Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
-- A. A. Milne
Once we've tasted the salt in our own house, we know what all the salt in the world tastes like; we don't have to go around tasting the salt in everybody else's houses to know it is salty. In the same way, once we know that the phenomena in our own being are all impermanent, stressful and non-self, then we know by inference that all the phenomena external to ourselves are impermanent, stressful and non-self just the same.
-- Ajaan Tong Sirimangalo
There are two types of search in this world, but most people are set only on the search for money and possessions. This type of search is necessary; for anyone to live their life without making effort to obtain such things is not possible. But these things are a support only for the body. Whatever external things one obtains, this is all food only for the body. Most people make great effort to find this food for the body, but very few people put out effort to obtain food for the heart. Meditation practice is food for the heart.
-- Ajaan Tong
It's just like a farmer who wakes early in the morning while it is still dark outside, in order to plow his field. He goes to the pasture and takes a buffalo back, hitching it to the plow and starting to plow the field. As he goes about plowing the field, the sun comes up and he sees that this is not his buffalo! Realizing this, he quickly lets the buffalo go free.
The meditator taking the body and mind as being permanent, satisfying and belonging to self is like the farmer taking the buffalo to be his own. The realization of impermanence, suffering and non-self is like the sun coming up and the farmer seeing that this is not his buffalo. The letting go by the meditator is like the man setting the buffalo free.
-- Ajaan Tong
If you stop and smell the roses along the way, it may be dark before you find your way home.
-- Ajahn Chah
If anything can go wrong, _FIX_ it. (To hell with MURPHY)
-- Ajay Kumar Dwivedi
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
-- Albert Camus
Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
-- Albert Einstein
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
-- Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
-- Albert Einstein
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
-- Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein
The good man cannot be miserable, though he may not be blessed with good fortune.
-- Aristotle
We all have many identities - of tribe and ethnicity; of religion and nationality. But defining oneself in opposition to someone who belongs to a different tribe, or who worships a different prophet, has no place in the 21st Century.
-- Barak Obama
All of man's troubles come from his inability to sit alone, quietly, in a room, for any length of time.
-- Blaise Pascal
A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
-- Bob Edwards
One should follow the dhamma which is well-followed,
One should not follow that which is followed for woe;
One who follows the dhamma dwells happily,
both in this world and indeed the next.
-- The Buddha (Dhp 169)
Not the faults of others, not what by others has been done or left undone; rather, of oneself should one consider those things done and left undone.
-- The Buddha (Dhp 50)
Difficult to grasp, swift, seizing whatever it desires - good is the taming of the mind; a tamed mind brings happiness.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Just as one absorbed in flower-picking
so is the one of scattered mind
and just as a sleeping village is carried away by a great flood
so is he, carried away in the clutches of death.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Come look at this world
all decked out like a royal chariot,
where fools plunge in,
and the wise have no connection.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Words, be they a thousand, on the topic of useless things,
One meaningful word surpasses, hearing which one comes to peace.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Good is restraint in the body; good is restraint in speech; good is restraint in thought. Restraint everywhere is good. The monk restrained in every way is freed from all suffering.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
He who has control over his hands, feet and tongue; who is fully controlled, delights in inward development, is absorbed in meditation, keeps to himself and is contented - him do people call a monk.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
He who has no attachment whatsoever for the mind and body, who does not grieve for what he has not - he is truly called a monk.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Meditate, O monk! Do not be heedless. Let not your mind whirl on sensual pleasures. Heedless, do not swallow a red-hot iron ball, lest you cry when burning, O this is painful!
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Control of the senses, contentment, restraint according to the code of monastic discipline - these form the basis of holy life here for the wise monk.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
The monk who is calm in body, calm in speech, calm in thought, well-composed and who has spewn out worldliness - he, truly, is called serene.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
That monk who while young devotes himself to the Teaching of the Buddha illumines this world like the moon freed from clouds.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.
-- The Buddha (Dhp)
For every desire that is let go,
a happiness is won;
He who would all happiness have,
must with all lust be done.
-- The Buddha (Jataka)
As is the seed that's sown, so is the fruit that is reaped. The doer of good will gather good, the doer of evil, will evil reap. Sown is the seed, and you will taste the fruit thereof.
-- The Buddha (Sam.)
All dhammas are preceded by the mind, superceded by the mind, made by the mind. When one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.
-- The Buddha
Adversity breaks in a man,
just as a charioteer
breaks in a horse; adversity,
O king, has tamed us here.
-- The Buddha
As for those passion-born fevers - burned with which the householder or householder's son would sleep miserably - that passion has been abandoned by the Tathagata, its root destroyed, like an uprooted palm tree, deprived of the conditions of existence, not destined for future arising. Therefore he sleeps in ease.
-- The Buddha
Journey, o monks, on a sojourn for the benefit of the masses, for the happiness of the masses, out of compassion for the world, to bring meaning, benefit, happiness to angels and humans.
-- The Buddha
Whatever streams in the world there be, mindfulness 'tis that stops them all.
