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Do you have a Rationalized Quanta of Zen appropriate to add? Submit it for consideration.
The Rationalized Quanta of Zen
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Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.
Old Zen Saying
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There is a truth beyond which there is no understanding, just being.
- Vi
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Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.
- Author unknown
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The obstacle is the path.
- Author unknown
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When the mind is the master, you live in a hell.
When you are the master of your mind,
you live in the land of the Buddhas.
- Bodhidharma
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Dreams lay the foundation for doing.
Doing is being with purpose.
Being, with purpose, is what it's all about - even if that purpose involves only you.
- Phil
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I searched endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
- Anna Quindlen
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When you are young, your body dances.
When you are old, your spirit dances.
- Vi
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You do stuff until you die.
Do interesting stuff.
- Phil
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Life is like fishing:
even if you know what you're fishing for,
you never know what you'll catch.
- Phil
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You can rationalize anything you want, but that doesn't make it so.
- Phil
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Teacher's open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
- Ancient Chinese Proverb
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The infinite is in the finite of every instant.
- Author Unknown
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The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.
Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one.
Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
- Guatama Buddha
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Those who seek power corrupt beauty,
not realizing in their ignorance the greater power
within the beauty they corrupt.
- Phil - 09/24/08
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The past: a memory with no substance - yet, the foundation we stand upon.
The future: a dream with no substance - always beyond reach.
In the absence of thought, in satori's bliss . . . we are the Eternal Now.
- Phil
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Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something, it has to do with bringing something forth.
If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it.
You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.
- Joseph Campbell, Man and Myth
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* It is less what one is that should matter, than what one is not.
* The qualities we possess should never be a matter for satisfaction, but the qualities we have discarded.
* It is not for us to search but to remain still, to achieve Immobility not Action.
* There is no becoming. ALL IS.
* The Saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.
* It is only the artificial ego that suffers. The man who has transcended his false 'me' no longer identifies with his suffering.
* We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.
* Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?
* Detachment is a state, it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.
* The notion that human life has greater value than any other form of life is both unjustifiable and arrogant.
* Wise men don't judge: they seek to understand.
* How many of the ways (disciplines, exercises, practices) recommended as helpful, or even necessary, for the attainment of Satori are not in fact consequences of that state erroneously suggested as means?
* There seem to be two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify themselves with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.
- The authors of each quote are unknown
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A slew of Quantum Zen Nuggets received as an email entitled "An Old Farmer's Advice".
* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
* Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
* Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
* Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
* Meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
* Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
* Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
* It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
* You cannot unsay a cruel word.
* Every path has a few puddles.
* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
* The best sermons are lived, not preached.
* Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
* Don't judge folks by their relatives.
* Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
* Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
* Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't botherin' you none.
* Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
* If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
* Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
* The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
* Always drink upstream from the herd.
* Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
* Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
* If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
* Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest behind.
- The authors of each quote are unknown
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I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of Love, Light, Truth and Peace. When you are in that place inside of you and I am in that place inside of me, we are one...namaste`.
- found on Yoga Loft - Zen Friends
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You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
- Woodrow Wilson
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Imagination unlocks the dream.
Satori allows you entry.
- Phil
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Being alone, loving what you're doing,
is far better than being alone among the huddled crowd.
- Phil
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Peaceful mind . . .
Peaceful heart . . .
Peaceful soul.
- Phil
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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!
Live the life you've imagined.
As you simplify your life, the laws of
the universe will be simplified.
- Henry David Thoreau
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Three views, then mine
I think, therefore I am.
- René Descartes
I think, therefore I think I am.
- Richard Feynman
I Am - therefore I think.
- SusanStrangeAngel
(And my view on the matter, based in the principle that "the thinker and the thought are one."
Thinking only makes thinking real.
- Phil
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Quantum Mechanics works in mysterious ways.
Zen works in obvious ways.
- Phil
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Knowledge means nothing if you don't have the wisdom to profit by it.
- Author unkown
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God was invented
because we fear the devil.
The devil was invented
as an excuse for our shortcomings.
- Phil
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Religion is to dress up for.
Zen is to lounge in.
- Phil
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"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true."
- Buddha
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The Big Bang is that first instant in time when the prior Universe lost cohesive stability and our current universe sprang forth - the moment awareness fragmented and oneness became a personal thing:
a void, seeking to eliminate its own non-existance.
- Phil
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"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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Shibumi
This is much like the Quantum Zen thought:
If you attempt to rationalize reality, you instantly lose reality.)
"Shibumi has to do with refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without prudency. In art, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of man, it is authority without domination. To arrive at shibumi, one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity."
- Trevanian
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EXPECTED IN A COSMIC RELIGION
"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a
cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids
dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and
is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all
things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."
- Albert Einstein
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The Mind of Absolute Trust
The great way isn't difficult for those who are unattached to their preferences.
Let go of longing and aversion, and everything will be perfectly clear.
When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction, heaven and earth are set apart.
If you want to realize the truth, don't be for or against.
The struggle between good and evil is the primal disease of the mind.
Not grasping the deeper meaning, you just trouble your minds serenity.
As vast as infinite space, it is perfect and lacks nothing.
But because you select and reject, you can't perceive its true nature.
Don't get entangled in the world; don't lose yourself in emptiness.
Be at peace in the oneness of things, and all errors will disappear by themselves.
If you don't live the Tao, you fall into assertion or denial.
Asserting that the world is real, you are blind to its deeper reality;
denying that the world is real, you are blind to the selflessness of all things.
The more you think about these matters, the farther you are from the truth.
Step aside from all thinking, and there is nowhere you can't go.
Returning to the root, you find the meaning;
chasing appearances, you lose their source.
