Quotes

[bngenoh]

To awaken is difficult to do, as sapiens is submitted to a cosmic hypnotic influence which is the universal energy of creation; and if this were not enough, each individual, when he does not like the reality of life or is not satisfied with himself, dreams of himself and the world in a manner ideal for himself.

[Zadius Sky]

While stubbornness shelters one from reality, open-mindedness reveals all of life's truths.

[bngenoh]

Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months, and without a new thought for years on end.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

Irons rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking.

Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.

[Menna]

 "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villan."

[Zadius Sky]

I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.

 - Jonas Salk

[Zadius Sky]

To really know who you are, your core self, you need to know who you are pretending to be and who you are not, and the way to heal is the same way to grow in awareness.

- Aleta Edwards, Fear of the Abyss

[Buddy]

Quote of the Day

    When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up.

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoch

Whoa. I really like that!

[Denis]

"All those satellites and computers, just to perfect the science of talking to oneself!" - Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: Legend

[voyageur]

Quote of the Day

    When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up.

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoch

Whoa. I really like that!

Ditto; noticed this on SotT when it was put up..

Trungpa Rinpoch is featured here (was sent this link):

_http://suniemianne.blogspot.ca/2011/07/kalachakra-2011-this-is-not-review.html

also includes a link to a film about him (have not seen it) called 'Crazy Wisdom'. This Rinpoch was not the traditional sort. Alcohol, drugs, sex were much apart of his final days to 1987. As many 'Guru's' seem to do, he maintained sexual student relations outside his marriage.

Being on the Kalachakra path, it say's here (same link):

The kalachakra path in Tibetan Buddhism is one in which the practitioner needs steady teachers because you play with fire.  You don't renounce the world in its entirety, you move bravely into it because there is no time to waste. You can be in it but not completely of it as some esoteric traditions say. This requires a mental discipline different from what we normally conceive of as mental discipline. Kalachakra is a part of the yogic tradition -- which means yoking yourself to life in order to learn from it. Mind in Tibetan Buddhism is like a field-- it is I would venture to guess literally the field of our attention. It is where we give and receive impressions and it our original state in a way and our gateway to the world and one another.  So understanding that and maintaining clarity in the field ensures receptivity to the world as it is. Not as we might wish it to be.

[Tristan]

"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it."
-Bruce Lee

[Buddy]

Quote of the Day

    When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up.

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoch

Whoa. I really like that!

Ditto; noticed this on SotT when it was put up..

Trungpa Rinpoch is featured here (was sent this link):

_http://suniemianne.blogspot.ca/2011/07/kalachakra-2011-this-is-not-review.html

also includes a link to a film about him (have not seen it) called 'Crazy Wisdom'. This Rinpoch was not the traditional sort. Alcohol, drugs, sex were much apart of his final days to 1987. As many 'Guru's' seem to do, he maintained sexual student relations outside his marriage.

Being on the Kalachakra path, it say's here (same link):

The kalachakra path in Tibetan Buddhism is one in which the practitioner needs steady teachers because you play with fire.  You don't renounce the world in its entirety, you move bravely into it because there is no time to waste. You can be in it but not completely of it as some esoteric traditions say. This requires a mental discipline different from what we normally conceive of as mental discipline. Kalachakra is a part of the yogic tradition -- which means yoking yourself to life in order to learn from it. Mind in Tibetan Buddhism is like a field-- it is I would venture to guess literally the field of our attention. It is where we give and receive impressions and it our original state in a way and our gateway to the world and one another.  So understanding that and maintaining clarity in the field ensures receptivity to the world as it is. Not as we might wish it to be.

Wow, that's all new to me. Thanks!

This part:

Mind in Tibetan Buddhism is like a field-- it is I would venture to guess literally the field of our attention. It is where we give and receive impressions and it our original state in a way and our gateway to the world and one another.  So understanding that and maintaining clarity in the field ensures receptivity to the world as it is. Not as we might wish it to be.

...is especially interesting considering that "field of our attention" is what I think of, not as my mind, but as Nature's mind that people share on some level (if that makes any sense). Related to this, it has always seemed somehow an important part of survivability in some terms, that no matter what happens, no matter how much pain, anguish or whatever, I must not close my eyes (become unconscious, as it were, since disorientation may be equal to forgetfulness).

[snaketracer]

"In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way."

[voyageur]

The following quote below is first described with a brief description:

While out on the old motorcycle this weekend, had it parked alongside a few other bikes in town. The bike has a tank bag and a certain designation, that if noted at all, would link it to Zen Buddhist thinking. So upon approaching the bike to depart, a woman on her bike, with full helmet on and it running, indicated with her question if that was my bike. Said it was. She then said, i’ve left you a gift. Rather perplexed, yet unknowingly thankful as a few more words were exchanged, approached the bike and within the clear map-case top tank-bag she had put a small card (at first I was thinking she might have slipped me the ‘watch tower’ or something similar) with the following:

Believe nothing
no matter where you
read it or who has said it,
not even if i have said it,
unless it agrees with
your own reason and
your own common sense.
-Buddha-

[JayMark]

Scientist Quotes

Max Planck

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.

And this one is my favorite from him:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

John Eccles

I believe that there is a fundamental mystery in my existence, transcending any biological account of the development of my body (including my brain) with its genetic inheritance and its evolutionary origin. ... I cannot believe that this wonderful gift of a conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some other unimaginable conditions.

I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.

The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a superstition held by dogmatic materialists. It has all the features of a Messianic prophecy, with the promise of a future freed of all problems—a kind of Nirvana for our unfortunate successors.

And perhaps his most famous quote:

I want you to know that there are no colors in the real world, there are no fragrances in the real world, that there’s no beauty and there’s no ugliness.
Out there beyond the limits of our perceptual apparatus is the erratically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup. And we’re almost like magicians in that in the very act of perception, we take that quantum soup and we convert it into the experience of material reality in our ordinary everyday waking state of consciousness.

[Zadius Sky]

Man is concerned with man, and forgets the whole and the flowing.

- Ezra Pound

You do not have an inferior function, it has you.

- C.G. Jung