Everyone post some favorite quotes!

[neti neti]

"The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth."

 

~Lao Tzu

Edited February 26, 2020 by neti neti

[moment]

1 hour ago, silent thunder said:

You always own the option of having no opinion.

There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control.

These things are not asking to be judged by you.

Leave them alone.

 

Marcus Aurelius

We badly need a leader in the USA and the world, with the heart/soul/mind of a Marcus Aurelius!

[neti neti]

"Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said."

 

~Katherine Boo

[manitou]

This is from Volume 6 of Baird Spaulding's works, Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East.  This paragraph was probably written in 1935 or so, but it seems more important today than ever.

 

"It is time that the mass of humanity learn to distinguish between the message and the messenger; the Truth and the vehicle through which Truth is presented to the world.  Truth is the same regardless of the book that presents it or the teacher who proclaims it.  It is not the setting through which Truth is presented that should be the point of consideration but the amount of Truth that is given.  Learning to distinguish between the thing that is taught and the manner in which it is taught comprises all the difference between confusion and illumination"........."The fact is, whether it be the teaching of Hindu, Christ, or modern metaphysics, the purport of any true message is that the Truth is to be found in the human heart and the contact is made right where we may find ourselves at any moment of our existence."

Edited February 28, 2020 by manitou

[thelerner]

Taomeow-

...also this forum is like a miniature world --  in any event a place as distracted by irrelevancies as the rest of the world which is chasing ghosts projected onto the walls of its caves while the invisible elephants in the room are growing huge.  So huge they might force all the air out of the caves -- then some will look up from the shadows and start noticing.  It's a matter of time and patience.  Everyone learns.  And everyone learns too damn late. 

[moment]

I don’t know how long I have slept in the dark, I do know how difficult it was to open my eyes. I come from afar. I am this dazzling moment. A flash of fire across the sky.  The world I hold still flows with tears, I came from the distance, I am this dazzling moment, the flash of fire across the sky, I see you, ah! fleeting, gorgeous, moment of light across the horizon. A worthwhile trip is not an imaginary line. A fleeting moment, open in front of me, the dazzling moment of light across my sky.

 

                                           me

[Chainer]

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

 

Epictetus
 

[moment]

5 hours ago, Chainer said:

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

 

Epictetus
 

I love those old Greek stoics.

[moment]

"I try to reach out by means of words, from their confinement, to get beyond them, into movement and clarity."

 

                                      ------ Agneta Ara

[moment]

"How to draw the line where rapture borders on the fear of death? Or are they two phases of the same? Perhaps synonymous? To write poetry is to move in danger zones, always in a forward direction, with knowledge, experience and love,  always as uncertain and assured as ever, burning and cool."

 

                                           ------------ Agneta Ara

[moment]

I knew the whole story but, it was not my story to tell.

[Taomeow]

"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half the people are stupider than that." -- George Carlin

[moment]

A turn of a card can change everything.

Edited March 6, 2020 by moment

[Chainer]

All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations.

William Faulkner

[C T]

“I think for me, what it really comes down to is the realization that hell,” he paused for a moment, letting the full weight of the word fill the room, “hell is taking everything personally. And I know this is true because I used to take everything personally, and it     was hell." 

 

~ Devendra Banhart, interviewed on Tricycle

[rideforever]

"We can have Rome back if we only smash enough BMW windows"

 

 

[silent thunder]

“I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed. I no longer covet ‘paradise’. More important, I no longer fear ‘hell’. The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it, until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself.”

 

Bruce Lee

[moment]

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle

[silent thunder]

There will be discomfort.  There may be pain.

This does not mean there must be suffering.

 

 

Suffering is a crisis of perception.

 

This realization arose unbidden in my mind in the midst of chronic extreme pain that lasted years.

i was semi-crippled then.

Confined to a chair most days, or walking with a cane.

 

 

 

There are no prisons but what mind creates and then inhabits.

[manitou]

..."the performance of an enterprise".

 

What a perfect way in which to frame wu wei.  The subtleties involved, and often the length of the 'enterprise', are so variable.  And yet in grounded silence the 'enterprise' is hatched, the vision put into motion.  The results are obtained without anybody but you knowing there was an enterprise at all.

 

I love it.

[moment]

4 hours ago, ऋषि said:

 

 

That's a beautiful tapestry!

[manitou]

Robe?

 

[moment]

On 3/15/2020 at 12:39 PM, silent thunder said:

There will be discomfort.  There may be pain.

This does not mean there must be suffering.

 

 

Suffering is a crisis of perception.

 

This realization arose unbidden in my mind in the midst of chronic extreme pain that lasted years.

i was semi-crippled then.

Confined to a chair most days, or walking with a cane.

 

 

 

There are no prisons but what mind creates and then inhabits.

 

[moment]

[silent thunder]

30 minutes ago, moment said:

 

 

26 minutes ago, moment said: