God's Representation

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• Origin of the Universe
• God's Representations
• On the Ways
• Love
• Birth and Death
• Maya (illusion)
• Possessions
• Mind and Faith
• Looking for the Truth
• Nirvana
• Not Moving
• The Self
• Emptiness
• Serenity

Armstrong, Neil Alden

1930- American astronaut, the first man to have walked on the Moon

1,6

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

9,6

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.

Aurobindo

1872-1950 (Sri Aurobindo Gose) Indian philosopher and spiritual master, founder of Auroville (Pondichery, India)

1,2

The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time.

Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire.

1,2

The universe comes to the individual as Life, – a dynamism the entire secret of which he has to master and a mass of colliding results, a whirl of potential energies out of which he has to disengage some supreme order and some yet unrealised harmony. This is after all the real sense of man's progress.

2,2

You will have the experience that every hour of your life you can learn something from others. Still you must never feel tied by their opinion but remember always that there is only one supreme Truth that can know and judge.

3,2

The only way to be truly free is to make your surrender to the Divine, total and without reserve. Then you will see that all that ties you, binds you, chains you loses its importance and falls off quite naturally.

3,2

For God's sake can't you forget that you are a girl or a boy and try to become a human being?

3,2

Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.

9,2

Truth cannot be attained by the Mind's thought but only by identity and silent vision. Truth lives in the calm wordless Light of the eternal spaces; she does not intervene in the noise and cackle of logical debate.

11,2

There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.

12,2

I am seeking to manifest something of the Divine that I am conscious of and feel – I care a damn whether that constitutes me an avatar or something else. That is not a question which concerns me. By manifestation, of course, I mean the bringing out and spreading of that Consciousness so that others also may feel and enter into it and live in it.

12,2

The fulfillment of desires bars the route to the inner discovery which can only be attained in peace and the transparency of a perfect disinterestedness.

12,2

This Self is our self-existent being. It is not limited by our personal existence. It is the same in all existences, pervasive, equal to all things, supporting the whole universal action with its infinity, but unlimited by all that is finite, unmodified by the changings of Nature and personality. When this Self is revealed within us, when we feel its peace and stillness, we can grow into that; we can transfer the poise of our soul from its lower immergence in Nature and draw it back into the Self. We can do this by the force of the things we have attained, calm equality, passionless impersonality. For as we grow in these things, carry them to their fullness, subject all our nature to them, we are growing into this calm, equal, passionless, impersonal, all-pervading Self. Our senses fall into that stillness and receive the touches of the world on us with a supreme tranquillity; our mind falls into stillness and becomes the calm universal witness; our ego dissolves itself into this impersonal existence. All things we see in this self which we have become in ourself; and we see this self in all; we become one being with all beings in the spiritual basis of their existence. By doing works in this selfless tranquillity and impersonality, our works cease to be ours, cease to bind or trouble us with their reactions.

Buddha

~-566-~-486 Indian philosopher, founder of Buddhism. The Dhammapada is a collection of verses uttered by the Buddha.

5,1

I wandered through the rounds of countless births,
Seeking but not finding the builder of this house.
Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again.
Oh, housebuilder! You have now been seen.
You shall build the house no longer.
All your rafters have been broken,
Your ridgepole shattered.
My mind has attained to unconditional freedom.
Achieved is the end of craving.

12,1

All worry about the self is vain; the ego is like a mirage, and all the tribulations that touch it will pass away. They will vanish like a nightmare when the sleeper awakes.
He who has awakened is freed from fear; he has become Buddha; he knows the vanity of all his cares, his ambitions, and also of his pains.

12,1

It easily happens that a man, when taking a bath, steps upon a wet rope and imagines that it is a snake. Horror will overcome him, and he will shake from fear, anticipating in his mind all the agonies caused by the serpent's venomous bite. What a relief does this man experience when he sees that the rope is no snake. The cause of his fright lies in his error, his ignorance, his illusion. If the true nature of the rope is recognised, his tranquillity of mind will come back to him; he will feel relieved; he will be joyful and happy.
This is the state of mind of one who has recognised that there is no self, that the cause of all his troubles, cares, and vanities is a mirage, a shadow, a dream.

