The world is not small. You are."
- From the television series Heroes
"One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an Angel."
- Madame de Pompadour from the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace"
"You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way."
- FromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possilbe and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From ths plae the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"'Take it easy, you little fool,' the werewolf growled. 'When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.'"
- FromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"We're old, son, much too old. Lived long enough. Seen too much. When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything's empty, nothing is real, nothing matters."
- Morla fromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're loking for. You're not on TV."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformty to hateful students wasn't what he wanted to do."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Stay vigilant: There are a thousand dogmatists who want to skin your cat."
- Aslynn
"The practice of confession is an excellent way to move beyond guilt and self-deception. It relies on the view that neurosis, while it may feel monolithic or immutable, is essentially transitory and insubstantial. It is just very strong energy that we mistakenly identify as a solid and permanent 'me.' Confessing, like making offerings and prostrations, helps us let go of this fixed version of who we are."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"All the harm, in short, my ego does
To its advantage and to others' cost,
May all of it descend upon itself,
To its own hurt--to others' benefit."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva
8.165 by Shantideva
"So many are the wants and tendencies
of beings,
Even Buddha could not please them all--
Of such an evil man as me no need to speak!
Better to give up such wordly thoughts.
People scorn the poor who have no wealth,
They also criticize the rich who have it,
What pleasure can derive from keeping company
With people such as these, so difficult to please?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 8.22 and 8.23 by Shantideva
"How could we be smack-dab in the middle of a heated debate and not really see wht's goin on? A metaphor might help. It's akin to going fly fishing for the first time with an experienced angler. your buddy keeps telling you to cast your fly six feet upstream from that brown trout 'just out there.' Only you cant see a brown trout 'just out there.' He can. That's because he knows what to look for. You *think* you do."
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking
when stakes are high
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler
"If we continually renew and break our commitments, we will long be barred from progressing along the bodhisattva path. We won't, however, be barred forever; ...we will not wander endlessly in misery. The notion of eternal damnation is foreign to Buddhist thinking. Some states of mind may seem endless, but even the worst suffering is impermanent and there is always a way out."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"don't take me for granted."
- Ben, age 10, from Always Kiss Me Goodnight compiled by J.S. Salt
"A content man has no need for subterfuge."
- Scott "Lets Ride" Brinkmeyer
"I'm reminded of a Native American man from the Taos Pueblo called Little Joe Gomez. In the early seventies, he met some people who were practicing complete silence. They were wearing chalkboards around their necks in case they needed to communicate. This got Little Joe laughing. When someone asked him what was so funny, he said, 'Very easy not to talk; very difficult to talk mindfully.'"
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"...our ordinary human suffering has value. It can humble us and teach us compassion. The pain we go through while changing old habits is not only worth tolerating, it's worth celebrating!"
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"Their weapons and my body--
Both are causes of my suffering!
They their weapons drew, while I held out my body.
Who then is more worthy of my anger?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 6.43 by Shantideva
"When the teachings tell us to 'make friends with our emotions,' they mean to become more attentive and get to know them better. Being ignorant about emotions only makes matters worse; feeling guilty or ashamed of them does the same. Struggling against them is equally nonproductive. The only way to dissolve their power is with our whole hearted, intelligent attention."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath"
- Lyrics from On the Radio sang by Regina Spektor
"Think about it, there must be higher
love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is a wasted time"
- Lyrics from Higher Love sang by Steve Winwood
"The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel, and misrepresentation."
- C. Northcote Parkinson
"Consider the impact crucial conversations can have on your relationships. Could failed crucial conversations lead to failed relationships? As it turns out, when you ask the average person what causes couples to break up, he or she usually suggests that it's due to differences of opinion. You know, people have different theories about how to manage their finances, spice up their love lives, or rear their chldren. In truth, everyone argues about important issues. But not everyone splits up. It's how you argue that matters."
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking
when stakes are high
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler
"So this is one of my dearest friends. This is Maynard from Tool, and uh, I call him up when I'm feeling terrible and he sings me lullabies."
- Tori Amos
"What you learn is that 'crucial conversations' transform people and relationships. They are anything but transacted; they create an entirely new level of bonding. They produce what Buddhism calls 'the middle way'--not a compromise between two opposites on a straight-line continuum, but a higher middle way, like the apex of a triangle... When you produce something with another person that is truly creative, it's one of the most powerful forms of bonding there is."
- Stephen R. Covey
From the forward of Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are
high
"A man walked into a fortune teller's tent. When the fortune teller saw him, she started laughing, so he hit her. Why? He was striking a happy medium."
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
- William Arthur Ward
"The bodhisattva path is not about being a 'good' person or accepting the status quo. It requires courage and a willingness to keep growing."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"To cover all the earth with sheets
of hide--
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather around your feet,
And it's as if the whole earth had been covered!"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 5.13 by Shantideva
"Man...the world aint supposed to work like this. I mean, maybe you don't know that, but this aint the way it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without asking you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything's supposed to be different than what it is."
- Danny Glover's character from the movie Grand Canyon
"There is a repeating pattern in our behavior that we somehow seem to miss. When we're challenged, our habitual reactions are especially predictable: we strike out or withdraw, scream or weep, become arrogant or feel inadequate. These strategies for seeking security and avoiding discomfort only increase our uneasiness. But alas, they seem addictive; even thoug the results are unsatisfactory, we use them again and again."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"Just so, and for the benefit of
beings,
I will also have this attitude of mind,
And in those precepts, step by step,
I will abide and train myself."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 3.24 by Shantideva
"For if you will accept me, I will
be
A benefit to all, and freed from fear.
I'll go beyond the evils of my past,
And ever after turn my face from them."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 2.9 by Shantideva
"Delenn does not walk in the same world that you and I walk in. She does not see the same world that you and I see. In her world we are better than we are, we care more than we care, we act towards each other with compassion. I much prefer her world to that of my own and I will not allow anything to threaten that."
- Lennier from the TV Series Babylon 5
"The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself."
- From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?"
"Whatever I feel like I wanna do. Gosh!"
- Napoleon Dynamite
"You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness...
...I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
- From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves."
- Bonaro W. Overstreet
"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Real life is a special case."
- Unknown mathematician
"I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life"
- Pink
"When the shoe fits, we forget the foot."
- Zen saying from Water Bears No Scars
"Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you."
- Roman Tombstone
"What is need compared to the path?"
- Kosh from the series Babylon 5
"See, we are what we pretend to be because we pretend to be what we really are. The act is not an act."
- From the Steven Soderbergh film Schizopolis
"Don't feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions. Too often we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey run loose in the pasture. Don't make the body do what the spirit does best, and don't put a big load on the spirit that the body could carry easily."
- Rumi
"Happiness is an inexpressibly misleading and temporary thing, decides nothing; the true stations of joy are on the road which lies through simple endurance."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained to distinguish good from evil."
- Hebrews Chapter 5 Verse 12
"Offering him the conventional wisdom, her advice had no effect on his pace. He knew that his method of making it through the labyrinth's path was right for him and he could do nothing else. The true seeker heeds rigid rules defining how God should be approached, as carefully as a boy listens to his younger sister. Which is to say, not at all."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Recognition of what you are doing, where you are--both physically and emotionally--occurs at the stage of illumination. It is here that a sense of being grounded comes into play. The runner can say, 'Yes, I have made a mess of my life in all the following ways...but be that as it may, her I am moving along this trail, improving with every step, not languishing in self-pity on the couch, advancing through this difficult time.' This indisputable fact that you are moving forward, even if only physically, adds momentum to your emotional healing."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is by saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
- Alexander Pope
"As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
- Nelson Mandela
“Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.”
- Rumi
"Perhaps it is not just that our conception of God changes, but that he and the way he relates to us changes as well."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"First, I am born. Then the trouble begins."
- Fletcher Munson
"I can make sense out of yesterday. Can you understand the power of that?"
- Elmo Oxygen
(from the Steven Soderbergh film Schizopolis)
"No one purifies another."
- The Buddha
"Another runner, in speaking of the post-marathon blues, suggested finding a new goal, another marathon, and another reason to train. This is a typical reaction to loss. Find a new lover to replace the old one. I suggest that you allow time to absorb these losses, to live for a while in the empty spaces that remain after the loss. God's presence can be detected all over this barren territory."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"Sooner or later, I get me up this
track.
Gotta do what it is that I do and then I'm - coming back.
Got sun in my face, sleeping rough up the road.
I'll tell you all about it, when I get home.
Gonna roll up the sidewalk, I'm gonna tear up the ground.
Comin' round to meet you, The long way round."
