Week 2022-24: Daisetzu T Suzuki - Collected Quotes

"Buddhists have conceived an object as an event and not as a thing or substance [...] The Buddhist conception of ‘things’ as samskara (or sankhara), that is, as ‘deeds’, or ‘events’, makes it clear that Buddhists understand our experience in terms of time and movement." (Daisetzu T Suzuki , "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"The central idea of Kegon is to grasp the universe dynamically whose characteristic is always to move onward, to be forever in the mood of moving, which is life." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"The fundamental idea of Buddhism is to pass beyond the world of opposites, a world built up by intellectual distinctions and emotional defilements, and to realize the spiritual world of non-distinction, which involves achieving an absolute point of view."(Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism", 1947)

"When the one is set against all the others, the one is seen as pervading them all and at the same time embracing them all in itself.” (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "The Essence of Buddhism")

"The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism", 1964)

"In this spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense [...] The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on." (Daisetzu T Suzuki, "On Indian Mahayana Buddhism", 1968)

"Clinging is never kept within bounds,
It is sure to go the wrong way; Quit it and things follow their own courses,
While the Essence neither departs or abides." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The seeing plays the most important role in Buddhist epistemology, for seeing is at the basis of knowing. Knowing is impossible without seeing; all knowledge has its origin in seeing. Knowing and seeing are thus found generally united in Buddha’s teaching. Buddhist philosophy therefore ultimately points to seeing reality as it is. Seeing is experiencing enlightenment." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"The significance of the Avatamsaka and its philosophy is unintelligible unless we once experience [...] a state of complete dissolution where there is no more distinction between mind and body, subject and object [...] We look around and perceive that [...] every object is related to every other object [...] not only spatially, but temporally. [...] As a fact of pure experience, there is no space without time, no time without space; they are interpenetrating." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"There is harmony in our activity, and where there is harmony there is calmness." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"When there is no crookedness in one's heart, we say that one is natural and childlike." (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Zen is discipline in enlightenment" (Daisetzu T Suzuki)

"Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence." (Daisetsu T Suzuki)

Week 2022-23: Ajahn Chah - Collected Quotes

"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace." (Ajahn Chah)

"If your mind is happy then you are happy anywhere you go. When wisdom awakens within you, you will see Truth wherever you look. Truth is all there is. It’s like when you learned how to read, you can then read anywhere you go." (Ajahn Chah)

"Just go into the room, sit in the centre of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come." (Ajahn Chah)

"Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away." (Ajahn Chah)

"The Buddha told us to see the way things are and let go of our clinging to them. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge." (Ajahn Chah)

"With even a little intuitive wisdom we will be able to see clearly the ways of the world. We will come to understand that everything in the world is our teacher." (Ajahn Chah)

"You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth - inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important. Read yourself, not books. Just know what is happening in your mind - not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty." (Ajahn Chah)

Week 2022-22: Swami Vivekananda - Collected Quotes

"A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law becomes a positive evil." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All knowledge, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it is not discovered but remains covered, and when the covering is being slowly taken off, we say, "We are learning." The advance of knowledge is made by the advance of this process of uncovering. The person from whom this veil is being lifted is the knowing person, the person upon whom it lies thick is ignorant, and the one from whom it has entirely gone is all-knowing." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. You can do any thing and everything, without even the guidance of any one. Stand up and express the divinity within you." (Swami Vivekananda)

"All the knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind. He rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call the law of gravitation." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Anything that makes weak - physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Each work has to pass through these stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy - by one, or more, or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Education is the manifestation of perfection already existing in man." (Swami Vivekananda)

"I am a voice without a form. It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body-to cast it off like a worn-out garment. But I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men and women everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God." (Swami Vivekananda)

"If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without his being conscious of the fact. He will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil, and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good, and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good, even in spite of himself. When such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established." (Swami Vivekananda)

"In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart. " (Swami Vivekananda)

"In a day, when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path." (Swami Vivekananda)

"It is a tremendous truth that if there be real worth in you, the more are circumstances against you, the more will that inner power manifest itself" (Swami Vivekananda)

"Let us work on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty, and being ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light!" (Swami Vivekananda)

"Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Mind is action of its own nature. Mind-activity means creation. The thought is followed by the word, and the word by the form. All of this creating will have to stop, both mental and physical, before the mind can reflect the soul." (Swami Vivekananda)

"My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is; to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. God is in every man, whether man knows it or not; your loving devotion is bound to call up the divinity in him." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Never think there is anything impossible for the soul." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Next to spiritual comes intellectual help; the gift of knowledge is a far higher gift... because the real life of man consists of knowledge; ignorance is death, knowledge is life." (Swami Vivekananda)

"No knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. What we say a we "know," should-in strict psychological language-be what we "discover" or "unveil." What we "learn" is really what we "discover" by taking the cover off our own soul, which is the mirror of infinite knowledge." (Swami Vivekananda)

"No one can get amything unless he earns it. This is an eternal law." (Swami Vivekananda)

"None can hate others without degenerating himself." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life, eighty turn out to be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real truth. Therefore beware." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Stand up, be hold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you duffer from, you are the sole and only cause." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Teach yourself, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil-doers only adds to the evil in the world. But if the people can be made to desist from evil doing, by means of spiritual instruction, there is no more evil in the world." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The brain and muscles must develop simultaneously. Iron nerves with an intelligent brain — and the whole world is at your feet." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The gift of knowledge is the highest gift in the world." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest sin is to think yourself weak." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The help which tends to make us spiritually strong is the highest help, next to it comes intellectual help and after that comes physical help." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The mistake is that we want to tie the whole world down to our own plane of thought and to make our mind the measure of the whole universe." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can't concentrate their minds at will." (Swami Vivekananda)

"The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free." (Swami Vivekananda)

"There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This is the gist of all worship - to be pure and to do good to others." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive." (Swami Vivekananda)

"This universe is the wreckage of the infinite on the shores of the finite." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Time, space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen. [...] In the Absolute there is neither time, space, nor causation." (Swami Vivekananda , "Jnana Yoga")

"To be good and to do good that is the whole of religion." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Truth is purity. Truth is all knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Truth, purity and unselfishness - whatever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition." (Swami Vivekananda)

"We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act." (Swami Vivekananda)

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What is education? Is it book-learning? No. Is it diverse knowledge? Not even that. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful is called education." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge." (Swami Vivekananda)

"When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state." (Swami Vivekananda)

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. 
There is no other teacher but your own soul." (Swami Vivekananda)

Week 2022-21: Nagarjuna - Collected Quotes

"If I have presented any theory

Then I am at fault.

But I have not accepted any theory;

I am totally free from any blame." (Nagarjuna , "Vigrahavyavartanikarika")

"In eating, sleeping, fearing, and copulating, men and beasts are alike;

Man excelleth the beast by engaging in religious practices.

So why should a man, if he be without religion, not be equal to the beast?" (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

"It's amazing, a wonder, that one wakes up in the morning." (Nagarjuna)

"O mighty one, The Four Recollections

Having been shown to be unmistakably the sole Path traversed by the Buddhas,

Do thou maintain zealous watchfulness over them at all times;

Through carelessness herein, all spiritual efforts become fruitless." (Nagarjuna)

"That which one desireth not for oneself,

Do not do unto others." (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

"The foolish are like ripples on water,

For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced;

But the righteous are like carvings upon stone,

For their smallest act is durable." (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

"The phenomena that have arisen interdependently

Are designated as emptiness;.

'Whatever has arisen through interdependent causation

Has no reality." (Nagarjuna , "Vigrahavyiivartanlkiirikii")

"The science which teacheth arts and handicrafts

Is merely science for the gaining of a living;

But the science which teacheth deliverance from worldly existence,

Is not that the true science?" (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

"The universality of change, when completely understood, is the seeing into the heart of all things, and the mind that thus understands is the mind that truly seeks the way." (Nagarjuna)

"Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves." (Nagarjuna)

"Time is fleeting, learning is vast; no one knoweth the duration of one's life:

Therefore use the swan's art of extracting milk from water,

And devote thyself to the Most Precious [Path]"  (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

To him who hath recovered from illness,

What need is there of a physician?

To him who hath crossed the river,

What need is there of a boat?" (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

"To him who knoweth the True Nature of things,

What need is there of a teacher?" (Nagarjuna)

"With the wise and gentle, the contented and the truthful,

Companionship, even in prison, is better than sovereignty with the unruly." (Nagarjuna, [attributed] "The Staff of Wisdom")

Week 2022-19: Dalai Lama - Collected Quotes

"It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come." (Dalai Lama)

"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it." (Dalai Lama)

"Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects." (Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV)

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." (Dalai Lama)

"My religion is kindness." (Dalai Lama)

"Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day". (Dalai Lama)

"Once a year, go someplace you have never been before." (Dalai Lama)

"One must lose all, sacrifice, in order to gain anything, you must first lose everything." (The 14th Dalai Lama)

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values." (Dalai Lama)

"Out primce purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." (Dalai Lama)

"Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free." (Dalai Lama)

"Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck." (Dalai Lama)

"Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer." (Dalai Lama)

"Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other." (Dalai Lama)

"Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality." (Dalai Lama)

"Silence is sometimes the best answer." (Dalai Lama)

"Spend some time alone every day." (Dalai Lama)

"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk." (Dalai Lama)

"The feeling of unbearableness at the sight of other peoples’ suffering, other sentient beings’ suffering. In order to generate that feeling one must first have an appreciation of the seriousness or intensity of another’s suffering. The more fully one understands suffering, and the various kinds of suffering that we are subject to, the deeper will be one’s level of compassion." (Dalai Lama)

"The mind has power over the body and speech, and therefore any training of body and speech must begin with the mind." (Dalai Lama, "Stages Of Meditation", 2002)

"The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well being." (Dalai Lama)

"The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness." (Dalai Lama)

"The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred." (Dalai Lama)

"The way to develop inner peace through meditation begins with the recognition that the destroyer of inner peace is not some external foe, but is within us. Therefore, the solution is within us too. However, that inner change does not take place immediately in the way that we switch on a light, but takes weeks, months and years." (Dalai Lama)

"There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster." (Dalai Lama)

"There needs to be understanding that anger never helps to solve a problem. It destroys our peace of mind and blinds our ability to think clearly. Anger and attachment are emotions that distort our view of reality." (Dalai Lama)

"This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness." (14th Dalai Lama)

"Tibetan Buddhism considers sleep to be a form of nourishment, like food, that restores and refreshes the body. Another type of nourishment is samadhi, or meditative concentration. If one becomes advanced enough in the practice of meditative concentration, then this itself sustains or nourishes the body." (Dalai Lama XIV)

"To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities." (Dalai Lama)"

"True change is within; leave the outside as it is." (Dalai Lama)

"We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily." (Dalai Lama)

"We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection." (Dalai Lama)

"We cannot hope to die peacefully if our lives have been full of violence, or if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment, or fear. So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life." (Dalai Lama)

"We need to strengthen such inner values as contentment, patience and tolerance, as well as compassion for others. Keeping in mind that it is expressions of affection rather than money and power that attract real friends, compassion is the key to ensuring our own well-being." (Dalai Lama)

"What acts as a far more effective circumstance for generating compassion and what, in fact, rouses us from our comfortable meditation seat is actually seeing or hearing others - encountering others directly, not just conceptually in our imagination." (Dalai Lama)

"What is Love? Love is the absence of judgment." (Dalai Lama)

"When you lose, don’t lose the lesson." (Dalai Lama)

"When you realize you have made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it." (Dalai Lama)

"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy. Pride leads to violence and evil. The truly good gaze upon everything with love and understanding." (Dalai Lama)

"Why worry? If there is anything that you can do to change it then change it, if not then why worry." (Dalai Lama)

"Wisdom is the best guide and faith is the best companion. One must try to escape from the darkness of ignorance and suffering, and seek the light of Enlightenment." (Dalai Lama)

Week 2022-18: Miyamoto Musashi - Collected Quotes

"[FIRST TECHNIQUE] […] your sword now having bounced upward, leave it as it is until the opponent strikes again, whereupon you strike the opponent's hands from below. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"[SECOND TECHNIQUE] […] If your sword misses the opponent, leave it there for the moment, until the opponent strikes again, whereupon you strike from below, sweeping upwards.[…]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"[THIRD TECHNIQUE] [...] as the opponent strikes, you strike at his hands from below. [...] as he tries to knock your sword down, bring it up in rhythm, then chop off his arms sideways. The point is to strike an opponent down all at once from the lower position just as he strikes. [...]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Having a position without a position, or a guard without a guard, means that the long sword is not supposed to be kept in a fixed position. [...] Where you hold your sword depends on your relationship to the opponent, depends on the place, and must conform to the situation; wherever you hold it, the idea is to hold it so that it will be easy to kill the opponent. [...] Even though you may catch, hit, or block an opponent's slashing sword, or tie it up or obstruct it, all of these moves are opportunities for cutting the opponent down. This must be understood. [...]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"In my individual school, one can win with the long sword, and one can win with the short sword as well. For this reason, the precise size of the sword is not fixed. The way of my school is the spirit of gaining victory by any means. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"In the present age, not only the bow but also the other arts have more flowers than fruit. Such skills are useless where there is a real need. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Other schools become theatrical, dressing up and showing off to make a living, commercializing martial arts. […] Do you think you have realized how to attain victory just by learning to wield a long sword and training your body and your hands? This is not a certain way in any case. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Speaking in terms of carpentry, soldiers sharpen their own tools, make various useful implements, and keep them in their utility boxes. […] An essential habit for carpenters is to have sharp tools and keep them whetted.[…]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"The field of martial arts is particularly rife with flamboyant showmanship, with commercial popularization and profiteering on the part of both those who teach the science and those who study it. The result of this must be, as someone said, that "amateuristic martial arts are a source of serious wounds". (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"The master carpenter, knowing the measurements and designs of all sorts of structures, employs people to build houses. In this respect, the master carpenter is the same as the master warrior. . . . As the master carpenter directs the journeymen, he knows their various levels of skill and gives them appropriate tasks. . . . Efficiency and smooth progress, prudence in all matters, recognizing true courage, recognizing different levels of morale, instilling confidence, and realizing what can and cannot be reasonably expected-such are the matters on the mind of the master carpenter. The principle of martial arts is like this [...]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"[…] the power of knowledge of the art of the sword. This is something that requires thorough examination, with a thousand days of practice for training and ten thousand days of practice for refinement. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Thus in my individual school there is an aversion to a narrow, biased attitude. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"The Way of the warrior does not include other ways, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, certain traditions, artistic accomplishments, and dancing. But even though these are not part of the Way, if you know the Way broadly, you will see it in everything." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"The way of warrior skill is the way of nature. When you are in line with the power of nature, knowing the rhythm of all situations, you will be able to cut and strike the enemy naturally." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Whatever guard you adopt, do not think of it as being on guard; think of it as part of the act of killing. [...]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"When your life is on the line, you want to make use of all your tools. [...] We find that whatever the weapon, there is a time and situation in which it is appropriate. [...] Both the spear and the halberd depend on circumstances; neither is very useful in crowded situations. [...] they should be reserved for use on the battlefield. [...] [the bow] is inadequate for seiging a castle.[...]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"Whether you adopt a large or small guard depends on the situation; follow whatever is most advantageous. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"You should not have any particular fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. […] Pragmatic thinking is essential. […]" (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"You should not have any particular fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else for that matter." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"You must contemplate the Way of the warrior's skill so you will be able to beat a man in combat by the use of your eye. With diligent training, you will be able to beat ten men in combat by using your spirit." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)

"If you do not look at things on a large scale, it will be difficult for you to master strategy. If you learn and attain this strategy, you will never lose, even to twenty or thirty enemies. More than anything … you must set your heart on strategy and earnestly stick to the Way." (Miyamoto Musashi)

"One can win with the long sword, and one can win with the short sword as well. For this reason, the precise size of the sword is not fixed. The way of my school is the spirit of gaining victory by any means […]" (Miyamoto Musashi)

"Strategy is the craft of the warrior." (Miyamoto Musashi)

"Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men." (Miyamoto Musashi)

"Whatever state of mind you are in, ignore it. Think only of cutting." (Miyamoto Musashi)

"You can only fight the way you practice." (Miyamoto Musashi)

Week 2022-17: Thich Nhat Hanh - Collected Quotes

"You cannot transmit wisdom and insight to another person. The seed is already there. A good teacher touches the seed, allowing it to wake up, to sprout, and to grow." (Thich Nhat Hanh, "Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children", 2007)

"Are you able to understand the suffering in the other person?" (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Be yourself.
 Life is precious as it is.
All the elements for your happiness are already here.
There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle.
Just Be." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. 
Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment."" (Thich Nhat Hanh)"

"Eating mindfully is a most important practice of meditation. We can eat in a way that we restore the cookie of our childhood. The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Every path, every street in the world is your walking meditation path." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Everyone has a desire, but the desire to transform oneself, to transform one’s affliction, suffering, in order to get free and help other people, and change the world, that is a good desire." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our view about them." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Freedom is possible. One in-breath alone is enough to set you free - from your regrets about the past, your worries about the future, and your projects in the present. In that state of freedom, you will make better decisions. Next time you have to make a decision, be sure to breathe in and out first." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive ~ then that is a kind of enlightenment." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"If you know how to practice mindfulness you can generate peace and joy right here, right now. And you'll appreciate that and it will change you. In the beginning, you believe that if you cannot become number one, you cannot be happy, but if you practice mindfulness you will readily release that kind of idea. We need not fear that mindfulness might become only a means and not an end because in mindfulness the means and the end are the same thing. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Listening is a very deep practice. [...].You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen [...] especially to people we think are our enemies - the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a change to tell him or her of your pain, and it’s your turn to be healed. This is the practice of peace." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Looking deeply into the wrong perceptions, ideas, and notions that are at the base of our suffering is the most important practice in Buddhist meditation." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Meditation is not meant to help us avoid problems or run away from difficulties. It is meant to allow positive healing to take place. To meditate is to learn how to stop - to stop being carried away by our regrets about the past, our anger or despair in the present, or our worries about the future." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Meditation is offering your genuine presence to yourself in every moment." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Our own life has to be our message." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"People say that walking on water is a miracle, but to me, walking peacefully on earth is the real miracle.” (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn't mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside. If you’re truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself in you can enjoy the silence." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The first miracle brought about by mindfulness is your own presence, your real presence. With this energy dwelling in you, you become completely alive. When the energy of mindfulness is dwelling in you, Buddha is dwelling in you. The energy of mindfulness is the energy of Buddha. It is the equivalent of the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit is, there is also understanding, life, healing, and compassion."  (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The moment of awakening may be marked by an outbursts of laughter, but this is not the laughter of someone who has won the lottery or some kind of victory. It is the laughter of one who, after searching for something for a long time, suddenly finds it in the pocket of their coat." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community; a community practising understanding and loving kindness, a community practising mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realise a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought, can reduce another person's suffering and bring that person joy." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"There are many ways to calm a negative energy without suppressing or fighting it. You recognize it, you smile to it, and you invite something nicer to come up and replace it; you read some inspiring words, you listen to a piece of beautiful music, you go somewhere in nature, or you do some walking meditation." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply to not allow yourself to get lost in regret about the past or worries about the future." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"We are all connected. When you touch one thing, you are touching everything. Whatever we do has an effect on others. Therefore, we must learn to live mindfully to touch the peace inside each of us. Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace. This collective mindfulness can bring positive change to our families, organizations, communities, nations and future generations." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"When we look deeply into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds there could be no rain, and without rain there would be no flower." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"When you learn HOW to suffer, you suffer much less." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?" (Thich Nhat Hanh)"

"When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer or more water or less sun. You never blame the lettuce." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Where mindfulness is, true life, solidity, freedom, and healing also manifest. We all have the ability to generate this energy of mindfulness. Do walking meditation, breathe mindfully, drink your tea mindfully, and cultivate this energy that dwells in you, that illuminates you, and makes life possible." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are …transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just Be." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Week 2022-15: Adyashanti - Collected Quotes

"The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief." (Steven Gray [Adyashanti], "Emptiness Dancing" , 2004)

"The mind is something that happens within you. Thinking is something that happens within what you are. Thinking does not define what you are. Thinking doesn't define anything." (Adyashanti, "The Basic Teachings - Part 1: Principles of the Teaching", 2009)

"Perhaps the most important element of any spiritual teaching is what we bring to it, because this dictates what the teaching will reveal within ourselves." (Adyashanti, "Orientation to the Teaching", 2010)

"All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are." (Adyashanti)

"And it is from the sacred that a new and fluid consciousness is born that wipes away the old and brings to life the flowering of a living and undivided expression of being. Such an expression is neither personal nor impersonal, neither spiritual nor worldly, but rather the flow and flowering of existence beyond all notions of self." (Adyashanti)

"Enlightenment is a destructive process. it has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true." (Adyashanti)

"Meditation is a dress rehearsal for death." (Adyashanti)

"Meditation is a teaching which offers you the possibility of breaking free from the egoic consciousness and coming into a whole new realisation of who and what you truly are. And all this starts with the willingness to question. To pause for just a moment and realise that maybe you aren't who you imagine yourself to be." (Adyashanti)

"One must be willing to stand alone - in the unknown, with no reference to authority or the past or any of one's conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility." (Adyashanti)

"Our potential is something that can flower only when we are no longer caught within the influence and limitations of the known. Beyond the realm of the mind, beyond the limitations of humanity’s conditioned consciousness, lies that which can be called the sacred." (Adyashanti)

"True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don't even let go. It lets go of itself." (Adyashanti)

"Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them, or to see things differently - until you have given the whole world its freedom - you'll never have your freedom." (Adyashanti)

"We realize - often quite suddenly - that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center. [...] The way they perceive the world suddenly changes, and they find themselves without any sense of separation between themselves and the rest of the world." (Adyashanti)

"When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are." (Adyashanti)

Week 2022-14: Jon Kabat-Zinn - Collected Quotes

"If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Full Catastrophe Living", 1990)

"Acknowledging that sometimes, often at very crucial times, you really have no idea where you are going or even where the path lies. At the same time, you can very well know something about where you are now (even if it is knowing that you are lost, confused, enraged or without hope)." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"But you cannot have harmony without a commitment to ethical behavior. It's the fence that keeps out the goats that will eat all the young shoots in your garden." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?" (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Perhaps the most 'spiritual' thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"We call the effort to cultivate our ability to be in the present moment 'practice' or 'meditation practice'." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", 1994)

"Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting", 1997)

"Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness", 2007)

"It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself." (Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness", 2007)

"Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"The real meditation is how you live your life." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing—a knowing that comes directly from the cultivation of mindfulness - we may only go in circles, for all our efforts and expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf" (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Week 2022-13: Alan Watts - Collected Quotes

"At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a 'problem' of it." (Alan Watts)

"Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world - a place where they are one." (Alan Watts)

"Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent... this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering." (Alan Watts)

"Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes them tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know." (Alan Watts)

"I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, 'That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation." (Alan Watts)

"I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all that there is." (Alan Watts)

"I simply feel that a human being must always recognize that he is qualitatively more than any system of thought he can imagine, and therefore he should never label himself. He degrades himself when he does." (Alan Watts)

"If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it." (Alan Watts)

"Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And, in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image." (Alan Watts)

"It has been said that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, or, in words of Chuang-tzu: 'The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.' In short, it is to be detached from both past and future and to live in the eternal NOW. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this NOW; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists for ever." (Alan Watts)

"Life is not a problem to be solved, 
nor a question to be answered. 
 Life is a mystery to be experienced." (Alan Watts)

"Our sense of individualismthat each of us is alone and separateis a culturally implanted hallucination." (Alan Watts)

"The art of meditation is neither mindless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive." (Alan Watts)

"The future is a concept - it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now." (Alan Watts)

"The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down you is the whole universe." (Alan Watts)

"The transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather than unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, ‘The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day.'" (Alan Watts)

"This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play." (Alan Watts)

"This - the immediate, everyday, and present experience—is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe." (Alan Watts)

"Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence." (Alan Watts)

"To discover the ultimate Reality of life- the Absolute, the eternal, God - you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just crude images. [...] They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind, and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it." (Alan Watts)

"To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give; no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.” (Alan Watts)

"You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean." (Alan Watts)

The way an ecologist describes human behavior is that an action - what you do - is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. You are something that the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. [...] The Real You is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down You IS the Whole Universe." (Alan Watts)

"Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be." (Alan Watts)

Week 2022-12: Ram Dass - Collected Quotes

"Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery." (Ram Dass)

"If you think you are so enlighted go and spend a week with your parents." (Ram Dass)

"Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them." (Ram Dass)

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed. The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back." (Ram Dass)

"Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind. By letting go of even the thought ‘I,’ and 'me' what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there. No separation anywhere. Pure awareness. Neither this, nor that. Just clarity and being." (Ram Dass)

"Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another."

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear." (Ram Dass , "Love Serve Remember")

"The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering." (Ram Dass and Paul Gorman)

"We're all just walking each other home." (Ram Dass)

"Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act." (Ram Dass)

"Your problem is you're ... too busy holding onto your unworthiness." (Ram Dass)

Week 2022-11: Eckhart Tolle - Collected Quotes

"When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in." (Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", 1997)

"A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace ~ arise from beyond the mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Always say 'yes' to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say 'yes' to life - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Am I aware not only of what is happening at this moment, but also of the Now itself as the living timeless inner space in which everything happens?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, this sense of your own presence, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body and the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as 'your self'." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be more powerfully transformative than attending all of these courses. And it's free." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important any more. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to – alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person – you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain." (Eckhart Tolle)

"For what you do to others, you do to yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind~stuff. Your life is real." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction." (Eckhart Tolle)

"How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten. Living knowledge, ancient and yet ever new, is then activated and released from within you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I just cannot live with myself any longer. [...] If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self ’ that ‘I’ cannot live with." (Eckhart Tolle , "The Power of Now")

"Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate 'other'. You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. (Eckhart Tolle)

"If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without." (Eckhart Tolle)

"If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego." (Eckhart Tolle)

"In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same." (Eckhart Tolle)

"In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not." (Eckhart Tolle)

"It has been said 'God is love' but that is not absolutely correct. God is the One Life in and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object. so love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Money can activate the painbody and cause complete unconsciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain." (Eckhart Tolle)

"On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane." (Eckhart Tolle)

"People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.True power if within, and it is available to you now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not 'the thinker'. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"[...] the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time - past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To be aware of little, quiet things, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease." (Eckhart Tolle)

"True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found." (Eckhart Tolle)

"What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine’ in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept is as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists." (Eckhart Tolle)

"When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are." (Eckhart Tolle)"

"When your attention moves into the Now, there is an alertness. It is as if you were waking up from a dream, the dream of thought, the dream of past and future. Such clarity, such simplicity. No room for problem-making. Just this moment as it is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. [...] When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Where does all that unhappiness come from?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Within every situation is contained a seed of grace. Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You don’t need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don’t forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You get there by realizing you are already there." (Eckhart Tolle)

Week 2022-10: Rudolf Steiner - Collected Quotes

"In thinking, we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos." (Rudolf Steiner, "The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception", 1894)

"It is owing to our limitations that a thing appears to us as single and separate when in truth it is not a separate thing at all." (Rudolf Steiner, "The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception", 1894)

"The smallest thing in its rightful place can lead to the highest goals." (Rudolf Steiner, "Rosicrucian Wisdom", 1907)

"When the past has taught us that we have more within us than we have ever used, our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us and fill us with its power." (Rudolf Steiner, "Paths of Experience", 1934)

"Man is effective in the world not only through what he does, but above all through what he is." (Rudolf Steiner, "Study of Man", 1948)

"Truth is a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality." (Rudolf Steiner, "Truth and Knowledge", 1963)

"You'll be able to gain insight and reach a conclusion only by applying the powers of mind, intellect, soul, heart, spirit, and imagination. This is what 'looking at something spiritually' really means." (Rudolf Steiner, "Bees", 1982)

"Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine." (Rudolf Steiner, "Art: An Introductory Reader", 2003)

"He who would know the world, seek first within his being’s depth; he who would truly know himself, develop interest in the world." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility." (Rudolf Steiner)

"If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Just as the human soul takes leave of the body... one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Nor it is an objection to say that we must understand a prayer if it is to have its true effect. That simply is not the case. Who understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet we can take pleasure in it." (Rudolf Steiner)

"The outer world, with all its phenomena, is filled with divine splendour, but we must have experienced the divine within ourselves, before we can discover it in our environment." (Rudolf Steiner)

"To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world." (Rudolf Steiner)

"What may be trivial and commonplace to the understanding is infinitely deep and sublime to the human heart." (Rudolf Steiner)

"When we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we quicken something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death. Once we have experienced this eternal part in us, we can no longer doubt its existence. Meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential center of our being." (Rudolf Steiner)

Week 2022-09: Maxwell Maltz - Collected Quotes

"A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"An idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Happiness is simply a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Mental pictures offer us an opportunity to practice new traits and attitudes, which otherwise we could not do. This is possible because again - your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"The ‘self-image’ is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"True success and true happiness not only go together but each other enhances the other." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than deciding, then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"We are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms. We are built that way. When we have no personal goal which we are interested in and which 'means something' to us, we are apt to 'go around in circles,' 'feel lost' and find life itself 'aimless' and 'purposeless'." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"When you're not goal-striving, not looking forward, you're not really living." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than ‘you’ ever could by conscious thought. 'You’ supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life, has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-cybernetics: Updated And Expanded", 2015)

"The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the “area of the possible.” The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-cybernetics: Updated And Expanded", 2015)

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone." (Maxwell Maltz)

"We must have courage to bet on our ideas, on the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness." (Maxwell Maltz)

"What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live with your self-respect alive and growing." (Maxwell Maltz)

"You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut." (Maxwell Maltz)