12,1

Those mundane persons who cultivate samadhi
Yet do not rid themselves of the notion of self
Get very agitated when their afflictions return….
Yet if they discern precisely the selflessness of things
And if they meditate on that exact discernment,
That causes the attainment of Nirvana;
No other cause whatever will bring peace.

Cage, John Milton

1912-1992 American experimental composer and leading figure of the avant-garde

12,5

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience…

Chao-chou

Zen master

2,1

A gold Buddha can't get through a furnace, a wood Buddha can't get through a fire, and a clay Buddha can't get through water. The real Buddha sits within: enlightenment, nirvana, suchness, and Buddha-nature are all clothes sticking to the body. They are also called afflictions; don't ask and there is no vexation.

Eigen, Michael

American psychoanalyst who wrote a paper describing his mystical experience.

11,6

I remember once being in emotional agony on a bus in my 20's. I doubled over into my pain and focused on it with blind intensity. As I sat there in this wretched state, I was amazed when the pain turned to redness, then blackness (a kind of blanking out), then light, as if a vagina in my soul opened and there was radiant light. The pain did not vanish, but my attention was held by the light. I felt amazed, uplifted, stunned into awareness of wider existence. Of course I did not want the light to go away, and was a bit fearful that it would, but above all was reverence, respect: it could last as long as it liked, and come and go as it pleased. It was an unforgettable moment. Life can never be quite the same after such experiences.

Freud

1856-1939 Sigmund Freud: Austrian physician, neurologist, and founder of psychoanalysis

3,6

His affects were controlled ...; he did not love and hate, but asked himself about the origin and significance of what he was to love or hate. Thus he was bound at first to appear indifferent to good and evil, beauty and ugliness.... In reality Leonardo was not devoid of passion... He had merely converted his passion into a thirst for knowledge.... When, at the climax of a discovery, he could survey a large portion of the whole nexus, he was overcome by emotion, and in ecstatic language praised the splendour of the part of creation that he had studied, or – in religious phraseology – the greatness of his Creator.

Harrison, George

1943-2001 British rock musician, the lead guitarist for the Beatles

1,5

And in the rising sun you can feel your life begin
Universe at play inside your DNA
You're a billion years old today
Oh the rising sun and the place it's coming from
Is inside of you, now your payment's overdue
Oh the rising sun

3,5

Remember, Now, Be Here Now
As it's not like it was before.
The past, was, Be Here Now
As it's not like it was before – it was

3,5

And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there.

4,5

That is all I want to say
Our love could save the day
That is all I'm waiting for
To try to love you more

13,5

I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

Harrison, Steven

Contemporary writer who is spending his life exploring the nature of consciousness and its expression. Author of Doing-Nothing: Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search.

4,6

The word "love" is not love, the word "god" is not god. Can we understand that these words "love" and "god" by their nature create an other, a separation? Once this separation exists unconsciously, then the "me" looks for "god" or "love", but can never have it. It is only through the dissolution of the concept, that is the idea of "love" and the idea of "me" that real love is found. This is not the "love" described by words, but by silence.

6,6

We may say that the world is illusion, but it is the viewer that is an illusion. The illusion is that the viewer is constant and solid. The illusion is that the viewer sees an objective world that exists outside its conditioning. That this is illusion and not fact is discernible by simply looking for this viewer. Where is it located? Is it constant? Solid?

13,6

The view, without a viewer, arises out of the emptiness. Emptiness is not an abrogation of responsibility in the world. On the contrary, full contact with the world brings full responsibility for the world with it. This is only possible when the notion of a viewer dissolves. Our happiness, our well-being, our integration, cannot be separated from the world.

13,6

What emptiness describes is no more null than we are concrete. What emptiness holds is reality. Reality is the movement of energy itself. Energy is not empty, nor is it concrete. It is dynamic possibility. The view, not the viewer, transforms this dynamic possibility into reality.