- The Long Way Round by Stereophonics
"You are never too old to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot
"If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine"
- Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine
"True knowledge lies in knowing how to live."
- Gracian
"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air."
- I Corinthians 9:26
"Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it."
- E. B. White
"Know that for every run in which I describe a transcendent experience there were many more that were either ordinary or, from an athlete's perspective, utter failures. Both spiritual and physical conditioning can be difficult processes. Accept each run for what it is, remembering that this is a spiritual practice that, like any discipline, requires persistence through episodes of success and seeming failure."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
- Ernest Hemingway
"The moment between before and after is called Truth."
- Katagiri Roshi
"'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.'"
- Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"There's no point in translating all of the old Chinese texts--not if you're serious about understanding real Zen. The sound of the rain needs no translation."
- Morimoto Roshi
"When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."
- Alan Watts
"I went to the mountain seeking enlightenment
There was no enlightenment on the mountain.
In desolation
I cried out and there came an echo.
I shouted again.
The echo came again."
- Soen Nakagawa
"No snowflake falls in an inappropriate place."
- Zen saying
"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
- Alan Watts
"The practice is what you throw yourself into. Unconditionally. The practice is the teacher. Your practice is your teacher."
- Maurine Stuart
"Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement."
- Jack Kornfield
"Don't go back to sleep."
- Jalal Ad-Din Rumi
"Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just opinion. Like a dog barking. American dog say, 'Woof, woof.' Korean dog say, 'Mung, mung.' Polish dog say, 'How, how.' So which dog barking is correct? That is human beings barking, not dogs barking. If dog and you become one hundred percent one, then you know the sound of barking. This is Zen teaching."
- Seung Sahn
"Bring me a pearl from the bottom of the sea without getting wet."
- Zen Koan
"Talk does not cook rice."
- Chinese Proverb
"You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion."
- Meister Eckhart
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
"Part of getting a second chance is taking responsibility for the mess you made in the first place."
- Jack Bauer from the television series 24
"With gentleness overcome anger,
With generosity overcome meanness,
With truth overcome deciet."
- The Buddha
"The world is on fire!
And are you laughing?
You are deep in the dark.
Will you not ask for light?"
- The Buddha
"Handwriting? You must be joking. After ten years of word processing, I can't even do handwriting anymore. I know I ought to be able to: handwriting is supposed to be one of those things like chopsticks: once you get the hang of it, it never really deserts you. The thing is that I've had much more practice with chopsticks than with pens, so no, I'm not handwriting."
- Douglas Adams
"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses."
- From The Cider House Rules by John Irving
"Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it."
- Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"The officer's next point was that I wasn't in the universe, I was in England, a point that has been made to me before. I gave up trying to win an argument and agreed to everything so that we could just get out of there."
- Douglas Adams
"[That's] More information about stuff I have already forgotten and more than I ever figured I would care about."
- A respected co-worker who wishes to remain anonymous
"Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."
- From The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"The thought of Aslynn is not Aslynn."
- A somewhat reworded Buddhist saying
"The fact is that I don't know where ideas come from, or even where to look for them. Nor does any writer. This is not quite true, in fact. If you were writing a book on the mating habits of pigs, you'd probably pick up a few goodish ideas by hanging around a barnyard in a plastic mac, but if fiction is your line, then the only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it."
- Douglas Adams
"You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'"
- Douglas Adams
"Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent thirty-five-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact it's not so much a country as such, more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things."
- Douglas Adams
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
- Douglas Adams
"A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?"
- Zen Koan
"Cooking, eating, sleeping, every deed of everyday life is nothing else than the Great Matter. realize this! So we extend tender care with a worshipping heart even to such beings as beasts and birds--but not only to beasts, not only to birds, but to insects too, ok? Even to grass, to one blade of grass, even to dust, to one speck of dust. Sometimes I bow to the dust..."
- Soen Nakagawa
"Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one."
- Turkish Proverb
"Asking people about their opinions is a very good way of making friends. Telling them about your own opinions can also work, but not always quite as well."
- Douglas Adams
"If God is a DJ, Life is a dance floor, Love is the Rhythm, You are the music."
- Pink
"God whose love and joy are everywhere can't come to visit unless you aren't there."
- Angelus Silesius
"Like the arrowsmith who turns his arros straight and true, a wise person makes his character straight and true."
- The Buddha
"The fundamental delusion of reality is to suppose that I am here and you are out there."
- Yasutani
"If you never want to see the face of hell, when you come home from work every night, dance with your kitchen towel, and if you're worried about waking up your family, take off your shoes."
- Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
"Zen does not teach, it points." - D. T. Suzuki
"It often happens that I awake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember I am the pope."
- Pope John XXIII
"The number of hours you meditate, the number of workshops you attend, and the number of New Age thinkers and writers you can quote do not measure your connection with Spirit. Spiritual snobbery is just another way the ego tries to run our lives rather than surrender our direction to God."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"A Hawaiian healter once told me that one of the worst soul diseases a person can have is something the Hawaiians call 'stink eye.' This is the condition of seeing the world and the people in it through the negative viewpoint of your own misery. 'If you have stink-eye, you miss everything,' the healer said, laughing."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: 'Does this path have a heart?' If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use."
- Don Juan
"After a public reading Bernie Glassman gave,
a woman in the audience stood up and asked:
'What does it take to live in the Now?'
The master answered:
'Would anyone who is not living in the Now please stand up?"
Zen Mondo
"And every person in your life here is a reflection of who you are. You never see them; you only see what you are in them. Htey are mirrors to you, faceless mirrors, and they orbit around you."
"And love should not be a condition of who you are. You shouldn't love someone because they believe the same things you believe but because they're a refelction of who you are; it enriches them."
"What if the whole world hates you, 'Silly buffoon, how could you listen to something so incredulous?' And then look at their life; what are their demons?"
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"There are many trails up the mountain, but in time they all reach the top."
- Anya Setori
"I have just three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world."
- Tao Te Ching
"I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong."
- Vita Sackville-West
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."
- From Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
"Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third."
- Marge Piercy
"Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present, free of contamination from the past."
- Joan Borysenko
"The only real valuable thing is intuition."
- Albert Einstein
"A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong. He accepts the consequences and lives with them. Every day."
- Command Odama from Battlestar Galactica
"I hate being tickled. Sure, it makes me laugh, but when I get tickled, I get pissed off. I'm like a monkey when I get tickled."
- Tara Reid
"There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy."
- Anonymous
"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work."
- Rita Mae Brown
“Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.”
- Carlos Castaneda
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost
"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation."
- Marian Wright Edelman
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
- Anais Nin
"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Make decisions, don't let them make you."
- Aslynn
"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast."
- Unknown
"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."
- Paul Tillich
"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves."
- Eric Hoffer
"We call ourselves civilized yet we're the only species that has to practice being alive."
- Aslynn
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say."
- Marshall McLuhan
"An angel is a belief with wings and arms that can carry you. It's not to be afraid of. And if it can't hold you up, seak for something new."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"Failing in love isn't the same as not loving. It doesn't let you off the hook, it doesn't mean you're free to not love."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"You can't live in the world without an idea of the world. But it's living that makes the ideas, you can't wait for a theory but you have to have a theory."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"In your experience of the world how do people change?"
"Well, it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly then plunges a huge, filthy hand in. He grabs hold of your bloody tubes and I slipped to evade his grasp but He squeeses hard, he insists. He pulls and pulls till all of your innards are yanked out. And the pain, can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled, torn. It's up to you to do the stitching."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."
- William Saroyan
"We have reached a verdict your honor, this man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing!"
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"'The secret of this kind of climbing,' said Japhy, 'is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you never hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen.' Which it was."
- From The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
"Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it means to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it still differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake."
- Erich Fromm
"Birds chirp, dogs run, mountains are high, valleys low. It's all perfect wisdom! the seasons change, the stars shine in the heavens; it's perfect wisdom. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, we are always in the midst of the Way. Or, more strictly speaking, we are nothing but the Way itself."
-Taizan Maezumi
"The person who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening."
- Karlfried Durckheim
"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he must forget all the roses that were ever painted."
- Henri Matisse
"I held you tight because somewhere deep inside I knew it might be the last time."
- Aslynn
"Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?"
- Marian Wright Edelman
"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it... White shores... and beyond. The far green country under a swift sunrise."
- Gandalf from The Return of the King
"You need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while."
- Douglas Adams
"All are nothing but flowers in a flowering universe."
- Soen Nakagawa
"Shy is good."
- Aslynn
"That is the ancient wisdom and the ancient schools always taught: Never to forget and never get caught in the emotional drama that you forget who you are! Never mistake the character for self, never. And the same is happening now. Do not mistake change for the destruction of self. Do not forget who you are but to move through it; not with fear but with knowledge and truth and understanding."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"I love you when you are who I want you to be!"
- A little clown wisdom from Aslynn
"The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it--exactly and completely."
- Dainin Katagiri
"If, for example, you are having a bad day, you may speak to someone harshly, never actually saying anything unkind but clearly conveying your misdirected irritation. That innocent person may misinterpret your irritability as a reaction to him and become defensive and afraid. Then, because he is feeling threatened, he will speak to the next person with an edge in his voice, once again causing a negative reaction, and so on. Once set in motion, this chain effect can pollute an entire environment, adversely affecting all those who are in it, leaving everyone drained and wondering what hit them. All the while, the person with the imbalanced expression remains unconscious of what he has initiated and may even continue to wreak energetic havoc."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"Spirit guides not spirit gods."
- Aslynn
"All of this time is necessary. One day it will not exist. There comes a day when what you want to see is not the frame in the film but the spaces in between. Do you get it?"
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine."
- St. John of the Cross
"Therefore the mind is like the ocean water, the body is like the waves. As there are no waves without water and no water without waves, water and waves are not separate, motion and stillness not different."
- Kaizen
"To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn."
- Henry David Thoreau
"The greatest sin is to be unconscious."
- Carl Gustav Jung
"When you are guided by compassion and loving-kindness, you are able to look deeply into the heart of reality and see the truth."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"The trouble is that you think you have time."
- Zen Master
"A student was walking through a pine forest with a Zen master.
'Please,' the disciple begged, 'tell me about enlightenment.'
'See that tree,' the master said, pointing, 'See how tall it is?'
'Yes,' the student said.
Then the master pointed to a different tree. 'See how short this tree is?' he asked.
'Yes,' said the student.
'That is enlightenment,' the master replied."
- Zen Mondo
"I bring up all these examples of bad advice because they contribute to considerable misinformation about how to manage the risk of motorcycling. The opinions of nonmotorcyclists and biker wannabes are a frequent distraction and a waste of time and energy."
- David L. Hough from More Proficient Motorcycling
"You know, asking the universe for pity is a waste of time. The universe doesn't care."
- Sammy from the film P.S.
"Lord, the air smells good today,
straight from the mysteries within the inner courts of God. A grace like
new clothes thrown across the garden, Free medicine for everybody. The trees
in their prayer, the birds in praise."
- Jalal Ad-Din Rumi
"The world is not to be put in
order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison
with this order."
- Henry Miller
"For forty years, a fisherman in
China used a straight needle to fish with. Whenever someone asked him why
he didn't use a bent hook, the fisherman always replied, 'You can catch
an ordinary fish with a bent hook, but I will catch a great fish with my
straight hook.'
Finally, word of this reached the Emperor, who decided to visit this foolish
fisherman himself. After the Emperor saw the man fishing with a straight
needle, he asked, 'What are you fishing for?'
The fisherman said: 'I am fishing for you, Emperor!'"
- Zen story
"If we don't trust each other, then we aren't going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we'll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony."
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni
"There is no evil from which God cannot draw forth a greater good."
- Pope John Paul II
"Images are that which is termed the betrayer to who you are inside. They are terrified to evolve beyond what is socially acceptable. There is no basis; everything you do is on someone else's advice. They are the ultimate victim, that if it goes wrong they'll have someone to blame."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"Zen is not safe. Letting go is a big risk. People are scared out of their minds to let go. To really let go of everything. To let go of everything! That's the big one, isn't it?"
- Maurine Stuart
"You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it."
- Charlotte Joko Beck
"Are you having fun? Are you looking
good? Don't do it!"
(in response to any action leading to a motorcycle accident)
- Bob, Team Oregon instructor
"What we call 'world' is only an opinion. Take away your opinions, then what? What is left? That's the point. Take away your opinion--your condition, situation--then your mind is clear like space. Clear like space means clear like a mirror. A mirror reflects everything: the sky is blue, tree is green, sugar is sweet. Just be one with the truth--that's Zen style. If your mind is clear like space, then you see clearly, hear clearly, smell clearly--everything clear. That is dharma. That is truth."
