Favorite Quotes
We become what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle
The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.
Ernest Hemingway
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow man; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville
One day, Alexander the Great visited Diogenes. Alexander was Diogenes’s biggest fan and had dropped by to pay his respects. At the end of the visit, Diogenes asked Alexander what his plans were. Alexander answered that he planned to conquer and subjugate Greece. Then what? Diogenes asked. Alexander said that he planned to conquer and subjugate Asia Minor. And then? Alexander said that he planned to conquer and subjugate the world.
Diogenes, who was not easily dissuaded from a line of inquiry, posed the question again: What next? Alexander the Great told Diogenes that after all that conquering and subjugating, he planned to relax and enjoy himself. Diogenes responded: Why not save yourself a lot of trouble by relaxing and enjoying yourself now?
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he has grown old, for no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that it is passed and gone is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom. The former, in order that as age comes over him he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been. And the later, in order that while he is young he may at the same time be old because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since if that be present, we have everything. And if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward obtaining it.
Epicurus
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus
Where one is emptied of self, ideas, concepts, assumptions, images, and all else; God pours himself into the soul, and the light at the core of the soul grows so strong, it spills out holiness and radiates through the whole person. . . . Therefore discard the form and be joined to the formless essence, for the spiritual comfort of God is very subtle. . . . Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. “
Meister Eckhart
Life has two tragedies. One is not getting your heart’s desire and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
God fixes a passionate desire in you,
and then disappoints you.
God does that a hundred times!
God breaks the wings of one intention
and then gives you another,
cuts the rope of contriving,
so you’ll remember your dependence.
But sometimes your plans work out!
You feel fulfilled and in control.
That’s because, if you were always failing,
you might give up. But remember,
it is by failures that lovers
stay aware of how they are loved.
Failure is the key
to the kingdom within.
Your prayer should be, “Break the legs
of what I want to happen. Humiliate
my desire. Eat me like candy.
It’s spring and finally
I have no will.”
Rumi
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”
C. S. Lewis
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
G. K. Chesterton
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
J. Krishnamurti
Don’t recall
Let go of what has passed
Don’t imagine
Let go of what may come
Don’t think
Let go of what is happening now
Don’t examine
Don’t try to figure anything out
Don’t control
Don’t try to make anything happen
Rest
Relax, right now, and rest
Master Tilopa
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is the awe and circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
C. S. Lewis
What would Jesus buy? Check out the awesome Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping at > http://www.revbilly.com/
“The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. . . . The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Persons of strong character are usually the happiest. They do not blame others for trouble that can be traced to their own actions and lack of understanding. They know that one has the power to add to their happiness or detract from it, unless they themselves allow the adverse thoughts or wicked actions of others to affect them.”
“If you want to be loved, start loving others who need your love. If you expect others to be honest with you, start by being honest yourself. If you want others to sympathize with you, start showing sympathy to those around you. If you want to be respected, you must learn to be respectful to everyone, both young and old. If you want a display of peace from others, you must be peaceful yourself. If you want others to be religious, start being spiritual yourself. Whatever you want others to be, first be that yourself. Then you will find others responding in like manner to you.”
“If you want to be happy, learn to live alone and to plunge into introspection about every experience — good books, problems, religion, philosophy, and inner happiness. Contented, self-chosen, habitual seclusion is the price of real happiness.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
HOW TO BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME
“The nonexistence of samsara is nirvana. A knife becomes sharp as the result of two exhaustions — the exhaustion of the whetstone and the exhaustion of the metal. In the same way, enlightenment is the result of the exhaustion of defilements and the exhaustion of the antidote of the defilements. Ultimately one must abandon the path to enlightenment. If you still define yourself as a Buddhist, you are not a buddha yet.”
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
WHAT MAKES YOU NOT A BUDDHIST
“It’s not the appearance that binds you. It’s the attachment to the appearance that binds you.”
Master Tilopa
“Who has not found the Heaven — below —
Will fail of it above —
For Angels rent the House next ours,
Wherever we remove —”
Emily Dickinson
“The master is like a great ship for beings to cross the perilous ocean of existence, an unerring captain who guides them to the dry land of liberation, a rain that extinguishes the fire of the passions, a bright sun and moon that dispel the darkness of ignorance, a firm ground that can bear the weight of both good and bad, a wish-fulfilling tree that bestows temporal happiness and ultimate bliss, a treasury of vast and deep instructions, a wish-fulfilling jewel granting all the qualities of realization, a father and a mother giving their love equally to all sentient beings, a great river of compassion, a mountain rising above worldly concerns unshaken by the winds of emotions, and a great cloud filled with rain to soothe the torments of the passions. In brief, he is the equal of all the buddhas. To make any connection with him, whether through seeing him, hearing his voice, remembering him, or being touched by his hand, will lead us toward liberation. To have full confidence in him is the sure way to progress toward enlightenment. The warmth of his wisdom and compassion will melt the core of our being and release the gold of the buddha-nature within.”
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Pema Chodron on the guru and other troublemakers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7qFi52FX1Q
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
Mark Twain
“By the way, you need never fear that if you give up on things to practice the way we’ve described it above you’ll become some poor beggar and starve to death. It is possible for a worldly person to die of hunger, but absolutely impossible for a religious practitioner to do so. This is because our compassionate Teacher, when he reached the state of total enlightenment, still had merit enough from his past deeds to go and take some 60,000 births as a ‘Wheel Emperor’— one of those incredibly powerful beings who rule the entire world. Instead he took the fantastic power of these deeds and dedicated it to the food and other necessities that all his future followers might require. In the White Lotus, the Sutra on Compassion, we hear the following oath from the Buddha as he first commits himself to reaching enlightenment for the sake of living kind: ‘And in the days when my teachings spread in the world, any man who wears so much as four inches of the saffron robe shall find food and drink to his heart’s desire. If he does not, then I shall have cheated the state of Buddhahood. And then may I lose my Buddhahood.’
Pabongka Rinpoche
“That which is born dies. That which is not born cannot die. We do not think clearly in this matter. Some of us think that what is born may live ‘forever,’ but that is a concept dependent on the time-illusion. Our difficulty arises in conceiving anything that is not born. We tend to conceive everything as subject to our notion of time. But ‘living for ever,’ i.e. going on living, is not the same thing as being eternal. The former is impossible, a pure illusion; the latter the only reality. Being eternal is never having been subject to the conception of time. Being eternal is not ‘going on living’: it involves no process of becoming: being eternal consists simply in Being.”
Wei Wu Wei
FINGERS POINTING TOWARD THE MOON
“Perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to be added, but when there is nothing more to be taken away.”
Antoine de Saint Exupery
“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”
Albert Schweitzer
“We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.”
Wei Wu Wei
“The true man or woman of religion is a rebellion, a profound revolution, a whirlwind in the midst of all that tends toward stagnation, fixity, deadness. The true force of spirituality is a cool breeze blowing down from the mountain heights bringing new and fresh air into the world of mediocrity. It awakens, enlivens, and makes the heart bold and courageous. The awakened heart intervenes in affairs of ordinary men and women provoking one and all with an invitation. Only the one swooned in the Vajra Heart Essence of wisdom and compassion has a deathless joy that can truly afford courage.”
Traktung Rinpoche
“Our buddha nature, then, has an active aspect, which is our “inner teacher.” From the very moment we became obscured, this inner teacher has been working tirelessly for us, tirelessly trying to bring us back to the radiance and spaciousness of our true being. . . . When we have prayed and aspired and hungered for the truth for a long time, for many, many lives, and when our karma has become sufficiently purified, a kind of miracle takes place. And this miracle, if we can understand and use it, can lead to the end of ignorance forever: The inner teacher, who has been with us always, manifests in the form of the “outer teacher,” whom, almost as if by magic, we actually encounter. . . . He or she is nothing less than the human face of the absolute. . . , the crystallization of the wisdom of all the buddhas, and the embodiment of their compassion directed always toward you. . . . For me, my masters have been the embodiment of living truth, undeniable signs that enlightenment is possible in a body, in this life, in this world, even here and even now, the supreme inspirations in my practice, in my work, in my life, and in my journey toward liberation. . . ”
Sogyal Rinpoche
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING, p. 134
“Bhikkus, suppose a man in the course of a journey saw a great expanse of water, whose near shore was dangerous and fearful and whose further shore was safe and free from fear, but there was no ferryboat or bridge going to the far shore…And then the man collected grass, twigs, branches, and leaves and bound them together into a raft, and…got safely to the far shore. Then, when he had got across and had arrived at the far shore, he might think thus: “This raft has been very helpful to me…Suppose I were to hoist it on my head or load it on my shoulder, and then go wherever I want.”…By doing so, would that man be doing what should be done with that raft?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“…So I have shown you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping.”
Lord Buddha
ALAGADDUPAMA SUTTA
“The idea that there is a goal. . . is wrong. We are the goal; we are always peace. To get rid of the idea that we are not peace is all that is required.”
Ramana Maharshi
“Generally, there are two kinds of fears in men’s minds — fear of death and fear of loss of material possessions. A man of prayer and self-purification will shed the fear of death and embrace death as a boon companion and will regard all earthly posssessions as fleeting and of no account. . . . No power on earth can subdue a man who has shed these two fears.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“All fear is a sign of lack of faith.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“It wasn’t trust that he would be predictable or follow some kind of reliable code. It was trust that his only motivation was to help people. His whole teaching was about leading people away from holding on to some kind of security. And I wanted my foundations rocked. I wanted to actually be free of habitual patterns which keep the ground under my feet and maintain that false security which denies death. Things are not permanent, they don’t last, there is no final security. He was always trying to teach us to relax into the insecurity, into the groundlessness. He taught me about how to live.”
Pema Chodren, writing about her teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
“To be enlightened is simply to be absolutely, unconditionally intimate with this moment.”
Scott Morrison
THERE IS ONLY NOW: A SIMPLE GUIDE TO SPIRITUAL AWAKENING, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, LIBERATION AND TRANSFORMATION
“Quite possibly there is no such thing as spiritual practice except stepping out of self-deception, stopping our struggle to get hold of spiritual states. Just give that up. Other than that there is no spirituality.”
