Oh, do I ever have a lot! Behold!
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Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
- Helen Keller
I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
- Hellen Keller
We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
- Hellen Keller
I have discovered that all of mans unhappiness derives from only one source, not being able to sit quietly in a room.
- Blaise Pascal
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
- Yasutani Roshi
If you take the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind and the rain.
-Herbalist Carol McGrath
Quote:
Asked how those in the Buddhist Dharma life should respond to times like these, and how they should live their lives in a world where evil runs like an open sewer; the great contemporary Tibetan master Khenpo Thrangu Rinpoche said:
"You must counter the negative energy with as much positive thought and action as you can possibly muster. You must unceasingly sustain Bodhisattva action. It is the Buddha's teaching to make of ourselves an example, a light, a beacon."
~The Guest 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.
~ Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
Quote:
Two things we must have: imagination and inspiration. A life with no imagination is a life of imprisonment. With the wings of imagination, we must try to fly into the Beyond. A life with no inspiration is a life of stagnation. With the dynamism of ceaseless inspiration, we shall give new meaning to life and immortalize life.
~ JSri Chinmoy
Whoever clings to mind sees not the truth of what is beyond the mind. Whoever strives to practice Dharma finds not the truth of Beyond-practice. One should cut cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked. One should thus break away from all distinctions and remain at ease.
~Tilopa,
The Song of Mahamudra
Quote:
The highest perfection of altruism, the ultimate altruism, is bodhicitta complemented by wisdom. Bodhicitta -- the aspiration to bring about the welfare of all sentient beings and to attain buddhahood for their sake -- is really the distilled essence, the squeezed juice, of all the Buddha's teachings, because ultimately, the Buddha's intention is to lead all sentient beings to perfect enlightenment, complete omniscience. Since it is bodhicitta that determines whether or not our practice becomes the path to enlightenment, bodhicitta is truly the heart essence of all the teachings of the Buddha. Thus, all 84,000 discourses of the Buddha can be seen as either preliminary to the practice of bodhicitta, the actual practice of bodhicitta, or precepts and activities in which we must engage as a result of taking the bodhicitta pledge.
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
from Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment
As a blind man feels when he finds a pearl in a dustbin, so am I amazed by the miracles of awakening rising in my consciousness. It is the nectar of immortality that delivers us from death, the treasure that lifts us from death, the treasure that lifts us above poverty into the wealth of giving to life, the tree that gives shade to us when we roam about scorched by life, the bridge that takes us across the stormy river of life, the cool moon of compassion that calms our mind when it is agitated, the fun that dispels darkness, the butter made from the milk of kindness by churning it with the dharma. It is a feast of joy to which all are invited.
~ adapted from the Bodhicharyavatara by Shantideva
Quote:
If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life
sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is a perverse form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate 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 in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
~ Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Quote:
Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises
that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conscience is the soul of freedom, its eyes, its energy, its life. Without conscience, freedom never knows what to do with itself.
~ Thomas Merton
Quote:
Try to do everything with a mind that lets go.
If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.
Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.
~ Venerable Achaan Chah, Thailand, 20th Century
Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.
~ Tibetan Book of the Dead
Quote:
By realizing that all forms are self-awareness, I have beheld my consort's face -- the true Mind Within.
~ from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
The good news
they do not print.
The good news
we do print.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
that the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you, and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation.
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, from Call Me By My True Names
Quote:
Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are seeking forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Living with contradiction, holding together polarities, making room for divergence leads to vitality and enables us to see opposites not as dead ends but as a series of open doors. When we come to know ourselves as gifted and conflicted, we become more tolerant of the differences we encounter in others and can relinquish the illusion that we are the center of a harmonious universe.
~ Elizabeth J. Canham
Quote:
Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.
Together we must reestablish our connections with the natural world and with the Spiritual power that is around us. And then we can move triumphantly, joyously, into the final stage of human evolution--spiritual evolution.
~ Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope
I hold the sword of vigilance at the gate of my mind.
When the conflicting emotions threaten, I threaten them back.
Only when they relax their grip
Do I relax mine.
~ an ancient saying of the Tibetan Kadampa masters
Quote:
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
~ Sam Keen, from To Love and Be Loved
Many of us feel that this season, most particularly this year, is a time for us to reconfirm our vows to step forward in our troubled world and to live and to act in a way that genuinely benefits others.
At the same time, we must step back, to reaffirm our deep responsibility to each other and to reconfirm our vows. "Each other" is not just our family or local community; it includes all beings, and as well the natural world which is the very source of our lives, sanity, and health.
For us this "backward step," as Zen Master Dogen calls it, is not an act of escape and quietism, but an act of honest examination of our priorities to realize how short this life is and how our actions in the world touch numberless beings. It is a way of viewing karma or cause and effect that puts the emphasis on consequentiality. Our kindness and acts of compassion toward each other, our courage to speak out and act against injustice, and our small and intimate acts of economy and social and environmental responsibility make a difference in the greater world and in our hearts.
~ Joan Halifax, Roshi
Quote:
Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
~ Martin Luther King
We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term. But how can one realize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the self as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.
~ Ramana Maharashi
Quote:
The simple way to understand the definition of Mahamudra is as follows. In its ultimate essence everything is perfect. Every sentient being is perfect. Every situation, every condition is perfect.... The ultimate truth is beyond any limitation; every single manifestation, no matter how good or bad it may be, is just the one manifestation of this ultimate truth. Every relative manifestation is ultimately perfect.
~ Tai Situ Rinpoche's commentary to the Third Karmapa's Mahamudra Prayer
Suffering is the sandpaper of our life. It does its work of shaping us.
Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.
~ Ram Dass
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