- Seung Sahn
"Because it's not just what you say in this audience; it's what you say all the time. It's not what you think here; it's what you put your mind on all the time. If you don't want to live on page two or page one, get out of the gutter and get on to looking forward. If you don't want to be bothered by indecent thoughts and temptations, stop looking at them. Because they are there because you manifest them to be there. Do you understand? And if you want to have a future, get out of your past."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"So what about your reality? If you stay here, it's simple. We just unroll the film and I'll tell you when you're going to die or what you're going to do next year. If your whole life is based on everything that you think might happen, it's very predictable what's going to happen to you. If you start brooding into the unknown, that is unpredictable because then you are activating your unknown mind, and that adventure no one knows but you. Get it?"
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"The nature of reality. It can be anything you want it to be. You create the barriers."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"There are things inside you that no one wants to face, things that you keep secret, even from yourself. But secrets are funny. The things that you try to hide always turn out to be the things you can't forget."
- George from Dead Like Me
"When you were a child this was not true; you didn't have a choice. But you are no longer a child. Now it's up to you to choose what to believe and what not to believe. You can choose to believe in anything, and that includes beliving in yourself."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."
- Shakespeare's Hamlet
"Awareness is always the first step because if you are not aware, there is nothing you can change. If you are not aware that your mind is full of wounds and emotional poison, you cannot begin to clean and heal the wounds and you will continue to suffer.
There is no reason to suffer. With awareness you can rebel and say, 'This is enough!' You can look for a way to heal and transform your personal dream. The dream of the planet is just a dream. It is not even real. If you go into the dream and start challenging your beliefs, you will find that most of the beliefs that guided you into the wounded mind are not even truth. You will find that you suffered all those years of drama for nothing. Why? Because the belief system that was put inside your mind is based on lies."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally. Take a moment to consider the truth of this statement. The whole world of control between humans is about making assumptions and taking things personally. Our whole dream of hell is based on that."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"The rain has stopped, the clouds drifted away, the weather is clear again. If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure... Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the way."
- Ryokan
“You live forwards, you learn backwards.”
- A Fellow Toastmaster
"There is no easy way from the earth to the stars."
- Seneca
"Communicate with other drivers by signaling intentions. Remember to cancel your turn signals. A false signal can create a conflict because it fails to accurately communicate intentions."
- Basic Rider Course by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation
"To understand God is to listen, listen to Jesus and Muhammed and Buddha; but don't get caught up in the names. Listen beyond them; listen to God's breath."
- Zen saying
"Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not excpect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong. You also try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. In the same way, whatever you feel and do is just a projection of your own personal dream, a reflection of your own agreements. What you say, what you do, and the opinions you have are according to the agreements you have made--and these opinions have nothing to do with me."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"From the beginning you are enlightened."
- Soen Nakagawa
"I have always known that at last I would take this road but yesterday I did not know it would be today."
- Narihara
"In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly."
- From The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
"For so many of us, love is really nothing more than a disguised demand: 'You take care of me now, and you better do it better than Mommy and Daddy did.' This unrealistic demand is the basis of all relationship nightmares and heartbreaks. As long as we think love means another person makes us feel good, we will continue to miss the wonder of real love; we will remain miserable, frustrated, and disappointed. Sadly, the truth is that no one can fill our voids. At best we can enter into agreements with one another to be companions and friends as we learn to fulfill ourselves. Real love is not a promise to be rescued from demons. In fact, real love is not about us at all. It is instead the decision to care for another as much as we care for ourselves and to accept him or her for who they are, without condition, exception, or judgement. This is a very tall order to fulfill, and it is nearly impossible to do so until we accept that we alone are responsible for our happiness. We cannot cling to another person, even when this is disguised as 'love'"
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"Just as a closed heart causes
problems, so does one that is too wide open. Such a heart causes people
to be overly sensitive to the energy of those around them, so much so that
they actually absorb other people's energy...When you are overly empathic,
the resonance you feel with others is nonselective...
Though we may tell ourselves that absorbing another's hurt is kind and loving,
in fact it is really an attempt to relieve our own discomfort. If we are
loving, we realize that all of life's experiences, even the painful ones,
need to be honored, and that we need to stay in our own energy field. We
must not try to control outcomes or assume we even have the right to get
involved. We all need our experiences in order to learn. If we attempt to
tamper with those of others, even with the best of intentions, we may be
setting them back on their path."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"No single tradition monopolizes
the truth."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"Until you are willing to receive what you give, and willing to give what you receive, you do not understand love."
- Chinese saying
"After the ecstasy, the laundry."
- Zen saying
"Living under the direction of Diving Power requires that we surrender all personal control and take a deliberate leap of faith, suspending our need for guarantees of any kind. This will be far easier if we are committed, honest, and faithful to what is important to our hearts and do not expect anyone else to take care of us. When we show up fully to our heart's desire and do everything possible to bring our heads and feet into alignment with our heart, then the Universe also commits. But until we do our part, the Universe can't help. When we direct our will fully toward what lies in our heart, the Universe will meet us halfway, leading us to victory."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"Whenever you enter into a psychic agreement with someone that suggests that they are more powerful than you are, sovereignty shuts down. You surrender your personal power and actually turn it over to the bullies, allowing them to use it against you. At times you may be aware of this agreement...Most of the time, however, people are unconscious of these disabling agreements."
"The emotional consequences of a weak sovereignty are codependency (the condition in which pleasing others is more important than pleasing ourselves), depression, addiction, and suppressed anger. These can result in digestive problems, ulcers, irritable colon, gallbladder problems, excessive weight around the middle, and loss of appetite. Our spiritual loss is the inability to live in our truth and be who we really are."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"A beginning student complained to his master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Frinally, he let the student go.
'Now how boring is your breath?' he asked."
- Zen Mondo
"Gaining enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident-prone."
- Zen saying
"And you're rattling everyone's bubbles, you see? Because you live surrounded by other little bubbles. And they're all the same size as you are because you can't have a bubble equal to you unless it is the reflection of what you are! And when you start growing, you shake all of the other bubbles--all of the other realities--up. And no one wants you to rock the boat; get it?"
"The unhappy souls are those who do not evolve. They are the ones who live in pain and misery because they do not change. It is vital. It is the essense. Don't you know evolution means change? But you keep yourself from doing it because you have fear in your reality and that fear keeps you going only so far. So simple is this understanding that you will intellectualize it and make it so complicated. You will not understyand it because it's your excuse not to grow because of fear."
"'I have done all of these things in my life. God, have I made mistakes! And they haunt me!' They haunt you because you have not seen them as wisdom instead of mistakes! And they keep coming back, waiting. And that God within you says, 'Come forth! Come forth!' It brings all of your misery up; don't you understand? The God within your being keeps your past in front of you, for you to say, 'It is finished.' To say, 'I have gained wisdom from this that it may be written in my book, in my soul, called life.' Then it gives you up and then the sun begins to shine upon you! The light that is within you begins to come forth."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"You are here to consume the subconscious mind and make it conscious. You are here to awaken God. That is your journey. In the highway of light it is called forever. Never, ever shortchange yourself in giving up forever for a small desire. Never close off your mind to learn because you think you are incapable of learning or because your comfort zone demands you no longer have to think. Your beingness is the journey of evolution."
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"Nothing's tender now. No, wait, that's not entirely true. I look around the campus and I see these eighteen-year-old boys and girls leaning into each other like saplings. Needing each other. Inhaling each other. And that's tender. That's unspoiled. I want to say to them, 'Oh, you poor puppies, make love now like there's no tomorrow. Because soon enough you're going to see the grotesquerie and...and...the leeringness of the world.'"
-From The Position by Meg Wolitzer
"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
- Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
"For twelve years Naropa followed the great Indian sage Tilopa. Tilopa would say, 'If you fetch me soup from the kitchen, then I might teach you.' Naropa would sneak in the kitchen, suffer a terrible beating at the hands of the kitchen staff, but emerge triumphant with the cup of soup. But Tilopa would only say, 'I want another cup, go and fetch it.'
This kind of incident occurred over and over and over again, until Naropa's sense of yearning for the teachings reached a crescendo. At that moment Tilopa gave Naropa the most profound initiation into the truth--he took off his sandal and slapped Naropa in the face. Suddenly that was it; there was nothing more Naropa needed."
- Tibetan Mondo
"Curiosity doesn't always
lead to wisdom."
- Aslynn
"If your compassion does not include
yourself, it is incomplete."
- Jack Kornfield
"Wonder is the basis of worship."
- Francis Bacon
"Since the house is on fire, let
us warm ourselves."
- Italian Proverb
"To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable,
but to be certain is to be ridiculous."
