Everyone post some favorite quotes!

[chegg]

"Pilgrim, there is no path; you yourself are making it by walking it!"

- Raimón Panikkar

[Marblehead]

That was pretty darned deep for me for so early in the morning, but very good.

[zerostao]

[Marblehead]

Well, you quoted one of my favorite people but I'm still not sure about that love thing.

[chegg]

.

Edited March 14, 2015 by chegg

[CloudHands]

"Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure."

P.K. Dick

[CloudHands]

 

admiration is the emotion farthest from comprehension

 

[Green Tiger]

Some Wai Lun Choi quotes from Real Gold Does Not Fear the Fire.

 

From a St. Paul workshop, October 1995:

 

 

The number one condition for Ch'i Kung is relaxing.

 

Meditation gives the whole body time to take a break. Don't just try to relax the body, you must relax the mind too. The more you use the brain, the more you use energy. When the body tires, you rest or collapse, but it's hard to rest the brain.

 

Tai-Gung (hips central and tucked) helps the microcosmic orbit because it keeps you in balance. Being off-balance makes you tense and then the circulation gets blocked.

 

Standing is better than sitting, sitting is better than lying. In standing meditation, you align yourself with gravity and make the circulation move. Weaker people must sit or lie down until they are strong enough to stand.

 

After thirty, most people start to decline physically. Walk down, don't run down.

 

A collapsed standing posture feels good at first, but later it is uncomfortable. A straight body is best for long-time practice.

 

I don't lie. Lying makes you tense.

[chegg]

"If man has an apartment stacked with newspapers, we call him crazy. If a woman has a house full of cats, we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the nation, we stick'em on the front of a magazine and pretend they are role models"

 

- B. Lester

[chegg]

Is this day is upon the TaoBums ?

 

 

 

"There will come a day when you will feel totally helpless, a mere pawn of destiny, and then you will begin to realize that God alone is your haven of security."

- Paramhansa Yogananda

Edited January 14, 2014 by chegg

[Green Tiger]

"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"

From Dune, by Frank Herbert. Wanna Yueh's favourite passage from The Orange Catholic Bible

[CloudHands]

great books

[RiverSnake]

"A mystic is somewhere between a gentle babe and a wild savage." Anonymous

 

My 2 cents, Peace

[Green Tiger]

"The opinion that there are bounds to human knowledge which it is impossible to pass, compelling man to stop short of the invisible world, is thus met by the occult scientist: he says that there can exist no doubt concerning the impossibility of penetrating into the unseen world by means of the kind of cognition [used in the physical sciences]. One who considers it the only kind can come to no other opinion than that man is not permitted to penetrate into a possibly existing higher world. But the occult scientist goes on to say that it is possible to develop a different sort of cognition, and that this leads into the unseen world. If this kind of cognition is held to be impossible, we arrive at a point of view from which any mention of an invisible world appears as sheer nonsense. But to an unbiased judgment there can be no basis for such an opinion as this, except that its adherent is a stranger to that other kind of cognition. But how can a person form an opinion about a subject of which he declares himself ignorant? Occult science must in this case maintain the principle that people should speak only of what they know, and should not make assertions about anything of which they are ignorant. It can only recognize every man's right to communicate his own experiences, not every man's right to declare the impossibility of what he does not, or will not, know. The occult scientist disputes no one's right to ignore the invisible world; but there can be no real reason why a person should declare himself an authority, not only on what he may know, but also on things considered unknowable."

 

-- Rudolph Steiner, from An Outline of Occult Science, pg. 24

 

I really like Steiner. His writing style comes off as really stiff, but I suppose the translation from German is partly to blame for that.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Green Tiger

[9th]

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

 

- Igor Stravinsky

[ThisLife]

*

 

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Edited February 18, 2014 by ThisLife

[ThisLife]

*

 

 

I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep think the things will kill me. A fire on one end and a fool on the other.

 

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license –look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut !

 

And my car back then was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drug of all: fossil fuels.

 

By the time I got here the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any left. Cold turkey.

 

Can I tell you the truth ? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get their hands on what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

 

Kurt Vonnegut

*

Edited February 26, 2014 by ThisLife

[joeblast]

The Meaning of Life

Along with art and love, life is one of those bedeviling concepts that we really ought to have a definition for but don’t. Philosophers tend to regard the question as too scientific, and scientists as too philosophical. Linus Pauling observed that it’s easier to study the subject than to define it, and, J.B.S. Haldane noted, “no definition will cover its infinite and self-contradictory variety.”