At the moment of profound insight, you transcend both appearance and emptiness.
Don't keep searching for the truth; just let go of your opinions.
For the mind in harmony with the Tao, all selfishness disappears.
With not even a trace of self-doubt, you can trust the universe completely.
All at once you are free, with nothing left to hold on to.
All is empty, brilliant, perfect in its own being.
In the world of things as they are, there is no self, no non-self.
If you want to describe its essence, the best you can say is "Not-two."
In this "Not-two", nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places have entered into this truth.
In it there is no gain or loss; one instant is ten thousand years.
There is no here, no there; infinity is right before your eyes.
The tiny is as large as the vast when objective boundaries have vanished;
the vast is as small as the tiny when you don't have external limits.
Being is an aspect of non-being; non-being is no different from being.
Until you understand this truth, you won't see anything clearly.
One is all; all are one. When you realize this, what reason for holiness or wisdom?
The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving,
is perfectly at peace, for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.
-Seng-ts'an
Seng-ts'an lived in the late sixth century, was the third patriarch of Zen in China. There are many legends about him. According to one, Seng-ts'an was suffering from leprosy when he met the second patriarch Hui-k'o, who encountered him with the words, "You're suffering from leprosy; what could you want from me?"
Seng-ts'an is supposed to have replied, "Even if my body is sick, the heart-mind of a sick person is no
different from your heart-mind." This convinced Hui-k'o of the spiritual capacity of Seng-ts'an; he accepted him as a student and later confirmed him as his dharma successor.
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One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day was.
- Will Rogers
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Enlightenment is earned, not bestowed.
- Vi and Phil
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As long as you draw attention to your differences,
you will be treated differently.
- Phil
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Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind.
Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
- Buddha
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Men are four:
He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool - shun him;
He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple - teach him;
He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep - wake him;
He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise - follow him.
- Lady Burton
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The reason there are so few good talkers in public is that there are so few thinkers in private.
- Anon
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It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then.
- Richard Armour
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That person proves his worth who can make us want to listen when he is with us
and think when he is gone.
- Grit
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Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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There are many humorous things in the world:
among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
- Mark Twain
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Do not throw the arrow which will return against you.
- Kurdish Proverb
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Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
- Chinese Proverb
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What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand.
- Confucius
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There is no decent place to stand in a massacre.
- Leonard Cohen
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People do not so much fear growing old
as they do ceasing to grow old.
- Phil
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Beware the fury of a patient man.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)- from the poem "Absalom and Achitophel"
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He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.
- Leonardo
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If "A" is success, then the formula is:
A = X + Y + Z
X = work
Y = play
Z = knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
- Albert Einstein
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To believe everything, to doubt everything,
two equally convenient solutions
both of which dispense with the necessity for reflection.
- Author unknown
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The difference between friend and stranger
is a moment of discovery.
- Phil
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How many revelations have I had on my own
where a second opinion the
truth might have shown?
- Phil
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If a problem has a solution, why worry about it?
If a problem has no solution, why worry about it?
If you can't fight and you can't flee, flow.
- author unknown
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The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure
but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
- Erich Fromm
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A little kindness from person to person is better than a vast love for all humankind.
- Richard Dehmel
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The highest reward for man's toil is not what he "gets for it," but what he "becomes by it."
- Ruskin
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Great souls have wills, feeble ones have only wishes.
- Chinese Proverb
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It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.
- James Barrie
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I'm not young enough to know everything.
- J. M. Barrie
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Evil often triumphs but never conquers.
- author unknown
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The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
That is why so much social life is exhausting.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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He who gains victory over other men is strong, but he who gains victory over himself is powerful.
- Lao-Tse
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Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at?
The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
- Albert Einstein
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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science.
- Albert Einstein
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Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
- Lewis Carroll
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The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill
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The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
- William James
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Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities.
Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential.
The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
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I want to know how God created this world.
I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.
I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
- Albert Einstein
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Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
- Chief Seattle
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All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind.
This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
- Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory
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Time is not a line, but a single, dimensionless point of Now.
- Phil
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A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce, Ulysses
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The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr
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I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden.
I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
- Helen Keller
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Suicide is the terminal lack of imagination.
- Vi
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The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
- Emily Dickinson
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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Galileo Galilei
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Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
- Claude Bernard
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Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
- John Maynard Keynes
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The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
- Aart Van Der Leeuw
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The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow.
The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute.
What bitterness!
He lives for what is always out of reach!
His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.
- Chang-Tzu
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The universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles which remain in contact with one another over distance,
and in no time.
- R. Nadeau and M. Kafatos
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If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
- Niels Bohr
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Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade,
but do not be disheartened, the source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep? The source is within you And this whole world is springing up from it.
- Jelauddin Rumi
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Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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It gives me a deep comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.
- Helen Keller
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Few people are capable of expressing, with equanimity, opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.
Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein
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We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction.
The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.
- Carl Jung
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What we are looking for is what is looking.
- St. Francis of Assisi
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The state of least excitation of consciousness is the field of all possibilities.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
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The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner,
but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
- Stephen W. Hawking
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How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
- Niels Bohr
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Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications.
- Rama, Frederick Lenz
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When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called
a Religion.
Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes that's hard.
If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
The truth knocks on your door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is
going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to
political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is
uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.
The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you
actually don't know.
To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot
in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when
rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment. He puts
his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees.
He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the
trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too
fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He's
here but he's not here. He rejects the here, he's unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets
there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be "here". What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around
him, but he doesn't want that because it *is* all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually
, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.
If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make
a complete fool out of you.
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work
proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally
.
Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one node or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate
what the other mode is all about.
- from Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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