Hsueh-yen

Zen master

6,1

One moon appears everywhere in all bodies of water; the moons in all bodies of water are contained in one moon. This is a metaphor for one mind producing myriad things and myriad things producing one mind. This refers to dream illusions, flowers in the sky, half-seeming, half empty.

Huai-t'ang

Zen master

3,1

Let go of body and mind, until you reach a state of great rest, like letting go over a cliff ten miles high, being like open space. And don't produce representations of discriminations of random thoughts arising and passing away; the moment a view sticks in your mind, use the sword of wisdom to cut it right off, not letting it continue.

Issa, Kobayashi

1763-1827 Haiku poet

11,1

Just by being,
I'm here –
In snow-fall.

Jesus

~-6-30 Jesus Christ: The central figure of Christianity

2,3

The kingdom of God is within you.

2,3

I am the Light that is above them all, I am the All, the All came forth from Me and the All attained to Me. Cleave a [piece of] wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there.

3,3

Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

4,3

I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.

4,3

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike.

5,3

I am going away; you will look for me and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.

5,3

I tell you, most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.

7,3

Sell what you have and give to those in need. This will fatten your purses in heaven! And the purses of heaven have no rips or holes in them. Your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.

7,3

It will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

8,3

If anyone says to this mountain, “Get up and throw yourself into the sea,” with no hesitation in his heart but believing that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. I tell you therefore: everything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already, and it will be yours.

9,3

But the man who lives by the truth comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.

10,3

Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

10,3

When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below … then shall you enter [the Kingdom]….

12,3

With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realize that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you loved me.

John, Elton

1947- Elton John: British singer-songwriter, a successful musician.

4,5

I believe in love
It's all we got
Love has no boundaries
Costs nothing to touch
War makes money
Cancer sleeps
Curled up in my father
And that means something to me
Churches and dictators
Politics and papers
Everything crumbles
Sooner or later
But love

4,5

And can you feel the love tonight?
It is where we are
It's enough for this wide-eyed wanderer
That we got this far
And can you feel the love tonight?
How it's laid to rest?
It's enough to make kings and vagabonds
Believe the very best

Krishna

~-3227 The 8th incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. The heart of His teaching is in the Bhagavad-Gita (Song of the Lord) which is regarded as one of the most important Hindu text.

2,2

There never was a time when you or I did not exist.
Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be.
(Krishna to Arjuna)

2,2

Physical nature is known to be endlessly mutable. The universe is the cosmic form of the Supreme Lord, and I am that Lord represented as the Supersoul, dwelling in the heart of every embodied being.

4,2

To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.

5,2

Whoever, at the time of death, quits his body, remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature. Of this there is no doubt.

5,2

Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.

8,2

According to the modes of nature acquired by the embodied soul, one's faith can be of three kinds – goodness, passion or ignorance.

8,2

But sacrifices, austerities and charities performed without faith in the Supreme are nonpermanent, O son of Prtha, regardless of whatever rites are performed. They are called asat and are useless both in this life and the next.

10,2

A person who has given up all desires for sense gratification, who lives free from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and is devoid of false ego – he alone can attain real peace.
That is the way of the spiritual and godly life, after attaining which a man is not bewildered. Being so situated, even at the hour of death, one can enter into the kingdom of God.

10,2

The stage of perfection is called trance, or samadhi, when one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.

12,2

The indestructible, transcendental living entity is called Brahman, and his eternal nature is called the self. Action pertaining to the development of these material bodies is called karma, or fruitive activities.

14,2

Water flows continually into the ocean
But the ocean is never disturbed:
Desire flows into the mind of the seer
But he is never disturbed.
The seer knows peace:
The man who stirs up his own lusts
Can never know peace.
He knows peace who has forgotten desire.
He lives without craving:
Free from ego, free from pride.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

1895–1986 Jiddu Krishnamurti: Indian mystic and author.

12,6

Nothing more is necessary. Look at yourself. Observe yourself. Go into yourself, because in this state as we are, we will create a monstrous world. You may go to the Moon, you may go further, to Venus, Mars and all the rest of it, but you will always carry yourself over there. Change yourself first! Change yourself – not first – change yourself. Therefore to change, look at yourself, go into yourself – observe, listen, learn. That's not a message. You can do it yourself if you want to.