 

Classical definitions of life typically refer to structural features, growth, reproduction, metabolism, motion against force, response to stimuli, evolvability, and information content and transfer. But definitions built on these elements are prone to exceptions. Fire grows, moves, metabolizes, reproduces, and responds to stimuli, but is “nonliving.” So are free-market economies and the Internet, which evolve, store representations of themselves, and behave “purposefully.” I am nonreproducing but, I hope, still alive.

 

If we we look around us, it’s hard to find a property that’s unique to life, and even if we could, our observations are limited to Earth’s biosphere, a tiny, tenuous environment like a film of water on a basketball. But if we expand our list to include abstract properties such as resistance to entropy, then we risk including alien phenomena that we might not regard intuitively as living.

Perhaps the answer is more poetic. “As I see it, the great and distinguishing feature of living things … is that they have needs — continual, and, incidentally, complex needs,” wrote botanist Donald C. Peattie in 1935. “I cannot conceive how even so organized a dead system as a crystal can be said to need anything. But a living creature, even when it sinks into that half-death of hibernation, even the seed in the bottom of the driest Mongolian marsh, awaiting rain through two thousand years, still has needs while there is life in it.”

[zerostao]

 

certainly not a favorite quote of mine but one to think about

[Marblehead]

I thought that sounded familiar and when I got to the bottom to see who was saying it I realized why it was familiar.

[Green Tiger]

[Mark Foote]

I was sure this had already been posted, but I can't find it, so here it is (again):

 

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
- Notebook, 1894 (Mark Twain)

[Marblehead]

I was sure this had already been posted, but I can't find it, so here it is (again):

 

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

- Notebook, 1894 (Mark Twain)

I have used a modified version of this quote without know who's original quote it was.

[zerostao]

[9th]

Precious Mirror Samādhi

The dharma of suchness is intimately transmitted by buddhas and ancestors;

Now you have it; preserve it well.

 

A silver bowl filled with snow; a flying heron hidden by the moon.

Related to each other, they are not the same; Joined together, their places are known.

The meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth.

Flee and you are trapped; hesitate and you fall into doubt and vacillation.

Ignoring and confronting are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire.

To portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement.

In darkest night it is perfectly clear; in the light of dawn it is hidden.

It is a standard for all things; used to remove all suffering.

Although it has no activity, it yet speaks.

Like facing a precious mirror; form and reflection behold each other.

You are not it, but in truth it is you.

Like a newborn child, it is fully endowed with five aspects:

No going, no coming, no arising, no abiding;

"ba ba wa wa" - is anything said or not?

 

In the end it says nothing, for the words are not yet right.

In the six lines of the doubled Li hexagram, appearances and reality interact,

Piled up they become three, the permutations make five,

Like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the five-pronged vajra.

Wondrously embraced within the real, rhythm and melody begin together.

Penetrate the source and travel the paths; embrace the crossroads and treasure the route.

You would do well to respect this; do not neglect it.

 

Natural and wondrous, it is not a matter of delusion or enlightenment.

Within causes and conditions, in time and season, it is serene and illuminating.

So fine it enters where there is no space, so vast it transcends all boundaries.

A hairs-breadth's deviation, and you are out of tune.

 

Now there is 'sudden and gradual', because teachings and approaches arise.

When teachings and approaches are distinguished, standards appear.

Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows.

Outside still and inside trembling, like tethered colts or cowering rats,

The ancient sages grieved for them, and offered them the dharma.

Led by their inverted views, they take black for white.

When inverted thinking stops, the affirming mind naturally accords.

 

If you want to follow in the ancient tracks, please observe the sages of the past.

One on the verge of realizing the Way, the Buddha contemplated a tree for ten kalpas,

Like a battle-scarred tiger, like a horse with shanks gone grey.

Because some are blinded by themselves, there are jeweled tables and ornate robes;

Because some are wide-eyed wondering, there are wildcats and white oxen.

 

With his archer's skill Yi hit the mark at a hundred paces,

But when arrows meet head-on, how could it be a matter of skill?

The wooden man starts to sing; the stone woman gets up dancing.

It is not reached by feelings or thoughts, how could it involve deliberation?

 

Vassals serve their lords, children obey their parents;

Not obeying is not filial, failure to serve is no help.

With practice hidden, function secretly, appearing like a fool, like an idiot;

To persist in this way is called 'the host within the host'.

 

- Tung-shan Liang-chieh