- Chinese Proverb
"If I have been of service, if
I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am
inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace
with myself, it has been a successful day."
- Alex Noble
"My children, my teachers, my loves,
there is no guilt, there is no blame, only what is meant to be. Grow through
your mistakes and know that if patient redemption will find you."
- Zhan, Farscape
"All right, we don't understand the
R2-D2 crap. We're gonna use the Star Trek system. One blink for yes, two
blinks for no."
Crichton, Farscape
"What always stops me is betrayal.
And if I betray someone...that scares me too."
- Tori Amos
"Writing is good, thinking is better.
Cleverness is good, patience is better."
- From Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
"Knowledge can be communicated,
but not wisdom."
- From Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
"I got great eyes, they're better
than 20/20, and they're blue!"
Crichton - Farscape
Pilot: "I don't believe you."
Crichton: "Why not?"
Pilot: "Too many inconsistencies. Too much obfuscation."
Crichton: "Obfuscation? How the Hell does that translate?"
- Farscape
"Voila! Les fesses du singe!"
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
- James Joyce
"In this way and that I tried to
save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening, about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!"
- Chiyono
"There should be a science of
discontent. People need hard
times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."
- The "Collected sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
from Dune by Frank Herbert
"Do not be afraid of the true
dragon!"
- Zen saying
"You will find only what you bring
in."
- Yoda
"I had a friend once... Then I
stopped making payments."
- Some guy I met at a bar
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
- The Bene Gesserit Littainy against Fear
Frank Herbert
Dune
"Sometimes I spend my days flying
over the world. Sometimes those who love me most cage me so they can hear
my song all day and night long. On the bright side, they do give me crackers."
- Aslynn
"White plum, on blossom, two blossoms,
three blossoms, one thousand blossoms, ten thousand blossoms."
- Hata Zenji
"It is well and good to opine
or theorize about a subject, as humankind is wont to do, but when moral
posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is
often a new, surprising insight."
- Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
"The temple bell stops but the sound keeps coming out fo the flowers." - Basho
"Today's begging is finished:
at the crossroads I wander by the side of the Buddhist shrine talking with
some children. Last year a foolish monk. This year, no change!"
- Ryokan
"It is important to see that the
main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of
ego. This means stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more
spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgement,
comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking."
- Chogyam Trungpa
"When we talk about preservation
of the environment, it is related to many other things. Ultimately the decision
must come from the human heart, so I think the key point is to have a genuine
sense of universal responsibility."
- The Dalai Lama
"To be frugal means to have a high
joy-to-stuff ratio. If you get one unit of joy for each material possession,
that's frugal. But if you need ten possessions to even begin registering
on the joy meter, you're missing the point of being alive."
- Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
"One can beg, buy, be presented
with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen."
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
"It's one thing to lie to other
people, it's two things to lie to yourself."
- Aslynn
"Don't play what's there, play what's
not there."
- Miles Davis
"Maybe Daisy was right. Maybe
death was the temp job and life was the vacation, a vacation you're supposed
to spend with the people you love, with the people who loved you. And if
life was that kind of vacation what then? What would your last thoughts
be then?"
- George from Dead Like Me
"Illusion and enlightenment? Two
sides of a coin. Universals and particulars? No difference."
-Ryokan
"Karma is choice."
"You live in illusion and the
appearance of things. There is a reality but you do not know this. When
you understand this, you will see that you are nothing, and being nothing
you are everything. That is all."
- Kalu Rinpoche
"Have you ever seen yourself through
the eyes of someone else that you've become? What an initiation! Have you
ever stopped for a moment and looked at yourself through the eyes of the
ultimate observer?"
- Ramtha
"All of this has happened before.
All of this will happen again."
- The Pythian prophecy
"In my hut this spring, there
is nothing--there is everything!"
- Sodo
"The wisdom of the heart is here,
just now, at any moment. It has always been here, and it is never too late
to find it. The wholeness and freedom we seek is our own true nature, who
we really are. Whenever we star a spiritual practice, read a spiritual book,
or contemplate what it means to live well, we have begun the inevitable
process of opening to this truth, the truth of life itself."
- Jack Kornfield
"Live every day as if it were
your last...because one day you'll be right"
- Benny Hill
"True enlightenment and wholeness
arise when we are without anxiety about nonperfection."
- The Third Patriarch
"Whatever you think is delusion."
- Katagiri Roshi