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
THE MYTH OF FREEDOM AND THE WAY OF MEDITATION, p. 150
“To cultivate awareness, one is encouraged to live fully in the present moment, as though the present were somehow more ‘real’ than the past and the future. But the idea of the present is unintelligible without a notion of past and future. In reality there is no such thing as the ‘present moment.’ However valuable it may be to try and remain totally in the here and now, one should not mistake a strategy for reducing distraction with a metaphysical statement about the nature of time. As Nagarjuna says, ‘Past, present, future are like bottom, middle, top and one, two, three.’ Just as ‘middle’ only makes sense in relation to what is above and below, so ‘present’ only makes sense in relation to what has already gone and what is still to come. The dividing line between them only exists in thought and language; it cannot be found in the sensuous unfolding of life itself. As soon as you let go of fixed ideas of the past and future, the idea of the present evaporates as well.”
Stephen Batchelor
VERSES FROM THE CENTER, p. 60
“What is to be practiced then? To be more and more at ease. To be more and more here and now. To be more and more in action, and less and less in activity. To be more and more hollow, empty, passive. To be more and more a watcher – indifferent, not expecting anything, not desiring anything. To be happy with yourself as you are. To be celebrating. And then, any moment, any moment, when things ripen and the right season comes, you bloom into a Buddha.”
Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh
TANTRA: THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING, p. 90
|
“The man 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 his 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 suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a ‘raft that leads to the far shore.’ Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of practice is not to develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted, broken and battered – that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let go his futile hankering after harmony, surcease from pain, and a comfortable life in order that he may discover, in doing battle with the forces that oppose him, that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites. The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life, and to encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When this is possible, meditation itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise from the unconscious – a process very different from the practice of concentration on some object as a protection against such forces. Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns whole-heartedly to confront the world that threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened.” Karlfried Graf von Durckheim THE WAY OF TRANSFORMATION |
|
|
Emptiness has been taught by the Conquerors As the refutation of all viewpoints. Those for whom emptiness is a viewpoint Are said to be hopeless. Arya Nagarjuna Mulamadhyamakakarika 13.8 |
|
|
“What on earth is wrong with humans playing God? I am all for it, especially as God doesn’t seem to be doing it.” Minette Marrin |
|
| “What About Me?” by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche What about me? That’s my first thought every morning. In fact, it’s embarrassing |
|
|
for the video that correlates to this poem, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDSAAlrqAHM
|
|
| “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” | |
| Albert Einstein
|
|
| “One must practice the things which produce happiness, since if that is present we have everything and if it is absent we do everything in order to have it.” | |
| Epicurus
|
|
| “The desire for happiness is essentail to man. It is the motivator of all our acts. The most venerable clearly understood, enlightened, and reliable constant in the world is not only that we want to be happy, but that we want only to be so. Our very nature requires it of us.” | |
| Saint Augustine ON THE HAPPY LIFE
|
|
| “By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.” | |
| Matthieu Ricard HAPPINESS: A GUIDE TO DEVELOPING LIFE’S MOST IMPORTANT SKILL, p. 19
|
|
| “Happiness does not come automatically. It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back. It depends on us alone. One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labor, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.” | |
| Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza
|
|
| “The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.” | |
| Andre Comte-Sponville
|
|
| “One’s whole practice should be based on the relationship between you and nowness.” | |
| Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, p. 156
|
|
| “In the case of enlightened people, they do not plan for the future because they have no desire to provide security for themselves. They do not need to know the pattern of the future anymore. They have conquered the preconception of ‘future.’ They are fully in the now. The now has the potential of the future in it, as well as that of the past. Enlightened people have completely mastered the restless and paranoid activities of mind. They are completely, fully in the moment; therefore they are free from sowing further seeds of karma. When the future comes they do not see it as a result of their good deeds in the past; they see it as present all the time. So they do not create any further reactions.” | |
| Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, pp. 203-204
|
|
| “What is samsara? It is the continuation of attachment to identity. In Tibetan: gye nyien gen le pungpo gyun — the contaminated condition form continues.” | |
| Gelek Rinpoche from his teachings on Yamantaka practice
|
|
| “How do we tell true love from possessive attachment?. . . Not being attached means not that we love the person less, but that we are not primarily focused on self-love through the love we claim to have for the other. Altruistic love is the joy of sharing life with those around us — our friends, our lovers and companions, our wife or husband — and of contributing to their happiness. We love them for who they are and not through the distorting lens of self-centeredness. We are concerned for the other’s happiness, and instead of wanting to possess him, we feel responsible for his well-being.” | |
| Matthieu Ricard HAPPINESS: A GUIDE TO DEVELOPING LIFE’S MOST IMPORTANT SKILL, p. 143
|
|
|
There are beautiful wild St. Francis of Assisi |
|
|
|
|
| [The following poem is engraved on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta.]
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; If you are kind, If you are successful, If you are honest and frank, What you spend years building, If you find serenity and happiness, The good you do today, Give the world the best you have,
You see, in the final analysis |
|
