Quotes
THE WEIGHING
The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.
As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
(Jane Hirshfield)
***
It is one thing to describe an interview with a Gorgon or a Griffin, a creature that doesn't exist, it is another thing to discover that a rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks like he doesn't
(G.K.Chesterton)
***
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
(T.S. Eliot from East Coker)
***
(Martin Buber)
To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin
(Martin Buber)
***
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.
(Thomas Merton)
***
He who is unhappy seeks the meaning of life. Those who are happy experience the meaning of life.
(Gerbert Bakx)
***
"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.".
(Thomas Merton)
***
" The more we try to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely it is that a life without depth, meaning or community will result. People who strive for a meaningful life experience greater fulfillment - and happiness"
(Emily Esfahani smith; 'the power of meaning'. The Power of meaning 2017, Random House LLC. )
***
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
(Seneca)
***
If we can perceive thoughts and feelings without aversion and without attachment, they can move through us as the weather changes. We are then free to feel them and we can move on like the wind.
(Jack Kornfield, 1945)
***
'I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires rather than attempting to satisfy them'
(John Stuart Mill)
***
'We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if were found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay it's too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching'
(1669, human happiness. Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French physicist, philosopher and theologian.
***
It's not always rewarding to seek happiness in the usual sense of the word, but it can be good to cultivate a neutral non-commital attitude toward the problems of life and thought. Achieving indifference to the vicissitudes of life and thought may well serve as a chief human means of obtaining mental peace. It is wisest to suspend judgment on the reliability of sense perceptions and simply live according to reality as it appears.
(Pyrrhon of Elis; Asia; India; Elis (Pyrrho, c.360-c.272 BC). Two paraphrases. Pyrrho accompanied Alexander on his campaign to India and witnessed, in encountering the forest fakirs, examples of happiness resulting from indifference to circumstances. His disciples published his teachings.)
***
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
(Pema Chodron)
***
'I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. …You have not grown old, and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.'
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)
***
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
(John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism :1863)
***
"“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.” ― (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet)
***
“Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.”
(Marcus Aurelius)
***
Why do we suffer mentally? because we grasp onto that is neither I or mine and see it as really being I or mine, and we suffer because we fail to actually recognize who we actually are.
(Alan Wallace)
***
We react against the possibility of loneliness, death, or not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
(Pema Chodron, 'When things fall apart')
***
'The rush and pressure of modern life are a form perhaps the most common form of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to the violence of our times'
(Thomas Merton)
***
"I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires rather than attempting to satisfy them"
(John Stuart Mill)
***
You suffer until you understand that suffering is not necessary.
(Eckhart Tolle)
***
'Impermanence is meeting and parting. It's falling in love and falling out of love. Impermanence is bittersweet, like buying a new shirt and years later finding it as part of a patchwork quilt.'
(Pema Chodron)
***
Everything you can think or say about yourself is definitely not true.
(Sartre)
***
Il n'y a pas de hors texte.
(Jacques Derrida)
***
We are like a wave in the ocean and others are waves too, when our wave dies out the energy released is transferred to another wave. The ocean is the being, the everything we are a part of.
(Buddha)
***
'Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. (1717-1779)'
(Horace Walpole)
***
The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love,
Born out of compassion for all human beings.
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become." -Sayings of the Buddha as cited by Das, 1997 (p. 130)
The Buddha (623-543BC)
***
Rumi: The Quest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door
laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent as
a guide from beyond.
(Ja lal ad-Dim Rumi (1207-1273))
***
You are free to think and say what you want but you are not free from the consequences. You create your own story and you identify with it.
(The Buddha)
***
Our deepest fear
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
(Marianne Williamson)
***
'We're so busy managing our lives that we cover over this great mystery we're involved in.'
(John O'Donohue)
***
'When everything falls apart and we feel uncertainty, disappointment, shock, embarrassment, what's left is a mind that is clear, unbiased, and fresh. But we don't see that. Instead, we feel the queasiness and uncertainty of being in no-man's-land and enlarge the feeling and march it down the street with banners that proclaim how bad everything is'
(Pema Chodron)
***
Accept this or each moment as if you has chosen it
(Eckhart Tolle)
***
For one's own thought is samsāra; let one cleanse it by effort: what one thinks, one becomes, this is the eternal mystery. Samsārais the constantly changing phenomenal world, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
(Maitrãyanîya Upanishad, VI. 3; (600? BC). Tr. Eknath Easwaran.)
***
The one who knows what it is like to live in the reality in the present. If we try to grasp we will suffer as all is impermanent and moves. If you try to stop this you try to stop life
(Jack Kornfield)
***
If you want to build a ship,
then do not gather the people together to plan, divide the work, fetch tools and fell wood, but instill in them the passionate longing for the wide, endless sea. Then they build the ship without help.
(Antoine de Saint Exupery (1900-1944))
***
'There are four maras. The first mara is called devaputra mara. It has to do with seeking pleasure. The second one, called skandha mara, has to do with how we always try to re-create ourselves, try to get some ground back, try to be who we think we are. The third mara is called klesha mara. It has to do with how we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. The fourth one, yama mara, has to do with the fear of death. The descriptions of these four maras show us four ways in which we, just like the Buddha, are seemingly attacked.'
(Pema Chodron)
***
With our friend Hekaton I found this insight: limiting desires also helps to combat fear. "Your fear ends," he says, "as soon as you lose hope." ”
(Seneca)
***
'By the way, what exactly is eternal fame? It's just vanity. What, then, should we aim at? Purely and solely on this: justice in our thinking, selflessness in our actions, a tongue that speaks no untruth and a willingness to regard everything that comes our way as something inevitable and at the same time familiar, as something that always has the same origin and comes from the same source.'
(Marcus Aurelius)
***
If we can perceive thoughts and feelings without aversion and without attachment, they can move through us as the weather changes. We are then free to feel them and we can move on like the wind.
(Jack Kornfield, 1945)
***