Lao-tzu

~-570-~-490 Chinese philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, which is the main reference taoist text.

1,4

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

1,4

The relation of the Tao to all the world is like that of the great rivers and seas to the streams from the valleys.

1,4

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

4,4

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

5,4

He who dies and yet does not perish, has longevity.

9,4

Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not. How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see.

11,4

The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of all things!

We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would ever so continue!

I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God.

11,4,g

True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can't be gained by interfering.

11,4

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

13,4

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

13,4

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

13,4

That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.

Lennon, John

1940-1980 John Lennon: British singer and songwriter, member of the Beatles, a prominent figure in popular music

2,5

God is a concept
By which we measure
Our Pain

3,5

Life is what happens to you
while you're busy
Making other plans

3,5

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

4,5

Love is needing
To be loved

4,5

Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower you got to let it,
you got to let it grow

4,5

Everyday we used to make it love
Why can't we be making love nice and easy
It's time to spread our wings and fly
Don't let another day go by my love
It'll be just like starting over – starting over

7,5

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

12,5

I told you about strawberry fields
You know the place where nothing is real
Well here's another place you can go
Where everything flows.
Looking through the bent backed tulips
To see how the other half live
Looking through a glass onion.
I told you about the walrus and me – man
You know that we're as close as can be – man

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

1756-1791 Born in Salzbourg, he is considered one of the most brilliant and versatile composers ever.

11,5,d

I am yet of those who want to do until the end when there is no way to do

Nansen

Zen master

3,1

The way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is a delusion, not knowing is confusion. When you have really reached the Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?

Osho

Haiku poet

11,1

Sitting silently,
Doing nothing,
Spring comes,
And the grass grows by itself.

Pai-chang

Zen master

2,1

The cause is right now; the result is at the moment of death. When the resultant action is already manifest, how can you fear? Fear is over the past and present; since the past had a present, the present must have a past. Since there has been enlightenment in the past, there must also be enlightenment in the present. If you can attain now and forever the single moment of present awareness, and this one moment of awareness is not governed by anything at all, whether existent or nonexistent, then from the past and the present the Buddha is just human, and humans are just Buddhas.

5,1

When facing the end, generally beautiful scenes appear. According to your mental inclinations, the most impressive are experienced first. If you do not do bad things right now, then there will be no unpleasant scenes when you face death. Even if there are some unpleasant scenes, they too will change into pleasant scenes.

10,1

It is like the water of the ocean: even without wind there are waves everywhere. Suddenly knowing of the waves all around is the gross within the subtle; letting go of knowledge in the midst of knowing is like the subtle within the subtle. This is the sphere of the enlightened.

Pao-chih

Zen master

13,1

The body is fundamentally empty and unreal; when you go back to the basis, who is calculating? Being and nonbeing can be done on your own; don't bother figuring with a confused mind. The body of sentient beings is the same as cosmic space; where can afflictions stay? Just seek nothing at all, and afflictions will naturally fall away.

13,1

All things are fundamentally empty; there is nothing to stick to. Objects are like floating clouds, certain to disperse. When you realize the basic emptiness of fundamental essence, that will be like a fever's breaking.

13,1

If you realize the original mind is empty some day, the fullness of reality as is will not leave you lacking.

Prabhupada

1896-1979 A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: Indian spiritual master, founder of the Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON, known as Hare Krishna

2,2

The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the complete whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the complete whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.

2,2

The Supreme Lord walks and does not walk. He is far away, but He is very near as well. He is within everything, and yet He is outside of everything.

6,2

One who always sees all living entities as spiritual sparks, in quality one with the Lord, becomes a true knower of things. What, then, can be illusion or anxiety for him?

P'u-an

Zen master

6,1

The whole world is one of your eyes, the body produced by your parents is a cataract. All ordinary people ignore the indestructible, marvelously clear, unfailingly mirroring eye, and cling fast to the dust cataract produced by the relationship of their father and mother. Therefore they take illusions for realities, and grasp at reflections as the physical forms themselves.

10,1

Delusion is dreaming; enlightenment is awakening. When you're deluded, you don't know it's a dream; when you wake up from the dream, then you realize it was a dream.

Ranryo

Zen master

3,1

Zen meditation and Buddha-remembrance are like two mountains,
Higher and lower potentials divide a single world.
When they arrive, all alike see the moon atop the peak,
Only pity those who have no faith and suffer over the climb.

Shih-t'ou

Zen master

10,1

The substance of your mind is apart from annihilation and apart from eternity; its essence is neither polluted nor pure. Calm and complete, it is equal in ordinary people and sages, functioning responsively without convention. All realms of experience and all states of being are only manifestations of your own mind – do the moon reflected in water or images in a mirror have origination and extinction?

Soseki, Natsume

1867-1916 Haiku poet

5,1

Not knowing why,
I feel attached to this world
Where we come only to die.

Stevens, Cat

British singer-songwriter, popstar, folk singer, and, Muslim activist

3,5

Miles from nowhere, guess I'll take my time, oh yeah, to reach there. Look up at the mountain I have to climb, oh yeah, to reach there.
Lord my body has been a good friend, but I won't need it when I reach the end.

3,5

Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now, kick out the devil's sin, and pick up, pick up a good book now, ooh.

Suzuki, Shunryu

1905-1971 (Shunryu Suzuki Roshi) Japanese Zen master, Author of 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind'

11,1

Don't move.
Just die...
over and over.

Don't anticipate.
Nothing can save you now
because you have
only this moment.

Not even enlightment
will help you now
because there are
no other moment.

With no future
be true to yourself
and express yourself fully.

Don't move.

Takasui

Japanese Zen Master, VIIth century

8,1

You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself what the subject of hearing could be. Pay no attention to the various illusory thoughts and ideas that may occur to you. Only doubt more and more deeply, gathering together in yourself all the strength that is in you, without aiming at anything or excepting anything in advance, without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened; become like a child in your own breast.

Tao-hsin

Zen master

13,1

Those who cultivate the way and attain real emptiness do not see emptiness or nonemptiness; they have no views.

Ta-tu

Zen master

13,1

You really have to know your own fundamental mind before you can stop and rest.
If you know your mind and arrive at the fundamental, that is like space merging with space.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Spiritual leader and a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. His lifelong efforts to generate peace moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

3,1

Peace is every step.
The shining red sun is my heart.
Each flower smiles with me.
How green, how fresh all that grows.
How cool the wind blows.
Peace is every step.
It turns the endless path to joy.

4,1

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

4,1

If love is in our heart, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle. Because understanding is the very foundation of love, words and actions that emerge from our love are always helpful.

11,1

Breathing in, I calm my body,
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment!

12,1

Listen, listen.
This wonderful sound brings me back to my true self.

14,1

Practicing mindfulness in each moment of our daily lives, we can cultivate our own peace. With clarity, determination, and patience – the fruits of meditation – we can sustain a life of action and be real instruments of peace.

14,1

"I have arrived, I am home." The home of the wave is water. It's right there. She does not have to travel thousands of miles in order to arrive at her true home. It's so simple and so powerful. I would like to invite you to memorize this little poem and to practice and remember it many times a day. In this way you will touch the ultimate dimension and always remember your true home.

14,1

If we want to walk in the Pure Land all the time, it helps us to let go of the things that keep us from being in the present. It helps us to learn to let go of what makes us worry, to get to zero. When we think of zero, we think of it as nothingness. We see it as something negative. But zero can be very positive. If you have a debt to pay, that is negative. When you pay it back, your balance returns to zero. That is wonderful because then you are free.

Third Zen patriarch

17th century

3,1

When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend,
and when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way....
If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

Translated by Chogyam Trungpa who was born in Eastern Tibet and recognized as an incarnation of the Trungpa line at an early date.

5,1

Now when the bardo of dharmata dawns upon me,
I will abandon all thoughts of fear and terror,
I will recognize whatever appears as my projection
and know it to be a vision of the bardo;
now that I have reached this crucial point
I will not fear the peaceful and wrathful ones, my own projections.

