Quotes

[Bo]

For the average man, the world is weird because if he's not
bored with it, he's at odds with it. For a warrior, the world is
weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable.
A warrior must assume responsibility for being here, in this
marvelous world, in this marvelous time.

Acts have power. Especially when the warrior acting knows that
those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming
happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever he is
doing may very well be his last act on earth

- Don Juan

 

[Alana]

Yes, the purpose of earth is not life, it is not man, earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling.

Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create –so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us – let us create for earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle.

~ Nikos Kazantzakis

 

[daco]

Some Zen quotes

"Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no pantings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path"- Bodhidharma

“Every suffering is a seed, because suffering impels us to seek wisdom.”- Bodhidharma

"Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit". -Bodhidharma

“When you seek it, you cannot find it.”

“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”

"You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed"- Mumon

"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion"

"Teachers open the door... You enter by yourself"

“When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself”- Shunryu Suzuki

“You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.”- Dogen

 

[Zadius Sky]

Henrik Ibsen:

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

 

[herondancer]

This one struck me quite forcibly in my late teens:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

It led me to try out many skills and at least learn the rudiments of them. I wanted it to be my profile quote, but it didn't fit. :(

Herondancer

 

[Kesdjan]

A passage from Robert Nozick's The Examined Life the importance of breathing and meditation:

The mouth is a versatile arena, the location of eating, speaking, kissing, biting, and (in conjunction with the nasal cavity) breathing. Perhaps the first four can be emotionally laden, but isn't breathing uncomplicated and automatic? When one attends to breathing, though, it turns out also to be a full and rich process. Eastern techniques of meditation recommend "following the breath," focusing upon the inhalation, the pause, the exhalation, the pause before the next inhalation, the pause, the exhalation, the pause before the next inhalation, and so on, repeating the cycle. One can also change the rate and tempo of these, prolonging the exhalation in a constant slow process, holding the breath after the inhalation. Remarkably, such simple breathing techniques alter the nature of one's awareness, in part by becoming the simple focus of awareness, bringing it to a nondistracted point and quieting other thoughts. In part, also, the changes in consciousness might be immediate physiological results of alterations in mode of breathing. Yet, there also are the changes wrought by the fact that it is breathing that the attention is focused upon. Breathing, like eating, is a direct connection with the external world, a bringing it inside oneself. It involves immediate changes in the body, including large changes in the size of one's chest cavity and belly. Perceiving one's physical being as a bellows, breathing the air in and out, enlarging and contracting in reciprocal relation to the outside space, being a container of space within a larger space, sometimes unable to distinguish between the held-in breath and the held-out breath until you see what happens next- all this makes one feel less enclosed within distinct boundaries as a separate entity. Breathing the world, even sometimes feeling one is being breathed by it, can be a profound experience of nonseparation from the res of existence. Within meditative breathing, emotions too can be brought more easily under control and evaluation- they do not simply wash over one to produce unmediated effects.
Moreover, a prolonged attention to breathing, as in meditative practice that "follows the breath," following the rising and falling of the chest and diaphragm, can develop the attention so that it becomes supple and concentrated, not subject to wandering, able to be maintained indefinitely on an object, and this attentiveness to breathing can be interwoven within daily activities too, thereby sharpening the nature of the attention to everything falling within the interstices of the noticed breathing. One can place external things or emotions, if fearful or stressful, within the calm and calming latticework of this attentive breathing, and within this attended-to structure too, subtler bodily rhythms become apparent which in turn can be attended to and followed, forming yet another lattice from which one can be suspended to delve deeper still.
To carry on our eating and breathing in this intense meditative fashion most of the time would insufficiently recognize the relaxed and easy naturalness these activities can have, but it seems important to do so sometimes at least and to carry with us the lessons we have learned thereby, returning on occasion to reconfirm these lessons or to learn new ones.
Attention also can be focused upon other things, inner or outer. The sun can be experienced as a direct source of light and warmth for oneself, and (aided by one's other knowledge) as the major energy source for all life processes here on earth. One's own body and its movement can also be focused upon attentively.
The most ordinary objects yield surprises to attentive awareness. Chairs, tables, cars, houses, torn papers, strewn objects, all stand in their place, waiting, patiently. An object that is displaced or awkwardly placed on purpose is no less a patient waiter. It is as though being an entity, any kind of entity, has its own salient quality, and we can become aware of something's entityhood, its sheer beingness. Everything is right exactly as it is, yet everything also is poised expectantly. Is some grand event being awaited, is there something we are to do besides simply knowing entities? (Are these dignified objects waiting there to be loved?)
Still, to linger on these matters and describe these details may seem "too precious." It would be a shame, though, to pass through one's life oblivious to what life and the world contains and reveals- like someone walking through rooms where wondrous music is playing, deaf to all. Perhaps, after all, there is a reason why we have bodies.
Holiness is to stand in a special and close relation to the divine. To respond to holy things as holy may place us, too, in a more special relation to them. Seeing everyday life as holy is in part seeing the world and its contents as infinitely receptive to our activities of exploring, responding, relating and crating, as an arena that would richly repay these activities no matter how far they are taken, whether by an individual or by all of humanity together throughout its time.

 

[Phill4]

while trying to understand what a "thought was working on" i made up this one:


The only constant in the universe are variables and change.

 

[Buddy]

Some pondering's that circulate on the web...
(probably not very accurate now, so just for inspirational value)

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep
... you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace
... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness
... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation
... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death
... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If your parents are still alive and still married
...you are very fortunate, even in America.

If you can hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful
...you are truly fortunate because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can hold someone's hand, hug them, or even touch them on the shoulder
...you are blessed because you have extended a friendly, compassionate, healing touch.

And if you can read this message, you are fortunate because over two billion people in the world cannot read at all.

 

[Buddy]

Ode 314

Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep.

Rumi


From "Like This" by Coleman Barks, Maypop, 1990
Further reading:
"The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi"; William C. Chittick (Translator); Published 1983

 

[Meanderthal]

original source unknown

Watch your thoughts..
They become your words.
Watch your words..
They become your actions.
Watch your actions..
They become your habits.
Watch your habits..
They become your character.
Watch your character..
It becomes your destiny.

 

[Mountain Crown]

If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?

Dave McGowan

 

[Alada]

From: The Princess and the Goblin – George MacDonald

It was foolish indeed – thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.

 

[Andromeda]

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
~George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

[Al Today]

If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?

Dave McGowan

Good grief. I dunno know if that's funny or sad...

 

[Breton]

"Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood"

One of the 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Covey.