My friend's words

God never puts you through more than you can handle.

-Irma

Destination

Man is already where he needs to be, where he is meant to be. Man is in paradise. The garden of Eden has never been left, nobody can expel you from it. But you can fall asleep, you can start dreaming a thousand and one things. Then those dreams become your reality, and the reality fades far away, becomes unreal.

-Osho

Beth Johnson

Appreciate your learning process, for it is of equal value to have realized there is a need for change as for the change itself.

Lose yourself..

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous.
We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

-Carlos Castaneda

Mind's play

Mind is the forerunner of (all evil) states. Mind is chief; mind-made are they. If one speaks or acts with wicked mind, suffering follows one, even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draught-ox.

-Buddha

Course of life

The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insight

"In fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new."

- Bertrand Russell

Explore yourself

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

- Aristotle

Words of wisdom

Wisdom is knowing how little we know.

- Socrates

Intelligensia

Intelligence is a natural phenomenon — just as breathing is, just as seeing is. Intelligence is the inner seeing; it is intuitive. It has nothing to do with the intellect, remember.

- Osho

Be yourself !

A really egoless person is not humble at all.
He is neither arrogant nor humble; he is simply himself.

-Osho

Nourish your dreams

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them
with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke
the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and
solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on
the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity
for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture
your dream.

-Lao Tzu

An implausible imagination

"In the round valley I saw a people weep
As they came on, all silent, at the pace
Our Litanies, in their processions keep.
When deeper down my eyes perused the place,
Each appeared strangely to be wrenched awry
Between the upper chest and lower face.
For toward the reins the chin was screwed, whereby
With gait reversed they were constrained to go,
For to look forth this posture would deny.
Perhaps by palsy's overmastering throe
Some may have been thus quite distorted, yet
I ne'er saw such, nor think it could be so.
Reader, so God vouchsafe thee fruit to get
Of what thou readest, think now in thy mind
If I could keep my cheeks from being wet
When this our image in such twisted kind
I saw, that tears out of their eyelids prest
Ran down their buttocks by the cleft behind.
Truly I wept, apposed upon the breast
Of the hard granite, so that my Guide said:
'Art thou then still so foolish, like the rest?
Here pity lives when it is rightly dead.
What more impiety can he avow
Whose heart rebelleth at God's judgment dread?'"
Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 7-30

-Dante

Pain

"Ah! Divine Justice! Who crowds throe on throe,
Toil upon Toil, such as mine eyes now met?
Why doth our guilt so ruin us and undo?"
Inferno, Canto VII, Lines 19-21

-Dante

Grief

"Here lamentation, groans, and wailings deep
Reverberated through the starless air,
So that it made me at the beginning weep.
Uncouth tongues, horrible shriekings of despair,
Shrill and faint voices, cries of pain and rage,
And, with it all, smiting of hands, were there,
Making a tumult, nothing could assuage,
To swirl in the air that knows not day or night,
Like sand within the whirlwind's eddying cage."
Inferno, Canto III, Lines 22-30

-Dante

Call it pessimism or maybe not...

There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.

- Dante

Rocker's thoughts..

"I never really believed that to understand or appreciate a good book you have to know who the author is."

-Michael Stipe

Move on

Just steadily go on with your koan every moment of your life. . . . Whether walking or sitting, let your attention be fixed upon it without interruption. When you begin to find it entirely devoid of flavour, the final moment is approaching: do not let it slip out of your grasp. When all of a sudden something flashes out in your mind, its light will illumine the entire universe, and you will see the spiritual land of the Enlightened Ones.

-Ta Hui

Free yourself of these chains

To shake off the dust of human ambition
I sit on moss in Zen robes of stillness,
While through the window,
In the setting sun of late autumn,
Falling leaves whirl
And drop to the ground.

-Tesshu Tokusa

Art

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

-William Butler Yeats

Thoughtful

Keep yourself from worries and sorrow.
Seize with all your might this fleeting life.

Yesterday is already far, tomorrow not yet arrived;
Be happy for a moment, this moment is your life.

Fill the bountiful cup!
Life's disgrace, drunkenness paradise.

-Omar Khayyam

A lie

There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.

-Aeschylus

Equal portion

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.

-Aeschylus

Look inside

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

-Lao Zi

Lao Zi

"By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes. "

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea— he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."

Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of beauty,

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.

- Kalidasa from Sanskrit

Forrest Gump

• Mama always said life was like a box a chocolates, never know what you're gonna get.
• You have to do the best with what God gave you.
• Mama always said, dying was a part of life.
• My Mama always said you've got to put the past behind you before you can move on.
• Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out... and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water... like that mountain lake. It was so clear, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It's so beautiful.

Osho

Real life has to be lived without habits.
You have heard, again and again you have been told, "Drop bad habits."
I tell you: Drop habit as such! There are not good and bad habits:
all habits are bad. Remain without habits, live without habits; then you
live moment-to-moment out of freedom.

Osho

The moment innocence disappears, the soul of intelligence is gone,
it is a corpse. It is better to call it simply "intellect." It can make you a great intellectual, but it will not transform your life and it will not make you open to the mysteries of existence.

J. Krishnamurti

To be aware, without condemnation or justification, of the activities of the self, - just to be aware - is sufficient.

J. Krishnamurti

Self-knowledge, comes into being when we are aware, of ourselves in relationship, which shows what we are from moment to moment.
Relationship is a mirror in which to see ourselves as we actually are.

Balsekar

Understanding can come only at the appropriate time, and no one can say when.
All that can be said is that the understanding cannot come so long as there is expectation, so long as there is a "me" wanting it.

William H. Auden

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin... let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead,
Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead.
Put crepe bows 'round the necks of public doves,
Let traffic policemen wear black, cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East, my West.
My working week and my Sunday rest. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour out the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

21 grams

How many lives do we live? How many times do we die? They say we all lose 21 grams... at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much is lost? When do we lose 21 grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained? How much is gained? Twenty-one grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. How much did 21 grams weigh?

Aeschylus

"He who learns must suffer.In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."