Watts, Alan

1915-1973 Widely recognized for his Zen and Taoist writings like Joyous Cosmology and Tao: The Watercourse Way.

2,6

God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see you own eyes, and you certainly can't bite you own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

2,6

If Jesus had had a very strong form of the common type of "cosmic consciousness" in which the individual feels that his own inmost Self, behind the superficial ego, is God, this would have been almost impossible to express in terms of Judaic theology without blasphemy. The best he could have done was to identify himself, publicly, with the orthodox image of the promised Messiah, both as Isaiah II's Suffering Servant and as the apocalyptic Son of Man, coming to rule the earth with the power of heaven rather than force of arms.

11,6

When you know that it is beyond you – beyond your powers of action as beyond your powers of relaxation. When you give up every last trick and device for getting it, including this "giving up" as something that one might do, say, at ten o'clock tonight. That you cannot by any means do it – that IS it! That is the mighty self-abandonment which gives birth to the stars.

12,6

There was a young man who said, “Though
It seems that I know that I know,
What I would like to see
Is the 'I' that knows 'me'
When I know that I know that I know.”

12,6

Wherever people may feel that the ego is located, and however much, or little, of the physical body is identified with it, almost all agree that "I" am not anything outside my skin.

Wilber, Ken

1949- American philosopher, thinker, integral theorist, and author

1,6

Thus, to the question "What existed before the Big Bang?," the answer very well might be a nonmaterial Logos governing the patterns of creation – what many would simply call God. And, this argument continues, since science discovered the Big Bang, science itself is pointing to God.

2,6

We might say that scientific reason (it-rationality) cannot grasp God because God is not an empirical object.

8,6

We might say that scientific reason (it-rationality) cannot grasp God because God is not an empirical object.

9,6

The True refers, in a very general sense, to objective truth. It means the truth according to dispassionate standards – not merely the truth according to my ego, or my tribe, or my religion. Science, above all, attempts to specialize in objective, empirical, reproducible truth. This does not mean there are not other types of truth; it simply means that science has a deserved reputation for delivering important types of objective truth.

Ying-an

Zen master

5,1

The quest of real followers of the path is just to oppose birth and death; they do not look for it in the sayings found in various sources in ancient and modern books. They just step back into themselves and bring it to mind, coolly yet keenly, at the very root and stem.

13,1

If you want to understand readily, just be unminding at all times and all places, and you will naturally harmonize with the path.
Once you are in harmony with the path, then inside, outside, and in between are ultimately ungraspable; immediately empty yet solid, you are far beyond dependency.

Yun-feng

Zen master

13,1

Seeing matter itself as emptiness produces great wisdom so one does not dwell in birth and death; seeing emptiness as equivalent to matter produces great compassion so one does not dwell in nirvana.

Corliss, Richard

Senior writer for Time magazine

14,6

In this modern maelstrom, yoga's tendency to stasis and silence seems at first insane, then inspired. The notion of bodies at rest becoming souls at peace is reactionary, radical and liberating. If it cures nagging backache, swell. But isn't it bliss just to sit this one out, to freeze-frame the frenzy, to say no to all that and 'om' to what may be beyond it, or within ourselves?

Dogen

1200-1253 Founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan

14,1

To be enlightened by the myriad things of the universe is to let go of your own body and mind as well as the body and mind of others. The enlightenment attained thus comes to rest, and though it appears to have stopped it precisely continues on.

Haddon, Dayle

Ex-model and two times one of Harper's Bazaar's 'Most Beautiful Women'

14,6

Where I was staying in India, there was a Chinese gong that was struck each morning and at the end of each day. It had an exquisite, calming resonance that lingered in the courtyard, tingling deep inside the body. Certain chimes, bells and some musical instruments resonate, and by following the resonation, it can lead you deeper within. (It's fun to find your own.) I play a tape of sitar music when I meditate. The sitar has a very relaxing, repetitive sound that also draws you inward when you follow it, making meditating that much easier.