-- The Buddha
For this is true, I know it well, Death will not pass me by. And what is love or what is wealth when you must come to die?
-- The Buddha, Jat 498
He who sits alone, sleeps alone, and walks alone, who is strenuous and subdues himself alone, will find delight in the solitude of the forest.
-- The Buddha, Dhp 305
Here, o bhikkhus, a bhikkhu* gone to the forest, gone to the root of a tree, or gone to an empty dwelling, sits with his legs crossed and body straight, keeping remembrance of the present moment at the fore. Thus he breathes in with remembrance; thus he breathes out with remembrance.
-- The Buddha
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
-- Carl Jung
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
-- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
If we heard but one instant, in imagination, the deep testimony of dead men's voices, which no power can stifle, and no pride shut out; where would be the injury and injustice, the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong, that each day's life brings with it!
-- Charles Dickens
[God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting Gotcha. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it...Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.
-- Douglas Adamas
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adamas
If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.
-- Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams
It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
-- Douglas Adams
Life is wasted on the living.
-- Douglas Adams
The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
-- Douglas Adams
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity
-- Douglas Adams
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
-- Douglas Adams
It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and longed to go and seek there the key of all mysteries, thinking that I might find there a new life, perhaps some great city where life should be grander and richer - and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Fathers and teachers, what is the monk? In the cultivated world the word is nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others it is used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is growing. It is true, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards, gluttons, profligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people point to these: "You are idlers, useless members of society, you live on the labor of others, you are shameless beggars." And yet how many meek and humble monks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent prayer in peace! These are less noticed, or passed over in silence.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
-- Henry David Thoreau
If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life
-- Henry David Thoreau
I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
-- J.D. Salinger
Maybe I'll be rich and work and make a lot of money and live in a big house. But a minute later: And who wants to enslave himself to a lot of all that, though?
-- Jack Kerouac
Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from their excess. They have no excess They give, and they withhold never, from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.
-- Jack London, The Road
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
-- John Lennon
I'm prepared for death because I don't believe in it. I think it's just getting out of one car and getting into another.
-- John Lennon
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
The Way is ever without action, Yet nothing is left undone. If princes and kings can abide by this, All things will form themselves. If they form themselves and desires arise, I subdue them with nameless simplicity. Nameless simplicity will indeed free them from desires. Without desire there is stillness, And the world settles by itself.
-- Lao Tzu
Boredom: the desire for desires.
-- Leo Tolstoy
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
-- Leo Tolstoy
Non-technical questions sometimes don't have an answer at all.
-- Linus Torvalds
A true follower of the Buddha should have few desires. He should be content with what he has and he should try to lessen his defilements.
-- Mahasi Sayadaw
The Buddha-dhamma makes little appeal to the masses since it is diametrically opposed to their sensual desire. People do not like even an ordinary sermon, let alone a discourse on Nibbana, if it has no sensual touch. It is acceptable only to those who have practised vipassana or who seek the dhamma on which they can rely for methods of meditation and extinction of defilements.
-- Mahasi Sayadaw
That’s the magical thing about creation and ownership. It creates the possibility for generosity. You can’t really give something you don’t own, but if you do, you’ve made a genuine contribution. A gift is different from a loan. It imposes no strings, it empowers the recipient and it frees the giver of the responsibilities of ownership.
-- Mark Shuttleworth
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.
-- Mark Twain
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down as far as possible relations between the multifold aspects of our experience.
-- Niels Bohr
I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which carries with it all atoms which rise to that height, but I see, that when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit.
-- R. Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
-- R. Emerson
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
-- R. W. Emerson
Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.
-- R. W. Emerson
Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away.
-- Ray Bradbury
We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.
-- Ray Bradbury
We're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.
-- Ray Bradbury
Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
-- Richard Bach
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
-- Robert Byrne
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
-- Samuel Johnson
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.
-- Samuel Johnson
In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
-- Samuel Johnson
Though Luang Vijitvaadakaan might say, "do good but not outstandingly, for it will bring danger; no one wants to see us too outstanding.' Well, I welcome and volunteer wholeheartedly to receive such fruit in return; all I ask is that such works as did not exist before come into existence, as did not arise before come to arise. Meaning, I am willing to sacrifice everything in trade for those works - and if I might lose something along the way, I should be willing to lose it happily; I should not be broken-hearted or heavy-hearted for that reason at all.
-- Somdet Buddhajaan
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.
-- Thomas Jefferson
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again - if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man - then you are ready for a walk.
-- Thoreau
The key thing is that you meditate to discover and rectify the faults within yourself, and not rely on others to bail you out.
-- Tiger Woods
The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has evaporated not into the cloud of some new reality concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behaviour of the particles but our knowledge of this behaviour.
-- Werner Heisenberg
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd cupid painted blind: Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.
-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
To Mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
-- William Shakespeare, Othello
How far that little candle throws his beams; so shines a good deed in a naughty world
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
How to let go? When we see reality for what it is, we will naturally let it be that way. It is only through delusion that we become partial.
--
Yuttadhammo