Everyone post some favorite quotes!

[Taomeow]

All these years I have spent at the service of mankind brought me nothing but insult and humiliation. -- Nikola Tesla 

[Mark Foote]

"… tell me, what is the most essential place? How is effort applied?"
 

(Yuanwu Keqin, “The Blue Cliff Record”, Case 55, tr. Cleary and Cleary)

 

 

 

 

 

[oak]

" O snail

   Climb Mount Fuji

   But slowly, slowly! "

 

Kobayashi Issa

[Cobie]

 

On 11/01/2025 at 5:21 AM, Taomeow said:

All these years I have spent at the service of mankind …  -- Nikola Tesla 

Imo he did not “serve mankind”, au contraire.

In olden days in China, a gentleman did not waste his time on trying to understand these things. Instead all effort went into the cultivation of the self: the inner realm.

 

Spoiler

Early Confucians saw reality as being bifurcated into two distinct realms--"inner" and "outer".

And that ming ("fate") refers to the unpredictable forces in the outside realm, which are beyond the bounds of proper human endeavor. 

 

The vagaries of ming are not the concern of the gentleman, whose efforts and worries are to be focused on the cultivation of the self: the inner realm where "seeking helps one to get it." 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1399496?seq=1

 

 

Edited January 21 by Cobie

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, Cobie said:

 

Imo he did not “serve mankind”, au contraire.

 

 

 

What's the source of this opinion?

I've read Nikola Tesla's biography, he was an extraordinary guy, with many weird quirks (geniuses are prone to those...  comes with the extraordinary territory) but "au contraire" is not about him.  He was quite idealistic and did believe that science serves mankind, and good science serves it well.  (He got screwed over by the less idealistic types, Thomas Edison et al.)  The quote was from his letter to his mother (whom he considered a greater inventor than himself -- minus education and opportunities, she merely invented things around the house to make her hard peasant work easier, brilliant practical innovations.)

 

2 hours ago, Cobie said:

In olden days in China, a gentleman did not waste his time on trying to understand these things. Instead all effort went into the cultivation of the self: the inner realm.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Early Confucians saw reality as being bifurcated into two distinct realms--"inner" and "outer".

And that ming ("fate") refers to the unpredictable forces in the outside realm, which are beyond the bounds of proper human endeavor. 

 

The vagaries of ming are not the concern of the gentleman, whose efforts and worries are to be focused on the cultivation of the self: the inner realm where "seeking helps one to get it." 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1399496?seq=1

 

 

 

That's confucian indeed, but taoists of antiquity were the first serious scientists, trying to understand many things and coming up with both theoretical frameworks some of which are only today being rediscovered (without giving credit of course), and practically inventing a whole lot of things we take for granted today.  (The list is very long and exceedingly impressive.  My favorite is a taoist nun who both invented vaccines -- in the 13th century! -- and insisted that they should never be mass administered or mandated -- going all the way to the emperor and successfully convincing him to reverse his mass vaccinations edict.)  Many, many taoists were cultivators of both ming and xing...  "leaving the world" and "coming into the world," emulating tao in this pattern.      

[Cobie]

26 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

What's the source of this opinion? 

Imo  no anprim with science

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Cobie said:

Imo  no anprim with science

 

It depends on your definitions I guess.  IMO "wild" science is science -- and superior to the "domesticated" kind -- but that's for a different thread. 

But if we're going to use computers, it makes me feel better about it when I take into account that they are based on the binary mathematics transmitted to Leibniz via correspondence with a missionary friend in China who translated and sent him the I Ching.  It was taoist sages who invented it... and who am I to tell them they weren't wild enough for my anprim ideals?   There's ideals and then there's reality, I try to judge each on its own terms.      

[Ajay0]

A few observations and much reasoning leads to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth. ~ .Alexis Carrell

 

Record enough facts, and the answer will fall to you like a ripe fruit. ~ Christopher Hitchens

 

Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping. ~ Dee Hock

[silent thunder]

Raise your words

not your voice.

It is rain that grows flowers

not thunder.

rumi

[Sanity Check]

Conditions of degeneration in the organic world are approximately known. These conditions are often of two distinct kinds, deprivation of food, light, etc. so leading to imperfect nutrition and enervation; the other, a life of repose, with abundant supply of food and decreased exposure to the dangers of the environment. It is noteworthy that while the former only depresses, or at most distinguishes the specific type, the latter, through the disuse of the nervous and other structures etc. which such a simplification of life involves, brings about that far more insidious and through degeneration seen in the life history of myriads of parasites.

--Patrick Geddes

[Ajay0]

^{In our day-to-day life, we have to deal with many adverse situations and people. Under such circumstances, we need to be aptly equipped to safeguard our mind from getting perturbed. ~ Anandmurti Gurumaa}

 

 

^{If people are bad you don't have to make your own mind bad. If things are bad you don't have to make your own state of mind bad.You don't have to worry about it to make your own life bad. When everything is wrong, at least keep one thing right, and that's your own mind. ~ Anandmurti Gurumaa}

 

 

 ^{When everything is wrong, at least keep one thing right, and that's your own mind. ~ Anandmurti Gurumaa}

[Sanity Check]

 

 

"Even if you use high class forbidden ninjutsu, you will only multiply your own incompetence."

 

Boom. One liner done.

[Ajay0]

First, see the conditions of your discontent in life/why you aren't happy, then you will start to see all your negative emotions. When you look deeper, you will see the negative emotions arise from the judgement thoughts of "I, me, my". If you can clearly see that the "I" is the trouble maker, then you can gradually convince yourself to train to reduce the "I", and this is the very purpose of the path of meditation. - Phakchok Rinpoche

 

 

'If I strike a match to light a white candle, then use that candle to light a blue candle, is the same flame burning on both the white and blue candle? Yes and no. And ‘yes and no’ can be applied to all relative truths. If you were to ask, is today’s ‘you’ the same as tomorrow’s ‘you’, the answer would be yes and no, because there is a continuation but only on the relative level.

 

The only time a ‘me’ or ‘self’ will not continue into a new life is when we get enlightened. Once we are enlightened, the idea of a ‘self’ is no longer perpetuated and neither is the idea of ‘time’. For the enlightened, there is, therefore, no such thing as continuity or reincarnation.' ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

 

[blue eyed snake]

[blue eyed snake]

[doc benway]

"Money is like shit. Pile it up and it stinks. Spread it around and you can grow things."

~ Richard Flanagan, Question 7