quotes

[maxdprophet]

Search back into your own vision. Think back to the mind that thinks. Who is it? — Wumen Huikai

[Deleted]

It is said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty; if you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature.

The fierce, tight clinging from dualistically experiencing phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken.

Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in the instructions will grow.

After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and non-virtue, are all the same for you - you will be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell!

But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and non-virtue, Buddha-fields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results – all of this is reality for you.

From DUDJOM RINPOCHE – REALITY AS IT IS

[Deleted]

"No muse appears when invoked, dire need
Will not rouse her pity."

~ May Sarton.

[zin]

"Helplessness and Hopelessness are very near together in English language -- one is negative -- the other is very constructive. Hopelessness is despair. Helplessness is impotence. Experience inside and perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences. As long as I believe in myself I do not need any help -- it is always because of this that we fail and of course everything goes wrong. ...

Never accept to go into hopelessness -- Hope has been given to us always as one of the highest things that we have not but we have to reach. It has been said that we are helpless but not that we are hopeless." Jane Heap (I edited a little, as they're from her notes)

My note: I found here "perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences" important. Maybe she is talking about being able to see the situation as it is (when one is free from influences) but it brought to my mind times of some kind of equilibrium, in which nothing seems to happen but in fact it is not so : ) I think asking for help at those times is good. Or, it is not exactly a wanting of help, it is more a remembering.

[stardustpilgrim]

May 6, 2017 20:37:30 GMT -5 zin said:

"Helplessness and Hopelessness are very near together in English language -- one is negative -- the other is very constructive. Hopelessness is despair. Helplessness is impotence. Experience inside and perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences. As long as I believe in myself I do not need any help -- it is always because of this that we fail and of course everything goes wrong. ...

Never accept to go into hopelessness -- Hope has been given to us always as one of the highest things that we have not but we have to reach. It has been said that we are helpless but not that we are hopeless." Jane Heap (I edited a little, as they're from her notes)

My note: I found here "perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences" important. Maybe she is talking about being able to see the situation as it is (when one is free from influences) but it brought to my mind times of some kind of equilibrium, in which nothing seems to happen but in fact it is not so : ) I think asking for help at those times is good. Or, it is not exactly a wanting of help, it is more a remembering.

How far is the east from the west? There is no separation. If you are walking west, just turn around right where you are, you are then headed east. Likewise, in the blink of an eye one can go from hopelessness to helplessness, from negative to positive (it can be a shift from ego/personality to essence). It's really an inner attitude. Help is always available, to the helpless (it is a very great thing to come to helplessness). Being helpless is a positive thing, like moving from a negative number up to zero. Being zero can be a very great thing.

[Deleted]

May 8, 2017 16:03:54 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

May 6, 2017 20:37:30 GMT -5 zin said:

"Helplessness and Hopelessness are very near together in English language -- one is negative -- the other is very constructive. Hopelessness is despair. Helplessness is impotence. Experience inside and perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences. As long as I believe in myself I do not need any help -- it is always because of this that we fail and of course everything goes wrong. ...

Never accept to go into hopelessness -- Hope has been given to us always as one of the highest things that we have not but we have to reach. It has been said that we are helpless but not that we are hopeless." Jane Heap (I edited a little, as they're from her notes)

My note: I found here "perhaps as a consequence of it I can turn and ask for help at that very moment I am free from influences" important. Maybe she is talking about being able to see the situation as it is (when one is free from influences) but it brought to my mind times of some kind of equilibrium, in which nothing seems to happen but in fact it is not so : ) I think asking for help at those times is good. Or, it is not exactly a wanting of help, it is more a remembering.

How far is the east from the west? There is no separation. If you are walking west, just turn around right where you are, you are then headed east. Likewise, in the blink of an eye one can go from hopelessness to helplessness, from negative to positive (it can be a shift from ego/personality to essence). It's really an inner attitude. Help is always available, to the helpless (it is a very great thing to come to helplessness). Being helpless is a positive thing, like moving from a negative number up to zero. Being zero can be a very great thing.

"You are zero and your greatest love is number one. The person you love most in the world is number two and then there is everyone else"...

[silver]

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best."
Henry van Dycke

[maxdprophet]

"The shadow will appear if there’s even the slightest separation between you and the flame." Chuck Hillig

[Deleted]

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates

[Deleted]

May 26, 2017 0:46:31 GMT -5 @bakk said:

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates

So there is no difference in slaughtering sentient steers, or pulling carrots out of the ground for food?

[zin]

(This quote is about ups and downs of life.. times of dilation/expansion and contraction. The 'automaton' there is also called 'automatic self'.)

"...Dilation is inevitably followed by contraction, and therefore all progress, all generous expansion is at once followed by a reaction. If you wish to know what the reaction will be, consider your private motives for resistance, for it will take their character; and they will be your intellectual criticisms, your doubts and rebellions, your skepticism and pessimism. If you are not aware of this reaction, it will control you, and you may sadly conclude that the progress which you made in the period of expansion has been all wiped out in the period of contraction. .....

Contraction condenses and concretizes. When you feel it coming over you, bring your progress down to the material level; act, execute, write down what you have learned in the period of exaltation. This is the exact opposite of what the Automaton does; he submits to the phase of depression as a phase of impotence, and lets gloom and resentment torture him in vain. The expansive phase, on the other hand, the Automaton uses up in exuberant action, distracting and dispersing himself, in fact wasting and scattering the vitality that he receives in that phase. One should observe this ebb and flow attentively, and use the pendular rhythm to increase one's strength.

In the period of expansion one should seek silence, lengthen one's meditations, and stay quiet as much as possible in order to listen, to heat up the inner fire. You waste your treasure if you yield to the temptation of externalizing your joy in talk and action. Your ardor should expand not outwardly but inwardly. For only calm and silence can give full power to the phases of impulse, expansion, and self-giving, which will revitalize your being. Exterior action should be reserved for the dark period of contraction. In this phase of harshness and cold assert your conquests, materialize your dreams, and bring to concrete expression that which you understood and assimilated in the phase of joy. Like the blacksmith, use reaction to assist action, to give form to what you have conceived."

Isha Schwaller de Lubicz

[silver]

Jun 14, 2017 21:19:54 GMT -5 zin said:

(This quote is about ups and downs of life.. times of dilation/expansion and contraction. The 'automaton' there is also called 'automatic self'.)

"...Dilation is inevitably followed by contraction, and therefore all progress, all generous expansion is at once followed by a reaction. If you wish to know what the reaction will be, consider your private motives for resistance, for it will take their character; and they will be your intellectual criticisms, your doubts and rebellions, your skepticism and pessimism. If you are not aware of this reaction, it will control you, and you may sadly conclude that the progress which you made in the period of expansion has been all wiped out in the period of contraction. .....

Contraction condenses and concretizes. When you feel it coming over you, bring your progress down to the material level; act, execute, write down what you have learned in the period of exaltation. This is the exact opposite of what the Automaton does; he submits to the phase of depression as a phase of impotence, and lets gloom and resentment torture him in vain. The expansive phase, on the other hand, the Automaton uses up in exuberant action, distracting and dispersing himself, in fact wasting and scattering the vitality that he receives in that phase. One should observe this ebb and flow attentively, and use the pendular rhythm to increase one's strength.

In the period of expansion one should seek silence, lengthen one's meditations, and stay quiet as much as possible in order to listen, to heat up the inner fire. You waste your treasure if you yield to the temptation of externalizing your joy in talk and action. Your ardor should expand not outwardly but inwardly. For only calm and silence can give full power to the phases of impulse, expansion, and self-giving, which will revitalize your being. Exterior action should be reserved for the dark period of contraction. In this phase of harshness and cold assert your conquests, materialize your dreams, and bring to concrete expression that which you understood and assimilated in the phase of joy. Like the blacksmith, use reaction to assist action, to give form to what you have conceived."

Isha Schwaller de Lubicz

Like twice - esp the last paragraph.  

[silver]

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four?
Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable?
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and
if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

― George Orwell, 1984

[silver]

“What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities
that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)”

― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

[silver]

“A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld