16 dances with a beam of light,
20 Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Yea Swaha
22 Gun dro nga tang yul nge nga
23 Gewa ju jik dza nyon druk
24 Nye nyon nyi shu shen gyur shi
25 Sem chung nga jik di dak o.
27 religious letter games...
48 om a ra ba tsa na di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di di
50 Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail to the Lotus Jewel)
52 The paths are many, the truth is one
54 Mickey Mouse has no wife, no horse, no mustache
56 where you are is where you were when you are where you will be.
59 don't let them immanentize your personal eschaton
61 nga tsho gyis rang gi gyo bar sems can song ba'i dgos.
62 (we should be self-motivating sentient beings.)
66 Acts without impediment
69 Yet he does not know himself
70 To be "kind," to be "gentle"
72 When an archer is shooting for nothing
74 If he shoots for a brass buckle
75 He is already nervous.
76 If he shoots for a prize of gold
79 He is out of his mind!
81 His skill has not changed. But the prize
82 Divides him. He cares.
83 He thinks more of winning
88 By giving, resources; by ethics, bliss
90 One may lead a horse to water, but cannot make him think.
94 neither i nor you nor anything exists truly
95 i, you and everything each have our own existence
96 the view between the two extremes is the middle way
99 Mickey Mouse and Mickey Rooney have something in common.
101 Natural language is hard.
102 -- (a prominent natural language scholar; do you know who? i don't.)
104 not this not this not this, what is it?
110 sangs rgyas kyi tshad mas ma nges ba'i phyir.
111 (the subject "horns of a rabbit" does not exist because it is not an object
112 validly cognized by a buddha.)
115 what you don't see is what you get when you don't look. -- fred t. hamster
117 this bell's knelling is never quelled,
118 while service is rendered,
119 tin staccato splattered over cupric strands,
120 spraying crazed meaning to distant lands.
124 To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others.
127 It is hard to think of what one is doing when one is doing it.
130 No program is so finished that a few bug fixes won't destroy it.
133 Words obscure meaning. -- fred t. hamster
135 There's a Ribong in my Attic, There's a Ribong in my Chair.
136 There's a Ribong in my Dipstick, There's a Ribong in my Hair.
137 In fact, there's a Ribong everywhere.
140 In the context of a spreadsheet system, the user must ensure that the
141 sheet is thoroughly spread onto the bed.
144 nechung: unable to open fortunes.dat file. (just kidding)
146 are you only using half your brain?
147 if you can only think in terms of logical conclusions, rational assumptions,
149 if you can only think in terms of intuitive jumps, esthetic motivations,
150 and the fluid nature of reality,
151 then you probably are stuck on one side of your head. try moving into
155 time has eight eyes and three elbows...
156 and millions of clocks.
159 i refuse to ignore what i cannot perceive. -- fred t. hamster
161 if you can't change your mind,
162 are you sure you've still got one?
164 The only people who deserve to be called "Americans" are called "Indians".
167 you are contemplative and analytical by nature
172 -- Merlin in Excalibur
174 Charlottesville, Virginia: gravity well for the soul.
176 if one is always ambiguous enough, he is never wrong.
177 but he never says anything either.
180 Protect Children, Feed Bunnies, Heal Sickness, Understand Reality
183 Improve the environment and the government;
184 feed politicians toxic waste.
186 alright, so it was a slow night.
187 alright, so it was a slow knight.
188 all night, what a slow knight.
189 there's slightly white snow tonight.
190 tight flights light from the height of night.
194 sasquatch in my breakfast cereal. -- fred t. hamster
196 "what i say is unimportant." -- david w andrews
197 "i'll keep that in mind." -- chris koeritz
199 "are Israelis Catholic?" -- christine kelly
203 -- seen in April 1991 High Times
207 -- co-authored by dave and chris
209 we grow old as soon as we cease to love and trust.
210 -- Madame De Choiseul
212 marijuana is a natural mollifier.
214 I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the
215 monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
220 -- Christian N. Bovee
222 Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist,
223 but the ability to start over.
224 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
226 One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.
229 The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. Cobra.
232 The first casualty when war comes is truth. -- Hiram Johnson, 1917
234 Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the
235 love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity
237 -- Samuel Johnson, from The Idler, 1758
239 Luck sometimes visits a fool, but never sits down with him.
242 How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? -- Satchel Page
244 Yeah, you got a point there man. Just let
245 your hair grow and nobody'll ever find out.
248 Eloquence is vehement simplicity. -- Richard Cecil
250 Two of my correspondents labeled me 'self-righteous', by which
251 they seem to have meant that they think they are righter
255 Every thought I have imprisoned in expression I must free by my deeds.
258 the other is a measure of the self. -- fred hamster
260 it is not who we are that defines us, but what we do.
261 the actions we take are the real indication of where our minds
262 and bodies are at, an expression of our being.
263 when one does not act, one cannot harm,
264 but by not acting when action could help another,
267 if what you are doing right now isn't broadening your mind
268 or elevating your spirit through total awareness of the essence,
269 then find that broadness! that elevation!
270 if an activity doesn't wake you up and tickle you,
271 then tickle yourself. that load which cannot be unburdened
274 the only people i don't like are those who don't want me to like them...
275 and i try to like them when they're not paying attention.
278 to george h. w. bush (on the occasion of our last meeting):
279 "you're a suit where a person should be."
281 The numbah uh bits in a compyooter word should NOT bee ayut, nor
282 sixuhteeen, nor thirty tooo, mah frayends. For vayrilee, it should
283 bee fifty! Theeuss would gayruntee that the sanctitty of our
284 great nayshun would be forevah preeserved! Theyuh would be just
285 one bit for each an every good stayett in this heyuh fahnnn nasyshun,
286 the YOOnited Stayetts of AhhMayReekah!
288 Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
289 -- Lord Acton, Letter, 5 April 1887
291 No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean,
292 for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
293 -- Henry B. Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams", 1907
295 One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
296 -- Henry B. Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams", 1907
298 It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
299 -- Alfred Adler, 1939
301 Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.
302 -- Roy Adzak, quoted in "Contemporary Artists", 1977
304 A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. -- Aesop
306 Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything. -- Aesop
308 We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified. -- Aesop
310 The paper burns, but the words fly away. -- Ben Joseph Akiba
312 Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc.
313 And never lie down with a woman who's got more trouble than you.
314 -- Nelson Algren, "What Every Young Man Should Know"
316 Most of us spend the first 6 days of each week sowing wild oats,
317 then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
320 Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night.
323 I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.
324 I want to achieve it through not dying.
327 The lion and the calf shall lie down together
328 but the calf won't get much sleep.
331 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a
332 large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
333 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
335 The difference between sex and death is that with death
336 you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
337 -- Woody Allen, quoted in "New York Tribune", 1975
339 It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people.
340 The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed
341 to enjoy the waking hours much more.
342 -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects" 1981
344 Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
345 -- Muhammad Ali, in "Time", 1978
347 Doing easily what others find difficult is talent;
348 doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
349 -- Henri-Frederic Amiel, "Journal", 1883
351 In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the
352 sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.
353 -- Idi Amin Dada, 1976
355 God has been replaced, as he has all over the West,
356 with respectability and air conditioning.
357 -- Imamu Amiri Baraka, "Home", 1966
359 Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity
360 of opportunity to be otherwise.
361 -- Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", 1969
363 Death is life's answer to the question 'Why?' -- Anonymous
365 God is not dead. He is alive and working on a less ambitious project.
368 In March July, October, May,
369 The Ides are on the fifteenth day,
370 The Nones the seventh: all other months besides
371 Have two days less for Nones and Ides.
374 Never argue with a fool--people might not know the difference. -- Anonymous
376 Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three. -- Anonymous
378 The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion,
379 the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
382 Vote early and vote often. -- Anonymous, on US election banners, 1850's
384 You're never alone with schizophrenia. -- Anonymous
386 Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause
387 for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.
390 Women like silent men. They think they're listening. -- Marcel Archard
392 We make war that we may live in peace. -- Aristotle
394 What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. -- Aristotle
396 Wit is cultured insolence. -- Aristotle
398 That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. -- Neil Armstrong
400 What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
401 -- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals", 1957
403 We are still speaking the same language,
404 but neither of us is hearing the other.
405 -- Hafez Assad, on Syrian relations with Egypt, in "Time", 3 April 1989
407 If Gary Hart had seen Fatal Attraction two years ago,
408 he'd probably be President.
409 -- Bruce Babbitt, 1988 Presidential Campaign
411 Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. -- Francis Bacon, 1624
413 Rebellions of the belly are the worst. -- Francis Bacon
415 It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
416 -- Walter Bagehot, "Biographical Studies", 1863
418 Be careful what you set your heart upon--for it will surely be yours.
419 -- James Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name" 1961
421 Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart;
422 for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
423 -- James Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name" 1961
425 The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it,
426 but no one wants to go there now.
427 -- James Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name", 1961
429 It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason
430 that it is more difficult to be witty every day
431 than to say pretty things from time to time.
432 -- Honore de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage", 1829
434 Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster
435 that devours everything: familiarity.
436 -- Honore de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage", 1829
438 The duration of passion is proportionate
439 with the original resistance of the woman.
440 -- Honore de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage", 1829
442 It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
445 Television is the first truly democratic culture--the first culture
446 available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want.
447 The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
448 -- Clive Barnes, in "New York Times", 1969
450 What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
451 -- Simone de Beauvoir, "La Femme rompue", 1967
453 Now comes the mystery.
454 -- Henry Ward Beecher, last words, 8 March 1887
456 Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done,
457 they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
460 The most important things to do in this world are to get something
461 to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.
462 -- Brendan Behan, in "Weekend", 1968
464 Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
465 -- Hector Berlioz, "Almanach des lettres francaises"
467 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
470 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. -- Psalms 111:10
472 Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
475 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
476 fools despise wisdom and instruction.
479 The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
482 No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate one and love the other,
483 or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and riches.
486 And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life's span?
489 Greater love hath no man than this,
490 that a man lay down his life for his friends.
493 Spring beckons! All things to the call respond;
494 the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
495 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
497 Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
498 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
500 Belladonna, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison.
501 A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
502 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
504 Bore, n: a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
505 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
507 Conservative, n: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as
508 distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
509 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
511 Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
512 not as they ought to be.
513 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
515 Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community
516 consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves,
518 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
520 Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
521 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
523 Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
524 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
526 Yankee, n: In Europe, an American.
527 In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander.
528 In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMYANK.)
529 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
531 The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
532 -- Josh Billings, "The Kicker"
534 People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
537 Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery.
540 The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start
541 thinking your work is terribly important.
544 An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes
545 which can be made, in a narrow field.
548 The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
549 opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
552 If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. -- Derek Bok, 1978
554 The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
555 -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
557 Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed.
558 If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.'
559 They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'
562 Censorship, like charity, should begin at home,
563 but unlike charity, it should end there.
566 No good deed goes unpunished. -- Clare Boothe Luce
568 When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
571 Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. -- Victor Borge
573 Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand,
574 but we must build as if the sand were stone.
575 -- Jorge Luis Borges, 1972
577 We never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.
578 -- Jorge Luis Borges, "Borges On Writing", 1974
580 It is possible to store the mind with a million facts
581 and still be entirely uneducated.
582 -- Alec Bourne, "A Doctor's Creed"
584 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue
585 to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant
586 may prove to be our executioner.
587 -- General Omar Bradley
589 Grub first, then ethics. -- Bertolt Brecht
591 I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
592 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
594 Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
595 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
597 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first,
598 and call whatever you hit the target.
599 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
601 No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
602 -- Jacob Bronowski, in "Encounter", 1971
604 Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
605 -- Sam Brown, in "Washington Post", 1977
607 Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.
608 -- Matthew Browne, "Lilliput Levee"
610 As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically
611 reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.
612 -- Anita Bryant, 1977
614 Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
615 -- William F. Buckley
617 Before you kill something make sure you have something better
618 to replace it with; something better than political opportunist
619 slamming hate horsesh*t in the public park.
620 -- Charles Bukowski, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man", 1969
622 We love your adherence to democratic principles.
623 -- George HW Bush speaking to Ferdinand Marcos, June 1981
625 The final lesson of Viet Nam is that no great nation
626 can long afford to be sundered by a memory.
627 -- George HW Bush, 1989 Inaugural Address
629 The caribou love [the Alaska oil pipeline].
630 They run up against it, and they have babies.
631 -- George HW Bush, 1988 and again "New York Times", 3 April 1989
633 It would be inappropriate for the President of the United States
634 to try to fine-tune for the people of Hungary how they ought to eat -
635 how the cow ought to eat the cabbage, as we say in the United States.
636 -- George HW Bush, quoted in "Philadelphia Inquirer", 13 July 1989
638 An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
639 -- Nicholas Murray Butler
641 Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. -- Samuel Butler
643 The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
644 -- Samuel Butler, "The Fair Haven", 1873
646 Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense
647 to know how to lie well.
648 -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks" 1912
650 Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven.
651 Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
652 -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks" 1912
654 One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague.
655 -- Robert Burton, 1651
657 For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
658 -- Lord Byron, "Don Juan", 1818
660 The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds;
661 and the pessimist fears this is true.
662 -- James B. Cabell, "The Silver Stallion" 1926
664 Men willingly believe what they wish. -- Julius Caesar
666 What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story.
667 And the greatest good is little enough:
668 for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
669 -- Pedro Calderon de la Barca, "Life is a Dream"
671 It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies.
672 -- Arthur Calwell, 1968
674 An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
677 Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
678 -- Albert Camus, "The Rebel", 1951
680 When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
681 it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
684 You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun
685 than you can with a kind word alone.
688 Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.
689 -- Al Capp, in "Esquire", 1970
691 It is long accepted by the missionaries that morality is inversely
692 proportional to the amount of clothing people wore.
695 "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be,
696 and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
697 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
699 Because of the greatness of the Shah, Iran is an island of stability
701 -- Jimmy Carter, 31 December 1977
703 Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" till you can find a rock.
706 As long as people will accept crap,
707 it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
708 -- Dick Cavett, in "Playboy", 1971
710 Everything beautiful has its moment and then passes away.
711 -- Luis Cernuda, "Las Ruinas"
713 A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
714 -- Miguel de Cervantes
716 I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women,
717 French to men, and German to my horse.
718 -- Charles V, King of France
720 In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.
723 He who asks is a fool for five minutes,
724 but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
727 The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
730 I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
731 or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
734 I like a man who grins when he fights. -- Winston Churchill
736 I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.
737 Pigs treat us as equals.
740 It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
743 Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
744 but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.
747 Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
750 The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
751 the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
754 Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
755 -- Winston Churchill, Speech, January 1952
757 Preparation, knowledge, and discipline can deal with any form of danger.
758 -- Tom Clancy, "The Hunt for Red October", 1984
760 Who will protect the public when the police violate the law?
763 It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God,
767 Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
770 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
771 -- Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of the Future", 1962
773 You're either part of the solution or part of the problem.
774 -- Eldridge Cleaver, 1968
776 The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
777 -- Eldridge Cleaver, "Soul on Ice", 1968
779 America is the only nation in history which miraculously
780 has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without
781 the usual interval of civilization.
782 -- Georges Clemenceau, 1 December 1945
784 War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
785 -- Georges Clemenceau
787 When you have nothing to say, say nothing. -- Charles Caleb Colton
789 I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
792 If we don't know life, how can we know death? -- Confucius
794 Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
797 Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. -- Confucius
799 What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. -- Confucius
801 When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them;
802 when we see persons of a contrary character,
803 we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
806 Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
807 -- Cyril Connolly, "The Unquiet Grave" 1945
809 Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime,
810 but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
811 -- Cyril Connolly, "The Unquiet Grave" 1945
813 Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite.
814 Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime
815 as to which is the main river.
816 -- Cyril Connolly, "The Unquiet Grave" 1945
818 Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones
819 who will be writing about you.
820 -- Cyril Connolly, "Journal and Memoir" 1983
822 Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
823 -- Cyril Connolly, "Journal and Memoir" 1983
825 The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
826 -- Cyril Connolly, "Journal and Memoir" 1983
828 You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
829 -- Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim", 1900
831 The horror! The horror!
832 -- Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness", 1902
834 I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and
835 invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people.
836 -- Calvin Coolidge, Speech, 21 September 1928
838 Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. -- Laurence Coughlin
840 A man feared that he might find an assassin;
841 Another that he might find a victim.
842 One was more wise than the other.
843 -- Stephan Crane, "The Black Riders and Other Lines", 1895
845 I stood upon a high place, and saw, below, many devils,
846 running, leaping, and carousing in sin.
847 One looked up, grinning, and said, "Comrade! Brother!"
848 -- Stephan Crane, "The Black Riders and Other Lines", 1895
850 I walked in a desert.
852 "Ah, God, take me from this place!"
853 A voice said, "It is no desert."
854 I cried, "Well, but---
855 "The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
856 A voice said, "It is no desert."
857 -- Stephan Crane, "The Black Riders and Other Lines", 1895
859 I was in the darkness;
860 I could not see my words
861 Nor the wishes of my heart.
862 Then suddenly there was a great light---
863 "Let me into the darkness again."
864 -- Stephan Crane, "The Black Riders and Other Lines", 1895
866 A man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist." "However," replied the universe,
867 "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
868 -- Stephan Crane, "War is Kind", 1899
870 There is growing evidence that smoking has pharamacological ...
871 effects that are of real value to smokers.
872 -- Joseph F. Cullman III (Pres. of Phillip Morris)
873 Annual Report to Stockholders, 1962
875 There are no atheists in the foxholes.
876 -- William Thomas Cummings, 1942
878 Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days.
879 An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to
880 make it meaningful: a meaningful friend, or a meaningful day.
881 -- the 14th Dalai Lama, interview in "TIME", 11 April 1988
883 The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time
884 of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.
887 The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents,
888 and the second half by our children.
891 There is no such thing as justice--in or out of court.
892 -- Clarence Darrow, Interview, April 1936
894 When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President;
895 I'm beginning to believe it.
898 The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is,
899 in fact, a return to the idealised past.
900 -- Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960
902 There is no such thing as a nonracial society
903 in a multiracial country.
904 -- F. W. de Klerk, President of South Africa,
905 quoted in _Time_, 11 September 1989
907 There are a million ways to lose a work day,
908 but not even a single way to get one back.
909 -- Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, _Peopleware_, 1987
911 People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have
912 a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that
913 there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity.
914 -- Hugo Demartini, in "Contemporary Artists", 1977
916 Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly
917 and safely insane every night of our lives.
918 -- William Dement, in "Newsweek", 1959
920 We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them
921 to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
924 I never deny, I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
927 There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
930 Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.
931 -- Benjamin Disraeli, "Coningsby" 1844
933 The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones
934 from one graveyard to another.
935 -- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England", 1945
937 Love built on beauty, soon as beauty dies.
938 -- John Donne, "Elegy II, The Anagram"
940 Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself,
941 but talent instantly recognizes genius.
942 -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear", 1914
944 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do
945 and always a clever thing to say.
946 -- Will Durant, in "Reader's Digest", 1972
948 Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
949 -- Will Durant, in "National Enquirer", 1980
951 A man's got to know his limitations.
952 -- Clint Eastwood in "Magnum Force", 1973
954 History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
955 once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
958 Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
959 -- Thomas Alva Edison, "Life", 1932
961 There is no substitute for hard work.
962 -- Thomas Alva Edison, "Life", 1932
964 To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.
965 -- Paul Ehrlich, in "The Farmers Almanac, 1978"
967 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
970 Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present,
971 but an equation is something for eternity.
974 Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it
975 is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us
976 any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He
980 God may be subtle. But He is not malicious.
983 I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war
984 fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people
985 of the earth will be killed.
988 I never think of the future--it comes soon enough.
991 The important thing is not to stop questioning.
994 The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has
995 merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
998 The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
1001 You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his
1002 tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand
1003 this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signls here, they
1004 receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
1007 Before God we are all equally wise--and equally foolish.
1008 -- Albert Einstein, "Cosmic Religion"
1010 The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
1011 -- Albert Einstein, "Life", 1950
1013 Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and
1014 the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
1015 -- Albert Einstein, "Ideas and Opinions", 1954
1017 A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
1018 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1020 I think that people want peace so much that one of these days
1021 government had better get out of their way and let them have it.
1022 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1024 In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
1025 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1027 We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
1028 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1030 What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight -
1031 it's the size of the fight in the dog.
1032 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958
1034 This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
1035 -- T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men", 1925
1037 The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines
1038 what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.
1039 -- Havelock Ellis, "Little Essays of Love and Virtue", 1922
1041 The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
1042 -- Havelock Ellis, "The Dance of Life", 1923
1044 The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago...
1045 had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
1046 -- Havelock Ellis, "The Dance of Life", 1923
1048 What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command.
1049 -- Havelock Ellis, "The Dance of Life", 1923
1051 Always do what you are afraid to do. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1053 Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
1054 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1056 What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters
1057 compared to what lies within us.
1058 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1060 When it is dark enough you can see the stars.
1061 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1063 To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
1064 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Journal", 20 December 1822
1066 A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
1067 Before him, I may think aloud.
1068 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays", 1841
1070 I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
1071 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays", 1841
1073 To be great is to be misunderstood.
1074 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays", 1841
1076 I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
1077 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Journal", May 1849
1079 Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
1080 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Conduct of Life", 1860
1082 Hitch your wagon to a star.
1083 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Conduct of Life", 1860
1085 A wise man first determines what is within his control;
1086 all else is then irrelevant.
1089 We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
1092 War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
1093 -- Desiderius Erasmus
1095 A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
1098 A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way
1099 that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
1100 -- Ludwig Erhard, in "The Observer", 1958
1102 There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman
1103 is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.
1106 Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do
1107 with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
1110 Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
1113 The best of seers is he who guesses well.
1116 The camera cannot lie. But it can be an accessory to untruth.
1117 -- Harold Evans, "Pictures on a Page", 1978
1119 Passions are fashions.
1122 When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before.
1123 You see more in you than there was before.
1124 -- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play", 1957
1126 The only accident [at Three Mile Island] is that this thing leaked out.
1127 You could have avoided this whole thing by not saying anything.
1128 -- Craig Faust (control-room operator at TMI), 1979,
1129 quoted from "Loose Talk"
1131 If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks
1132 and transporting goods on our backs.
1135 A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
1136 -- James Feibleman, "Understanding Philosophy", 1973
1138 The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
1139 -- Fanny Fern, "Willis Parton"
1141 Computer: a million morons working at the speed of light.
1144 The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -
1145 and you are the easiest person to fool.
1146 -- Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
1148 Anybody who hates children and dogs can't be all bad. -- W. C. Fields
1150 I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. -- W. C. Fields
1152 It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper. -- Errol Flynn
1154 Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
1157 The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
1158 to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
1161 I am responsible only to God and history.
1164 I still believe that people are really good at heart.
1165 I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation
1166 consisting of confusion, misery and death.
1169 Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
1170 -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac
1172 In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
1173 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1789
1175 Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
1178 Clothe an idea in words and it loses its freedom of movement.
1181 The news is the one thing the networks can point to with pride.
1182 Everything else they do is crap--and they know it.
1183 -- Fred Friendly, 1980
1185 The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
1188 A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather
1189 and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
1192 A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday
1193 but never remembers her age.
1196 A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
1199 A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
1202 The world is full of willing people;
1203 some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
1206 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
1207 But I have promises to keep,
1208 And miles to go before I sleep,
1209 And miles to go before I sleep.
1210 -- Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", 1923
1212 We compound our suffering by victimising each other.
1213 -- Athol Fugard, in "The Observer", 1971
1215 The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
1216 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
1218 The most important thing about Spaceship Earth -
1219 an instruction book didn't come with it.
1220 -- R. Buckminster Fuller, quoted in "Contemporary Architects", 1980
1222 It's not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree.
1223 It's what you do with your life that counts.
1224 -- Millard Fuller, in "Time", 16 January 1989
1226 Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is
1227 almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
1230 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
1231 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
1233 Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
1234 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
1236 Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing
1237 between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
1238 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
1240 The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises
1241 in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral
1242 justification for selfishness.
1243 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
1245 In economics, the majority is always wrong.
1246 -- John Kenneth Galbraith, in "Saturday Evening Post", 1968
1248 One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
1249 -- John Kenneth Galbraith, in "Time", 1961
1251 I could prove God statistically. -- George Gallup
1253 He who awaits much can expect little.
1254 -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
1255 "El Coronel no Tiene quien le Escriba"
1257 Si Dios no hubiera descansado el domingo
1258 habria tenido tiempo de terminar el mundo.
1259 (If God hadn't rested on Sunday,
1260 He would have had time to finish the world.)
1261 -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
1262 "Los Funerales de Mam Grande", 1974
1264 No creo en Dios, pero le tengo miedo.
1265 (I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.)
1266 -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "El Amor en los Tiempos de Calera", 1985
1268 The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.
1269 -- Charles de Gaulle, 1967
1271 A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs. -- German Proverb
1273 If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
1276 I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant,
1277 and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
1280 Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
1283 In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over
1284 and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
1287 The secret of success is sincerity.
1288 Once you can fake that you've got it made.
1291 Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.
1294 All things are only transitory. -- Goethe
1296 We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions,
1297 nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
1298 -- Mikhail Gorbachev, UN address, 7 December 1988
1300 The truest wild beasts live in the most populous places.
1301 -- Baltasar Gracian, "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" 1647
1303 Thirty days hath November,
1304 April, June, and September,
1305 February hath twenty-eight alone,
1306 And all the rest have thirty-one.
1307 -- Richard Grafton, 1562
1309 I think when a person has been found guilty of rape
1310 he should be castrated. That would stop him pretty quick.
1311 -- Billy Graham, 1974
1313 The illusion that times that were are better than those that are,
1314 has probably pervaded all ages.
1315 -- Horace Greeley, "The American Conflict", 1864-1866
1317 If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
1318 -- Motto of the Green Berets
1320 Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
1321 -- Graham Greene, 1981
1323 Figures won't lie, but liars will figure.
1324 -- Charles H. Grosvenor
1326 It's round the world I've traveled; it's round the world I've roamed;
1327 but I've yet to see an outlaw drive a family from its home.
1328 -- Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd"
1330 Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
1331 -- Alex Hamilton, "The Listener", 1978
1333 The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
1334 -- R. W. Hamming, "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers", 1973
1336 War will cease when men refuse to fight.
1339 Licker talks mighty loud w'en it gets loose fum de jug.
1340 -- Joel C. Harris, "Uncle Remus: Plantation Proverbs"
1342 Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has
1343 just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
1346 In times like these, it is helpful to remember
1347 that there have always been times like these.
1350 The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.
1351 -- John W. Hazard, "Changing Times" 1957
1353 Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater. -- William Hazlitt
1355 Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained
1356 with the greatest violence.
1359 Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity,
1360 and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
1361 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
1363 Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do.
1364 But beautiful women don't need to know about men.
1365 It's the men who have to know about beautiful women.
1366 -- Katherine Hepburn
1368 Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived
1369 and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
1370 -- Ernest Hemingway, quoted in "Sunday Times", 1966
1372 Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased
1373 at the price of chains and slavery?
1376 All is flux, nothing stays still. -- Heraclitus
1378 Nothing endures but change. -- Heraclitus
1380 Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end.
1381 It all depends upon where the observer is standing.
1384 I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
1385 brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass
1386 over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner
1387 eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
1389 -- Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965
1391 Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks. -- Herodotus
1393 If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of
1394 fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
1397 There's nothing in the middle of the road
1398 but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.
1399 -- Jim Hightower, in "Time", 3 April 1989
1401 To do nothing is also a good remedy. -- Hippocrates
1403 Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
1404 -- Alfred Hitchcock, in "The Observer", 1960
1406 In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is
1407 and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.
1408 -- Alfred Hitchcock, 1966
1410 The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
1413 What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
1416 Never tolerate the establishment of two continental powers in Europe.
1417 -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", 1933
1419 Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
1420 -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", 1933
1422 Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
1423 -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", 1933
1425 The great masses of the people... will more easily
1426 fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
1427 -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", 1933
1429 You can discover what your enemy fears most
1430 by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
1431 -- Eric Hoffer, in "The Faber Book of Aphorisms", 1964
1433 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman
1435 Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover
1437 Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!
1438 (Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!)
1441 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
1442 (It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.)
1445 He has half the deed done who has made a beginning. -- Horace
1447 Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. -- Horace
1449 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
1452 Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. -- Kin Hubbard
1454 When a fellow says it ain't the money but
1455 the principle of the thing, it's the money.
1458 Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
1459 -- Kin Hubbard, "Abe Martin's Broadcast", 1930
1461 Habit is the nursery of errors. -- Victor Hugo
1463 We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics.
1464 -- Hubert H. Humphrey
1466 The right to be heard does not automatically
1467 include the right to be taken seriously.
1468 -- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1965
1470 A woman has to be twice as good as a man to go half as far. -- Fannie Hurst
1472 The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from
1473 ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference,
1474 and undernourishment.
1475 -- Robert Hutchins, "Great Books" 1954
1477 Maybe this world is another planet's Hell. -- Aldous Huxley
1479 The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet
1480 is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is
1482 -- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited", 1956
1484 Experience is not what happens to you.
1485 It is what you do with what happens to you.
1486 -- Aldous Huxley, in "Reader's Digest", 1956
1488 Technological progress has merely provided us with more
1489 efficient means for going backwards.
1490 -- Aldous Huxley, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", 1956
1492 A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
1493 -- Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People", 1882
1495 The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
1496 -- Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People", 1882
1498 There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.
1501 Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.
1502 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
1504 To think contrary to one's era is heroism.
1505 But to speak against it is madness.
1508 The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it. -- Reggie Jackson
1510 It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
1511 -- Clive James, in "The Observer", 1976
1513 A great many people think they are thinking
1514 when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
1517 The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
1520 El amor es un camino que de repente aparece y de tanto caminarlo se te pierde.
1521 -- Victor Jara, "El Amor es un Camino"
1523 In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
1526 I think [a black]... could scarcely be found capable of
1527 tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid.
1528 -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia", 1787
1530 It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless,
1531 of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
1534 To seek permission is to seek denial. -- Steve Jobs
1536 Men are like wine--some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.
1537 -- Pope John XXIII, 1978
1539 I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket.
1540 -- Lyndon B. Johnson
1542 If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River,
1543 the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM.
1544 -- Lyndon B. Johnson
1546 No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist
1547 or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.
1548 -- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1960
1550 Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
1551 -- Samuel Johnson, 7 April 1775
1553 The heart has its prisons that intelligence cannot unlock.
1554 -- Marcel Jouhandeau, "De la grandeur"
1556 Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?
1559 An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts. -- John Junor
1561 In the fight between you and the world, back the world. -- Franz Kafka
1563 There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring:
1564 impatience and laziness.
1567 The more things change, the more they remain the same.
1568 -- Alphonse Karr, "Les Guepes", January 1849
1570 You do not destroy an idea by killing people; you replace it with a better one.
1573 Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.
1574 -- John Keats, Correspondence, 1819
1576 College isn't the place to go for ideas. -- Hellen Keller
1578 We have met the enemy and he is us. -- Walt Kelly in "POGO"
1580 If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
1581 -- Florynce Kennedy, 1976
1583 Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
1586 Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
1589 We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind
1590 in the history of the world--or to make it the last.
1593 And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you;
1594 ask what you can do for your country.
1595 -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961
1597 If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,
1598 it cannot save the few who are rich.
1599 -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961
1601 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
1602 will make violent revolution inevitable.
1603 -- John F. Kennedy, 12 March 1962
1605 Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
1606 -- Robert F. Kennedy
1608 Some men see things as they are and say why?
1609 I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?'
1610 -- Robert F. Kennedy, quoted in "Esquire", 1969
1612 Without feeling there's no reason to live.
1613 -- Andre Kertesz, photographer, 1894-1985
1615 In the long run we are all dead.
1616 -- John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory", 1936
1618 In a fight you don't stop to choose your cudgels. -- Nikita Khruschev
1620 Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build
1621 bridge even when there are no rivers.
1624 Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1625 -- Soren Kierkegaard, "Life"
1627 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
1628 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
1630 It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me,
1631 but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
1632 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
1634 Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the
1635 the philanthropist to over-look the circumstances of
1636 economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
1637 -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Strength to Love", 1963
1639 The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort,
1640 but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
1641 -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Strength to Love", 1963
1643 He travels the fastest who travels alone.
1646 Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
1649 The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
1652 Television--a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well-done.
1655 Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
1658 Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
1661 People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather
1662 have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
1663 -- Robert Keith Leavitt
1665 It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
1666 -- Robert E. Lee, December 1862
1668 To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
1669 -- Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Wizard of Earthsea", 1975
1671 When smashing monuments, save the pedestals--they always come in handy.
1674 It is true that liberty is precious--so precious that it must be rationed.
1677 The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.
1678 -- Claude Levi-Strauss, "Tristes Tropiques", 1955
1680 Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive,
1681 but what they conceal is vital.
1684 Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you.
1685 Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.
1686 -- Bernard Levin, in "Daily Mail", 1964
1688 A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat
1689 without having his neighbor notice it.
1692 He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. -- Abraham Lincoln
1694 Nearly all men can stand adversity,
1695 but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
1698 Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
1701 The ballot is stronger than the bullet. -- Abraham Lincoln
1703 Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong
1704 impulse to see it tried on him personally.
1707 You can fool all the people some of the time,
1708 and some of the people all the time,
1709 but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
1712 Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee,
1713 and just as hard to sleep after.
1714 -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1716 Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
1719 I have always thought the actions of men the best
1720 interpreters of their thoughts.
1723 Winning is not everything. It's the only thing.
1724 -- Vince Lombardi, 1965
1726 The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.
1727 -- Cesare Lombroso, "The Man of Genius"
1729 Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
1732 In war there is no substitute for victory.
1733 -- General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, 19 April 1951
1735 There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
1736 -- General Douglas MacArthur, 1955
1738 Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada m s;
1739 caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.
1740 -- Antonio Machado, "Proverbios y cantares, VI"
1742 It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.
1743 -- Niccolo Machiavelli
1745 All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death
1746 than the animals that know nothing.
1747 -- Maurice Maeterlinck
1749 The atom bomb is a paper tiger...
1750 Terrible to look at but not so strong as it seems.
1753 Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
1754 -- Mao Zedong, "Quotations from Chairman Mao", 1966
1756 Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
1757 -- Mao Zedong, "Quotations from Chairman Mao", 1966
1759 An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
1760 -- Donald R. Perry Marquis, "archy and mehitabel", 1927
1762 Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
1765 From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
1768 Religion... is the opium of the masses.
1769 -- Karl Marx, "Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right", 1844
1771 Unrecognized faults lead to wasted efforts
1772 -- Joanot Martorell, "Tirant lo Blanc", 1490
1774 Impropriety is the soul of wit.
1777 Love is only the dirty trick played on us
1778 to achieve continuation of the species.
1779 -- W. Somerset Maugham, "A Writer's Notebook" 1949
1781 I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.
1782 -- William H. Mauldin, "Up Front" 1944
1784 Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.
1787 The people here [in Nicaragua] are amazingly friendly, when you
1788 figure we're here to overthrow their government.
1789 -- Richard Melton, US Ambassador to Nicaragua
1791 A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence
1792 and yet keep both ears to the ground.
1795 Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
1798 No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
1801 Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
1804 The American public knows what it wants,
1805 and deserves to get it good and hard.
1808 There's always an easy solution to every human problem -
1809 neat, plausible, and wrong.
1812 Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
1813 -- H. L. Mencken, "A Book of Prefaces", 1917
1815 Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life,
1816 there is actually no truth to be discovered;
1817 there is only error to be exposed.
1818 -- H. L. Mencken, "Prejudices, Third Series", 1922
1820 The older I grow the more I distrust
1821 the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
1822 -- H. L. Mencken, "Prejudices, Third Series", 1922
1824 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
1825 -- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy", 1949
1827 Conservatives are not necessarily stupid,
1828 but most stupid people are conservatives.
1831 He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
1834 A good listener is not only popular everywhere,
1835 but after a while he gets to know something.
1838 Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.
1841 I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
1844 Some of the greatest love affairs I've known
1845 have involved one actor, unassisted.
1848 When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism;
1849 but when you take it from many writers, it's research.
1852 I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.
1855 Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in,
1856 and those inside equally desperate to get out.
1857 -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
1859 The value of life lies not in the length of days,
1860 but in the use we make of them...
1861 Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not
1862 on your tale of years, but on your will.
1863 -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1580
1865 Obstacles are those frightful things you see
1866 when you take your eyes off the goal.
1869 Only the sinner has the right to preach.
1870 -- Christopher Morley
1872 There is only one success, to be able to spend your life in your own way.
1873 -- Christopher Morley
1875 You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
1876 -- John Morley, "Rousseau", 1876
1878 Any party which takes credit for the rain
1879 must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the draught.
1882 If the nation's economists were laid end to end,
1883 they would point in all directions.
1886 As a student I learned from wonderful teachers
1887 and ever since then I've thought everyone is a teacher.
1888 -- Bill Moyers, interviews on "Fresh Air", 1991
1890 Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
1893 Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
1896 The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well off,
1897 have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the
1898 greatest misery without almost noticing them.
1901 Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death
1902 should not be an even greater one.
1903 -- Vladimir Nabokov, quoted in "Time", 1981
1905 The speed of exit of a civil servant is directly proportional
1906 to the quality of his service.
1907 -- Ralph Nader, "The Spoiled System"
1909 Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.
1910 -- V. S. Naipul, interview in "Time", 10 July 1989
1912 If you wish to be a success in the world,
1913 promise everything, deliver nothing.
1916 In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
1919 Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
1922 A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
1923 -- Napoleon, "Maxims" 1804-1815
1925 History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
1926 -- Napoleon, "Maxims" 1804-1815
1928 Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
1929 -- Napolean, quoted in "The Book of Insults", 1978
1931 Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
1934 Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
1935 -- George Jean Nathan
1937 Nobody believes the official spokesman ...
1938 but everybody trusts an unidentified source.
1941 Lack of will power has caused more failure than
1942 lack of intelligence or ability.
1943 -- Flower A. Newhouse
1945 Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
1948 If I have seen far, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
1951 O God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed,
1952 courage to change what should be changed,
1953 and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
1954 -- Reinhold Niebuhr, sermon, 1934
1956 Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
1959 They [Nazis] came first for the Communists,
1960 and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
1961 Then they came for the Jews,
1962 and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
1963 Then they came for the Catholics,
1964 and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
1965 Then they came for me,
1966 and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
1967 -- Martin Niemueller
1969 In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
1970 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
1972 One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
1973 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
1975 What does not destroy me, makes me strong.
1976 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
1978 Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
1979 -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil", 1885-1886
1981 A ship is always referred to as "she"
1982 because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.
1983 -- Chester Nimitz, Speech, 13 February 1940
1985 I have nothing to hide.
1988 I would have made a good pope.
1991 Voters quickly forget what a man says.
1994 Your President is no crook!
1997 Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth -
1998 to see it like it is, and tell it like it is -
1999 to find the truth, to speak the truth, and live the truth.
2000 -- Richard Nixon, accepting the Presidential Nomination, 1968
2002 When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
2003 -- Richard Nixon, in interview with David Frost, 19 May 1977
2005 Laws were made to be broken.
2006 -- Christopher North
2008 Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view.
2009 -- Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Return of the Jedi"
2011 There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
2012 -- Kenneth H. Olson, President of DEC,
2013 Convention of the World Future Society, 1977
2015 The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds,
2016 and the pessimist knows it.
2017 -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" 1951
2019 Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
2022 Liberal--a power worshipper without power.
2025 On the whole human beings want to be good,
2026 but not too good and not quite all the time.
2027 -- George Orwell, collected essays
2029 All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
2030 -- George Orwell, "Animal Farm" 1945
2032 Big Brother Is Watching You
2033 -- George Orwell, "1984", 1948
2035 Who controls the past controls the future.
2036 Who controls the present controls the past.
2037 -- George Orwell, "1984", 1948
2039 At 50 everyone has the face he deserves.
2040 -- George Orwell, "Journals", 1949
2042 Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives,
2043 but on balance life is suffering and only the very young
2044 or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
2045 -- George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", 1950
2047 It is convenient that there be gods,
2048 and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.
2049 -- Ovid, "Ars Amatoria"
2051 To be loved, be lovable.
2052 -- Ovid, "Ars Amatoria"
2054 The chief product of an automated society
2055 is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
2058 It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as
2059 to fill the time available for its completion.
2060 -- C. Northcote Parkinson, in "The Economist", 1955
2062 The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
2065 If all men knew what others say of them,
2066 there would not be four friends in the world.
2067 -- Blaise Pascal, 1656
2069 Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
2070 -- Blaise Pascal, "Pensees", 1670
2072 Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor
2073 of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply... For fear will
2074 rob him of all if he gives too much.
2075 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2077 God forgives us... Who am I not to forgive?
2078 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2080 I have one great fear in my heart, that one day
2081 when they [the whites of South Africa] have turned to loving,
2082 they will find we [the blacks] are turned to hating.
2083 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2085 Then what is it worth, this mining industry? And why should it
2086 be kept alive, if it is only our poverty that keeps it alive? ...
2087 Is it we that must be kept poor so that others may stay rich?
2088 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2090 What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
2091 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2093 Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? ...
2094 Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand.
2095 But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle,
2096 is beyond all human wisdom.
2097 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2099 Yet [white] men [of South Africa] were afraid,
2100 with a fear that was deep, deep in the heart,
2101 a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, ...
2102 They were afraid because they were so few.
2103 And fear could not be cast out, but by love.
2104 -- Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country", 1948
2106 To give up the task of reforming society is to
2107 give up one's responsibility as a free man.
2110 Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often
2111 discover what they lack.
2114 Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do
2115 and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
2116 -- George S. Patton, "War As I Knew It", 1947
2118 Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
2119 control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
2122 Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
2123 -- Boies Penrose, 1931
2125 An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow
2126 why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
2127 -- Laurence J. Peter
2129 Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
2132 Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear
2133 but forgetting where you heard it.
2136 In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
2137 -- Laurence Peter, "The Peter Principle" 1969
2139 Democracy is a process by which the people are free
2140 to choose the man who will get the blame.
2141 -- Laurence Peter, "Peter's Quotations", 1977
2143 Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear
2144 but forgetting where you heard it.
2145 -- Laurence Peter, "Peter's Quotations", 1977
2147 A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well.
2148 -- Gaius Petronius, "Satyricon"
2150 Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
2151 -- Wendell Phillips, Speech, 7 November 1860
2153 Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.
2156 The measure of man is what he does with power.
2159 If everybody's behavior can be explained by simple stupidity and greed,
2160 there's no point in assuming a conspiracy.
2163 I don't need a friend who changes when I change
2164 and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
2167 Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.
2170 Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.
2173 Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
2176 If you do not raise your eyes you will think you are the highest point.
2177 -- Antonio Porchia, "Voces", 1968
2179 One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
2180 -- Antonio Porchia, "Voces", 1968
2182 They talk most who have the least to say.
2185 A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
2188 A good workman is known by his tools.
2191 Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret,
2192 especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.
2195 Maxim 914: Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
2198 Maxim 1070: I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
2201 Practice is the best of all instructors.
2204 If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
2205 -- J. Danforth Quayle
2207 There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.
2208 In other words, a good offense wins.
2209 -- J. Danforth Quayle, on "Star Wars",
2210 quoted in "Time", 19 September 1988
2212 Happy campers you have been, happy campers you are,
2213 and happy campers you will always be.
2214 -- J. Danforth Quayle, on arrival in American Samoa,
2215 quoted in "Time", 8 May 1989
2217 I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and
2218 the only regret I have was that I didn't study
2219 Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.
2220 -- J. Danforth Quayle, quoted in "Time", 8 May 1989
2222 What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind.
2224 -- J. Danforth Quayle, addressing the United Negro
2225 College Fund, quoted in "Time", 26 June 1989
2227 Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as the Earth]...
2228 We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water.
2229 If there is water, there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.
2230 -- J. Danforth Quayle, interviewed on Cable Network
2231 News, 11 August 1989
2233 Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune.
2234 -- Raymond Queneau, "A Model History"
2236 I have been staying in Moscow for only 24 hours,
2237 but already I feel almost at home.
2238 -- Hashemi Rafsanjani, in "New York Times",
2241 A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating,
2242 because 300 people choke to death on food every year.
2243 -- Dixy Lee Ray, 1977, quoted from "Loose Talk"
2245 Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
2248 Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible
2249 for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen.
2252 If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
2255 Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards,
2256 if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
2259 Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
2262 Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite
2263 at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
2264 -- Ronald Reagan, "Saturday Evening Post" 1965
2266 I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964
2267 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
2268 -- Ronald Reagan, 20 October 1965
2270 I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
2271 -- Ronald Reagan, 1968
2273 All the wastes in a year from a nuclear power plant
2274 can be stored under a desk.
2275 -- Ronald Reagan, quoted in "Burlington Free Press", 15 February 1980
2277 History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20% of the
2278 people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government....
2279 When it reaches 25%, there comes an increase in lawlessness.
2280 -- Ronald Reagan, quoted in "Time", 14 April 1980
2282 Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released
2283 by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough
2284 emissions standards for man-made sources.
2285 -- Ronald Reagan, quoted in "Sierra", 10 September 1980
2287 I have just signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever;
2288 we begin bombing in 5 minutes.
2289 -- Ronald Reagan, weekly radio address, 11 August 1984
2291 Facts are stupid things.
2292 -- Ronald Reagan, 1988 Republican Convention
2294 The scientists split the atom; now the atom is splitting us.
2295 -- Quentin Reynolds, in "Quote & Unquote", 1970
2297 The streets are safe in Philadelphia,
2298 it's only the people who make them unsafe.
2301 We need excellence in public education and if the teachers can't do it,
2302 we'll send in a couple of policemen.
2303 -- Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia Bulletin, Oct 19, 1973
2305 One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability
2306 to distinguish our needs from our greeds.
2307 -- Don Robinson, quoted in "Reader's Digest", 1963
2309 If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind,
2310 give it more thought.
2313 We always love those who admire us,
2314 but we do not always love those whom we admire.
2315 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
2317 Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.
2318 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
2320 Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches
2321 beyond their own understanding.
2322 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims" 1665
2324 Old people like to give good advice,
2325 as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples.
2326 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims" 1665
2328 Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done
2329 as the fear of the consequences.
2330 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims" 1665
2332 The reason that lovers never weary each other
2333 is because they are always talking about themselves.
2334 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims" 1665
2336 Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are
2337 for finishing it.... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing
2338 would fall flat in a week.
2341 Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
2344 Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
2347 There is nothing as stupid as an educated man
2348 if you get him off the thing he was educated in.
2351 There's no trick to being a humorist when you have
2352 the whole government working for you.
2355 This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session
2356 as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
2359 We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb
2360 and clap as they go by.
2363 Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.
2364 -- Will Rogers, "The Illiterate Digest", 1924
2366 I never met a man I didn't like.
2367 -- Will Rogers, speech, June 1930
2369 Half our life is spent trying to find something to do
2370 with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
2371 -- Will Rogers, "The Autobiography of Will Rogers", 1949
2373 The world is an enormous injustice.
2376 We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
2377 of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
2378 but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
2381 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
2382 -- Eleanor Roosevelt, "This is My Story", 1937
2384 The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those
2385 who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
2386 -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
2388 It is common sense to take a method and try it.
2389 If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
2390 But above all, try something.
2391 -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Speech, 22 May 1932
2393 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
2394 -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1st Inaugural Address, 1933
2396 A technique is a trick that works.
2399 One half of the children born die before their eighth year.
2400 This is nature's law; why try to contradict it?
2401 -- Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Emile, ou de l'education", 1762
2403 People who know little are usually great talkers,
2404 while men who know much say little.
2405 -- Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Emile, ou de l'education", 1762
2407 Never trust anyone over thirty. -- Jerry Rubin, 1966
2409 The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
2410 so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
2413 Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -
2414 more than ruin, more even than death.
2415 -- Bertrand Russell, "Selected Papers"
2417 You can outdistance that which is running after you,
2418 but not what is running inside you.
2421 A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.
2424 Women and elephants never forget an injury.
2425 -- Saki, "Reginald", 1904
2427 A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
2428 -- Saki, "The Square Egg", 1924
2430 Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king
2431 but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.
2432 -- Sallust, "De bello Iugurthino"
2434 Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves,
2435 spits on its hands and goes to work.
2436 -- Carl Sandburg, in "New York Times", 1959
2438 In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes
2439 when you awake in the morning.
2440 -- Carl Sandburg, in "New York Post", 1960
2442 A man's feet should be planted in his country,
2443 but his eyes should survey the world.
2446 Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
2449 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
2452 When the rich make war it's the poor that die.
2453 -- Jean-Paul Sartre, "Le Diable et le bon Dieu", 1951
2455 Tolerance means excusing the mistakes others make.
2456 Tact means not noticing them.
2457 -- Arthur Schnitzler
2459 Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision
2460 for the limits of the world.
2461 -- Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism"
2463 There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.
2464 -- Charles M. Schulz
2466 Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
2467 -- C. P. Scott, c.1900
2469 They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---
2470 -- General John B. Sedgwick, last words, 1864
2472 They that govern the most make the least noise.
2473 -- John Seldon, 1689
2475 People will swim through sh*t if you put a few bob in it.
2478 It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
2479 -- Seneca, "Epistles"
2481 There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
2482 -- Seneca, "On Tranquility of the Mind"
2484 Every reign must submit to a greater reign. -- Seneca, "Thyestes"
2486 Singing makes all the sad people happy because it is the voice of happiness.
2489 A government that robs Peter to pay Paul
2490 can always depend upon the support of Paul.
2491 -- George Bernard Shaw
2493 Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.
2494 -- George Bernard Shaw
2496 If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
2497 -- George Bernard Shaw
2499 It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
2500 -- George Bernard Shaw
2502 Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior
2503 to all others because you were born in it.
2504 -- George Bernard Shaw
2506 Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.
2507 -- George Bernard Shaw
2509 We've already established what you are, ma'am.
2510 Now we're just haggling over the price.
2511 -- George Bernard Shaw
2513 Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
2514 -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Rejected Statement"
2516 He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
2517 -- George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman", 1903
2519 Lack of money is the root of all evil.
2520 -- George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman", 1903
2522 Liars ought to have good memories.
2525 All reformers, however strict their social conscience,
2526 live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
2527 -- Logan Pearsall Smith
2529 I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
2532 I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
2535 The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
2538 If God had meant there to be more than 2 factors of production,
2539 He would have made it easier for us to draw three-dimensional diagrams.
2542 Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
2545 Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
2548 If you want a thing well done, do it yourself.
2549 -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
2551 A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
2554 The writer is the engineer of the human soul.
2557 Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.
2558 -- Joseph Stalin, Speech, 19 April 1923
2560 Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.
2561 -- Joseph Stalin, 1935
2563 Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?
2566 Time is the only critic without ambition.
2567 -- John Steinbeck, "Writers at Work', 1977
2569 There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
2570 vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
2573 A hungry man is not a free man.
2576 In America, any boy may become president and I suppose
2577 that's just one of the risks he takes.
2580 Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact
2581 that sometimes he has to eat them.
2584 The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
2585 -- Adlai Stevenson, 9 September 1952
2587 The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
2588 -- Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque", 1881
2590 Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness.
2591 Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.
2592 -- Sting (Gordon Summer), 1980
2594 If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying
2595 to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.
2596 -- I. F. Stone, 1967
2598 Ninety per cent of everything is crap.
2599 -- Theodore Sturgeon
2601 There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
2604 Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and
2605 thinking what no one else has thought.
2606 -- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
2608 And you may ask yourself "Am I right? Am I wrong?"
2609 And you may say to yourself "MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE?"
2610 -- The Talking Heads
2612 The nice thing about standards is that there are
2613 so many of them to choose from.
2614 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
2616 A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, will tell you.
2617 -- Bert Taylor, "The So-Called Human Race", 1922
2619 The hunger for love is much more difficult
2620 to remove than the hunger for bread.
2621 -- Mother Teresa, quoted in "Time", 4 December 1989
2623 El infierno es el lugar donde no se ama.
2624 (Hell is the place where love is not found.)
2627 If you want anything said, ask a man.
2628 If you want anything done, ask a woman.
2629 -- Margaret Thatcher
2631 You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.
2632 -- Margaret Thatcher, 1976
2634 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,
2635 the true place for a just man is also a prison.
2636 -- Henry David Thoreau
2638 That government is best which governs least.
2639 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" 1849
2641 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
2642 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
2644 If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
2645 perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
2646 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
2648 The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
2649 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Journal", 26 September 1859
2651 I think that maybe if women and children
2652 were in charge we would get somewhere.
2655 It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
2658 You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
2659 -- James Thurber, "The Thurber Carnival", 1945
2661 The Law of Raspberry Jam--The wider any culture is spread,
2662 the thinner it gets.
2663 -- Alvin Toffler, "The Culture Consumers", 1964
2665 The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
2668 The function of genius is not to give new answers,
2669 but to pose new questions--which time and mediocrity can solve.
2670 -- Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Men and Events"
2672 The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained
2673 by recourse to every form of violence.
2674 -- Leon Trotsky, "Terrorism and Communism", 1924
2676 If you can't convince them, confuse them.
2679 If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
2682 It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
2685 Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.
2686 -- Harry S. Truman, "Memoirs, Vol. II", 1955
2688 A President cannot always be popular.
2689 -- Harry S. Truman, "Memoirs, Vol. II", 1955
2691 It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job;
2692 it's a depression when you lose yours.
2693 -- Harry S. Truman, 1958
2695 Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
2696 -- Harry S. Truman, 1959
2698 A little more moderation would be good. Of course,
2699 my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation.
2700 -- Donald Trump, in "Time", 16 January 1989
2702 I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking
2703 anything, you might as well think big.
2704 -- Donald Trump, in "Time", 16 January 1989
2706 The more laws and order are made prominent,
2707 the more thieves and robbers there will be.
2710 Words divide us, action unites us.
2711 -- Slogan of the Tupamaros
2713 If I had any humility I would be perfect.
2716 Man is the only animal that blushes--or needs to.
2719 The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
2722 The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
2725 When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand
2726 to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished
2727 at how much he had learned in seven years.
2730 Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority,
2731 it is time to reform.
2734 Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
2735 it's time to pause and reflect.
2738 Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.
2739 -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson", 1894
2741 Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy
2742 you must have somebody to divide it with.
2743 -- Mark Twain, "Following the Equator", 1897
2745 Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
2746 -- Mark Twain, Correspondence, 1908
2748 Good politics are often inextricably intertwined.
2749 -- Morris Udall, "Too Funny to Be President", 1988
2751 Lord, give us the wisdom to utter words that are gentle and tender,
2752 for tomorrow we may have to eat them.
2753 -- Morris Udall, quoted in "Sierra", May/June 1989
2755 To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.
2756 -- Miguel de Unamuno, "The Tragic Sense of Life", 1913
2758 Nada muere, todo baja del rio del tiempo al mar de la eternidad y alli queda.
2759 -- Miguel de Unamuno, "Ver con los Ojos y Otros Relatos Novelescos"
2761 No es acaso todo esto un sueno de Dios o de quien sea,
2762 que se desvanecera en cuanto El despierte,
2763 y por eso le rezamos y elevamos a El canticos a himnos,
2764 para adormecerle, para cunar su sueno?
2765 -- Miguel de Unamuno, "Niebla", 1914
2767 Nadie tiene mas imaginacion que la realidad.
2768 -- Miguel de Unamuno, "El Espejo de la Muerte", 1941
2770 The Vice Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate.
2771 Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does.
2774 Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
2775 (And perhaps at some later date it will be pleasant to remember these things.)
2778 Time is flying never to return.
2781 It is not enough to succed. Others must fail.
2784 There's a lot to be said for being noveau riche,
2785 and the Reagans mean to say it all.
2786 -- Gore Vidal, in "The Observer", 1981
2788 A witty saying proves nothing. -- Voltaire
2790 If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. -- Voltaire
2792 Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...
2793 and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor.
2794 -- Wernher von Braun
2796 We are what we pretend to be. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
2798 One's company, two's a crowd and three's a party.
2799 -- Andy Warhol, in "Exposures", 1979
2801 The sports page records people's accomplishments;
2802 The front page nothing but their failures.
2803 -- Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren
2805 My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us
2806 to occupy the land until Jesus returns.
2807 -- James Watt, in "The Washington Post", 24 May 1981
2809 If you worry about your customers,
2810 you won't have to worry about money.
2811 -- Les Welch, in "Bicycle USA", March/April 1990
2813 I passionately hate the idea of being with it,
2814 I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
2815 -- Orson Welles, 1966
2817 I never loved another person the way I loved myself. -- Mae West
2819 Too much of a good thing is wonderful. -- Mae West
2821 When choosing between two evils, I always like to take
2822 the one I've never tried before.
2823 -- Mae West, in "Klondike Annie" 1936
2825 Do I contradict myself?
2826 Very well then I contradict myself,
2827 (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
2828 -- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass", 1855
2830 There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
2833 No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
2836 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
2837 and that is not being talked about.
2840 A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
2841 -- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Grey", 1891
2843 Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them;
2844 sometimes they forgive them.
2845 -- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Grey", 1891
2847 There is no sin except stupidity.
2848 -- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist", 1891
2850 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
2851 -- Oscar Wilde, "Lady Windermere's Fan", 1892
2853 Relations are simply a tedious pack of people,
2854 who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live,
2855 nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
2856 -- Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest", 1895
2858 Hindsight is always 20:20.
2861 Voters do not decide issues. They decide *who* will decide issues.
2862 -- George F. Will, in "Newsweek", 1976
2864 Anyone can hate. It costs to love.
2867 Only the winners decide what were war crimes.
2868 -- Gary Wills, in "New York Times", 1975
2870 Not-really-trying is just as much effort as trying-really-hard.
2871 The only difference... is that not-really-trying receives no reward.
2872 -- A. N. Wilson, "Incline Our Hearts", 1989
2874 If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
2875 try missing a couple of car payments.
2878 You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't
2879 put a few nickels in the machine.
2880 -- Flip Wilson, 1971
2882 Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
2883 -- Jonathan Winters in "The Twilight Zone"
2885 The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
2886 -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
2888 Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses
2889 possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting
2890 the figure of man at twice its natural size.
2891 -- Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own", 1929
2893 TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
2894 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
2896 I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.
2899 Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
2900 -- William Butler Yeats
2902 He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.
2903 -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1968
2905 It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
2908 Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
2911 One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you
2912 only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
2913 -- Frank Zappa, 1979
2915 Progress might be a circle, rather than a straight line.
2916 -- Eberhard Zeidler, in "Contemporary Architects", 1980
2918 Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a
2919 mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and
2920 wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, "Okay, as
2921 long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch,
2922 you know." He started telling his story, about the treasure
2923 and his life and all, and I thought "This story isn't too long".
2924 But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, "Uh-oh, this
2925 story is getting long." But then the story was over, and I said
2926 to myself: "You know, that story wasn't too long after all".
2927 I forgot what the story was about, but there was a good movie
2928 on the plane. It was a little long though.
2929 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2931 I believe in making the world safe for our children,
2932 but not for our children's children, because i don't
2933 believe children should be having sex.
2934 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2936 In weightlifting, I don't think that sudden uncontrolled urination should
2937 automatically disqualify you.
2938 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2940 Blow ye winds, like the trumpet blows, but without that noise.
2941 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2943 When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed it.
2944 Probably, they gathered together one evening, slapped each other on the
2945 back and said, "Hey, good job".
2946 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2948 I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing
2949 a fresh load of tadpoles to that old board of his. Then he'd spin it round
2950 and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell
2951 out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But
2952 then, we had some growing up to do.
2953 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2955 If I ever opened a trampoline store, I don't think I'd call it Trampo-Land,
2956 because you might think it was a store for tramps, which is not the
2957 impression we are trying to convey with our store. On the other hand, we
2958 would not prohibit tramps from browsing, or testing the trampolines, unless
2959 a tramp's gyrations seemed to be getting out of control.
2960 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2962 I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula
2963 _and_ Superman away.
2964 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2966 Too bad you can't just grab a tree by the very tiptop and bend it clear to
2967 the ground and then let her fly, because I bet you'd be amazed at all the
2968 stuff that comes flying out.
2969 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2971 I remember that fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew
2973 "You don't have to tell me," I said. "I am off the team, aren't I?"
2974 "Well," said the coach, "You never were really _on_ the team. You
2975 made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet
2976 is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the
2977 ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at
2978 inappropriate times."
2979 It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought, something is
2980 brewing inside the head of the coach. He sees something inside of me,
2981 some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the
2983 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2985 When I heard that trees grow a new "ring" for each year they live, I thought,
2986 we humans are kind of like that; we grow a new layer of skin each year; and
2987 after many years we are thick and unwieldy from all our skin layers.
2988 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2990 If you're in a boxing match, try not to let the other guy's glove touch your
2991 lips, because you don't know where that glove has been.
2992 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2994 It's too bad that whole families have been torn apart by something as
2995 simple as wild dogs.
2996 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
2998 Marta says the interesting thing about fly fishing is that it's two lives
2999 connected by a thin strand. Come on, Marta. Grow up.
3000 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3002 The old pool shooter had many a game in his life. But now it was time to
3003 hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing to the floor.
3004 "Sorry," he said with a smile.
3005 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3007 If I ever do a book on the Amazon, I hope I am able to bring a certain
3008 lightheartedness to the subject, in a way that tells the reader we are going
3009 to have fun with this thing.
3010 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3012 Even though he was an enemy of mine, I had to admit that what he had
3013 accomplished was a brillant piece of stratagy. First, he punched me, then
3014 he kicked me, then he punched me again.
3015 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3017 The sound of fresh rain run-off splashing from the roof reminded me of the
3018 sound of urine splashing into a filthy Texaco latrine.
3019 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3021 I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very
3022 large shrimp. That way, you could ride him, then, after you
3023 camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science?
3024 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3026 I scrambled to the top of the precipice where Nick was waiting. "That was
3027 fun," I said. "You bet it was", said Nick. "Lets climb higher." "No," I
3028 said, "I think we should be heading back now." "We have time," Nick
3029 insisted. I said we didn't, and Nick said we did. We argued back and forth
3030 like that for about 20 minutes, then finally decided to head back. I didn't
3031 say it was an interesting story.
3032 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3034 Some folks say it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and knocked
3035 the pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a lucky swing.
3036 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3038 Too bad there's not such a thing as a _golden_ skunk, because you'd probably
3039 be _proud_ to be sprayed by one.
3040 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3042 To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same
3043 time unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I
3044 can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing". This is truth, to me.
3045 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3047 I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to
3048 be an eclipse and tell the cave men, "If I have come to destroy you, may the
3049 sun be blotted out from the sky". Just then the eclipse would start, and
3050 they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about
3051 the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh.
3052 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3054 I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king, because I like
3055 people that do what I say.
3056 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3058 Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our
3059 house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall
3060 around myself, a "shell" if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard,
3061 protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags.
3062 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3064 A man doesn't automatically get my respect. He has to get down in the dirt
3066 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3068 If you're ever stuck in some thick undergrowth, in your underwear, don't
3069 stop and start thinking of what other words have "under" in them, because
3070 that's probably the first sign of jungle madness.
3071 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3073 Sometimes the beauty of the world is so overwhelming, I just want to throw
3074 back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle, and I don't care who hears
3075 me, because I am beautiful.
3076 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3078 Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an
3079 astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into
3080 Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!!, you just
3081 slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and
3082 say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think again, bat man."
3083 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3085 I wish scientists would come up with a way to make a dogs a lot bigger, but
3086 with a smaller head. That way, they'd still be good as watchdogs, but they
3087 wouldn't eat so much.
3088 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3090 I bet for an Indian, shooting an old fat pioneer woman in the back with an
3091 arrow, and she fires her shotgun into the ground as she falls over, is like
3092 the top thing you can do.
3093 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3095 I think a good movie would be about a guy who's a brain scientist but he gets
3096 hit on the head and it damages the part of the brain that makes you want
3098 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3100 I wouldn't be surprised if someday some fishermen caught a big shark and cut
3101 it open, and there inside was a whole person. Then they cut the person open,
3102 and in him is a little baby shark. And in the baby shark there isn't a
3103 person, because it would be too small. But there's a little doll or
3104 something, like a Johnny Combat little toy guy--something like that.
3105 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3107 It makes me mad when I go to all the trouble of having Marta cook up about
3108 a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at Marineland says, "You can't throw
3109 chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish." Sure they eat fish, if that is all
3110 you give them. Man, wise up.
3111 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3113 If the Vikings were around today, they would probably be amazed at how much
3114 glow-in-the-dark stuff we have, and how we take so much of it for granted.
3115 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3117 It's not good to let any kid near a container that has a skull and
3118 crossbones on it, because there might be a skeleton costume inside and the
3119 kid could put it on and really scare you.
3120 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3122 If you had a school for professional fireworks people, I don't think you
3123 could cover fuses in just one class. It's just too rich a subject.
3124 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3126 People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they
3127 forget the negative side, which is the preening.
3128 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3130 If I lived back in the Wild West days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my
3131 holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy
3132 said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started
3133 laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's
3134 right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody
3135 would be real quiet and ashamed, because they made fun of the soldering iron
3136 of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
3137 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3139 When I think back on all the blessings I have been given in my life, I can't
3140 think of a single one, unless you count that rattlesnake that granted me
3142 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3144 I hope in the future Americans are thought of as a warlike, vicious people,
3145 because I bet a lot of high schools would pick "Americans" as their mascot.
3146 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3148 Sometimes I think the world has gone completely mad. And then I think, "Aw,
3149 who cares?" And then I think "Hey, what's for supper?"
3150 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3152 If you ever discover that what you're seeing is a play within a play, just
3153 slow down, take a deep breath, and hold on for the ride of your life.
3154 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3156 I can see why it would be prohibited to throw most things off the top of
3157 the Empire State Building, but what's wrong with little bits of cheese?
3158 They probably break down into their various gases before they even hit.
3159 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3161 If you're a circus clown, and you have a dog that you use in your act, I
3162 don't think it's a good idea to to dress the dog up like a clown, because
3163 people see that and they think, "Forgive me, but that's just too much".
3164 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3166 Here's a good joke to do during an earthquake: straddle a big crack in the
3167 ground, and if it opens wider, go "Whoa! Whoa!" and flail your arms around,
3168 like you're going to fall in.
3169 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3171 If you ever go temporarily insane, don't shoot somebody, like a lot of people
3172 do. Instead, try to get some weeding done, because you'd really be suprised.
3173 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3175 It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe
3176 it was like an angry rabbit, who was running to go fight in another fight,
3177 away from the first fight.
3178 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3180 I think a good way to get into a movie is to show up where they're making the
3181 movie, then stick a big cactus plant onto your buttocks and start yowling
3182 and running around. Everyone would think it was funny, and the head movie guy
3183 would say, "Hey, let's put him in the movie."
3184 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3186 Instead of having "answers" on a math test, they should just call them
3187 "impressions", and if you got a different "impression", so what, can't we
3189 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3191 If God dwells inside us, like some people say, I sure hope He likes
3192 enchiladas, because that's what He's getting!
3193 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3195 Probably to a shark, about the funniest thing there is a wounded seal,
3196 trying to swim to shore, because _where_does_he_think_he's_going_?!
3197 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3199 Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday
3200 be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the
3201 greatest works of genius ever created by Man.
3202 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3204 Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine,
3205 which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
3206 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3208 Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself:
3209 "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words--"mank" and "ind."
3210 What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
3211 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3213 I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they don't
3214 just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good
3216 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3218 It takes a big man to cry, but it takes an even bigger man to laugh at
3220 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3222 I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned him,
3223 and we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I helped skin
3225 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3227 I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is
3228 they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then,
3229 when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, "What was
3231 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3233 The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
3234 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3236 Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite
3237 and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny
3238 plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like
3240 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3242 I'd rather be rich than stupid.
3243 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3245 If you were a poor Indian with no weapons, and a bunch of conquistadors
3246 came up to you and asked where the gold was, I don't think it would be a
3247 good idea to say, "I swallowed it. So sue me."
3248 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3250 If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger,
3251 screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave Man, I
3253 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3255 I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture,
3256 is the story of Popeye.
3257 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3259 When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they
3261 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3263 To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography,
3264 and the dancers hit each other.
3265 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3267 What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to save a
3268 solid gold baby? Maybe we'll never know.
3269 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3271 We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at
3272 them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.
3273 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3275 Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of
3276 striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
3277 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3279 I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was
3280 free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending
3281 he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality.
3282 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3284 To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've
3285 wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to
3286 the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
3287 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3289 As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was
3290 very pleasurable-until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN
3292 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3294 Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been
3295 painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a
3296 child look like a deer.
3297 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3299 If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We
3300 might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
3301 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3303 Better not take a dog on the space shuttle, because if he sticks his head
3304 out when you're coming home his face might burn up.
3305 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3307 You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown who makes
3308 people happy, but inside he's real sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.
3309 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3311 Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm
3312 myself down. I'll go over to the persons house and ring the doorbell.
3313 When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on
3314 the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of it's head with
3315 a note that says "You." After that I usually feel a lot better, and no
3317 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3319 If you're a horse, and someone gets on you, and falls off, and then gets
3320 right back on you, I think you should buck him off right away.
3321 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3323 If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep
3324 the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to
3326 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3328 If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe
3329 you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey,
3331 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3333 I'd like to see a nude opera, because when they hit those high notes, I bet
3334 you can really see it in those genitals.
3335 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3337 Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's
3338 neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because
3340 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3342 He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he
3343 made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she
3344 disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, "Dust to
3345 dust," some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he
3346 told the others, "I'll be waiting for you in heaven--with a gun."
3347 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3349 The memories of my family outings are still a source of strength to me. I
3350 remember we'd all pile into the car-I forget what kind it was-and drive and
3351 drive. I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some trees there.
3352 The smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we
3353 played. I remember a bigger, older guy we called "Dad." We'd eat some stuff,
3354 or not, and then I think we went home. I guess some things never leave you.
3355 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3357 If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is
3358 "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to
3359 tell him is "probably because of something you did."
3360 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3362 Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is
3363 not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an
3364 elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.
3365 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3367 As we were driving, we saw a sign that said "Watch for Rocks." Martha said
3368 it should read "Watch for Pretty Rocks." I told her she should write in
3369 her suggestion to the highway department, but she started saying it was a
3370 joke-- just to get out of writing a simple letter! And I thought I was lazy!
3371 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3373 One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my
3374 little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out
3375 warehouse. "Oh, no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried,
3376 but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started
3377 to drive over to the the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
3378 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3380 If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flipper, which one would you think
3381 liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong,
3382 though. It's Hambone.
3383 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3385 Laurie got offended because I used the word "puke."
3386 But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.
3387 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3389 We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we
3390 wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with a whore he
3392 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3394 I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to
3395 town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
3396 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3398 As the evening sky faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I
3399 thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and
3400 how I named him Flint.
3401 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3403 If you're a young Mafia gangster out on your first date, I bet it's real
3404 embarrassing if someone tries to kill you.
3405 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3407 Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first
3408 instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell
3409 on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.
3410 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3412 If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and your friends
3413 are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were
3415 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3417 When I was a kid, my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school
3418 we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of
3419 us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
3420 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3422 I think people tend to forget that trees are living creatures. They're
3423 sort of like dogs. Huge, quiet, motionless dogs, with bark instead of fur.
3424 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
3426 Another major social development of the time was the Temperance
3427 Movement, led by Carrie Nation, who headed an organization called
3428 Scary Looking Women with Hatchets. They would swoop down upon saloons
3429 and smash all the whiskey bottles, then go back to their headquarters,
3430 fire up reefers as big as Roman candles, and laugh until dawn. This
3431 resulted in so much social turmoil that in 1918 Congress decided to
3432 have a total prohibition on alcohol, which was approved early on a
3433 Saturday morning by a vote of 9-2, with 416 members unable to attend
3434 because of severe headaches. Thus began the nation's "Noble
3435 Experiment," which was eventually judged to be a noble failure and
3436 replaced by the current sensible and coherent alcohol policy of
3437 showing public-service TV announcements wherein professional sports
3438 figures urge people not to drink, interspersed with TV commercials
3439 wherein professional sports figures urge people to drink.
3440 -- from "Dave Barry Slept Here", 1989
3444 The Tao that can be known is not Tao.
3445 The substance of the World is only a name for Tao.
3446 Tao is all that exists and may exist;
3447 The World is only a map of what exists and may exist.
3449 One experiences without Self to sense the World;
3450 One experiences with Self to understand the World.
3451 The two experiences are the same within Tao;
3452 They are distinct only within the World.
3453 Neither experience conveys Tao
3454 Which is infinitely greater and subtler than the World.
3458 When Beauty is ascribed to the World
3459 Ugliness has been learned;
3460 When Good is ascribed to the World
3461 Evil has been learned.
3464 Alive and dead are abstracted from growth;
3465 Difficult and easy are abstracted from progress;
3466 Long and short are abstracted from contrast;
3467 High and low are abstracted from position;
3468 Song and speech are abstracted from harmony;
3469 After and before are abstracted from sequence.
3471 For this reason the sage controls without instruction,
3472 And teaches without words.
3473 He lets all things rise and fall,
3474 Nurtures, but does not interfere,
3475 Gives without demanding,
3478 3. Control without Action
3480 Not praising the worthy prevents cheating
3481 Not esteeming the rare prevents theft
3482 Not flaunting beauty prevents lust
3484 So the sage controls people by:
3485 Emptying their hearts,
3486 Filling their bellies,
3487 Weakening their ambitions,
3488 And strengthening their bodies.
3490 If people lack knowledge and desire
3491 The crafty among them can not act;
3492 If no action is taken
3493 Then all live in peace.
3495 4. Properties of Tao
3497 Tao is a depthless vessel;
3498 Used by the Self, it is not filled by the World;
3499 It cannot be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
3500 Its depths are hidden, ubiquitous and eternal;
3501 I don't know where it came from,
3502 But it came before Nature.
3507 It treats all things impartially.
3508 The Sage is not kind,
3509 And treats all people impartially.
3511 Nature is like a bellows
3512 Empty, yet supplying all needs,
3513 The more it moves, the more it yields;
3514 The sage draws upon Tao in the same way
3515 And so can not be exhausted.
3519 Like a riverbed, the heart is never filled
3520 It is an ineffable female
3521 Whose entrance is the root of the World;
3522 Tao is ever present within it:
3523 Draw upon it and it will never fail.
3527 Nature is everlasting
3528 Because it does not have a Self.
3530 In the same way the sage
3531 Serves his Self last and finds it served first,
3532 Regards his body as accidental and finds it endures;
3533 Because his Self does not require service
3538 The best of man is like water,
3539 Which benefits all things, and does not contend with them,
3540 Which flows in places that others disdain,
3541 Where it holds fast to Tao.
3544 In dwelling holds fast to the land,
3545 In feeling holds fast to the heart,
3546 In dealing holds fast to men,
3547 In talking holds fast to truth,
3548 In governing holds fast to order,
3549 In crafting holds fast to competence,
3550 In acting holds fast to opportunity;
3551 So he does not contend, and is without blame.
3555 Stretch a bow to its limit and it is soon broken;
3556 Temper a blade to its sharpest and it is soon blunted;
3557 Amass the greatest treasure and it is soon stolen;
3558 Claim credit and honour and you will soon fall;
3559 Retire once your purpose is achieved--this is the best way.
3563 Embracing Tao, can you become embraced?
3564 Supple, breathing gently, can you become newborn?
3565 Clearing your vision, can you become clear?
3566 Nurturing your beloved, can you become impartial?
3567 Opening your heart, can you become female?
3568 Knowing the world, can you embrace Tao?
3570 Bearing and nurturing,
3571 Creating but not owning,
3572 Giving without demanding,
3573 Controlling without authority.
3576 11. Wealth and Worth
3578 Thirty spokes meet at a nave;
3579 Because of the hole we may use the wheel.
3580 Clay is moulded into a vessel;
3581 Because of the hollow we may use the cup.
3582 Walls are built around a hearth
3583 Because of the doors we may use the house.
3584 Thus wealth comes from what is,
3585 But worth from what is not.
3589 Too much color blinds the eye
3590 Too much tone deafens the ear
3591 Too much taste dulls the palate
3592 Too much play maddens the mind
3593 Too much desire tears the heart.
3595 The sage provides for the belly but not for the senses;
3596 He lets go of sensation and accepts substance.
3600 The mythic masters said: "Praise and blame cause anxiety;
3601 The objects of hope and fear are within your Self."
3603 "Praise and blame cause anxiety"
3604 For you must hope and fear to receive or to lose them.
3606 "The objects of hope and fear are within your Self"
3607 For, without Self, neither fortune nor disaster can befall.
3610 He who regards the World as the Self is able to control the World;
3611 He who loves the World as the Self is able to nurture the World.
3613 14. The Continuity of Tao
3615 Looked at but cannot be seen--it is beyond form;
3616 Listened to but cannot be heard--it is beyond sound;
3617 Grasped at but cannot be touched--it is beyond reach;
3618 Depthless things evade definition,
3619 And blend into a single mystery.
3621 In its rising there is no light,
3622 In its falling there is no darkness,
3623 A continuous thread beyond description,
3624 Lining what can not exist,
3628 Meet it, it has no face,
3629 Follow it, it has no back.
3631 Understand the past, but attend the present;
3632 In this way you know the continuity of Tao,
3633 Which is its essence.
3635 15. The Mythic Masters
3637 The Mythic Masters of Tao had understanding
3638 So profound they can not be understood.
3640 Because they cannot be understood
3641 I can only describe their appearance:
3642 Cautious, like one crossing thin ice,
3643 Hesitant, like one who fears danger,
3644 Modest, like one who is a guest,
3645 Smooth, like melting ice,
3646 Genuine, like unshaped wood,
3647 Empty, like a riverbed,
3648 Opaque, like muddy water.
3650 He who can lie still while the mud settles,
3651 And remain still until the water flows
3652 Does not seek fulfillment
3653 And may transcend Nature.
3655 16. Transcending Nature
3657 Empty the Self completely;
3658 Embrace perfect peace.
3659 The World will rise and move;
3660 Watch it return to rest.
3661 All the flourishing things
3662 Will return to their source.
3664 This return is peaceful;
3665 It is the way of Nature,
3666 An eternal decay and renewal.
3667 Understanding this brings enlightenment,
3668 Ignorance of this brings misery.
3670 Who understands Nature's way becomes all-cherishing;
3671 Being all-cherishing he becomes impartial;
3672 Being impartial he becomes magnanimous;
3673 Being magnanimous he becomes part of Nature;
3674 Being part of Nature he becomes one with Tao;
3675 Being one with Tao he becomes immortal:
3676 Though his body will decay, Tao will not.
3680 The best rulers are scarcely known by their subjects;
3681 The next best are loved and praised;
3682 The next are feared;
3684 They have no faith in their subjects,
3685 So their subjects become unfaithful to them.
3687 When the best kings achieve their purpose
3688 Their subjects claim the achievement as their own.
3692 When Tao is forgotten
3693 Duty and justice arise;
3694 Then wisdom and sagacity are born
3695 Along with hypocrisy.
3697 When family relationships dissolve
3698 Then respect and devotion arise;
3699 When a nation falls to chaos
3700 Then loyalty and patriotism are born.
3704 If we could discard wisdom and sagacity
3705 Then people would profit a hundredfold;
3706 If we could discard duty and justice
3707 Then loving relationships would form;
3708 If we could discard artifice and profit
3709 Then corruption and theft would disappear -
3710 Yet such remedies treat only symptoms
3711 And so are inadequate.
3713 People need personal remedies:
3714 Reveal your naked Self,
3715 Embrace your original nature,
3716 Bind your self-interest,
3717 Control your desire.
3721 I know nothing and nothing troubles me.
3722 I see no difference between yes and no.
3723 I see no difference between good and evil.
3724 I do not fear what the people fear in the night.
3726 The people are merry as if at a tremendous party
3727 Or playing in the park at springtime;
3728 But I am tranquil and wandering,
3729 Like a newborn before it learns to smile,
3730 Lonely, with no true home.
3732 The people have enough and to spare,
3734 And my heart is foolish,
3737 The people are bright and certain,
3738 Where I am dim and confused;
3739 The people are clever and wise,
3740 Where I am dull and ignorant,
3741 Aimless as a wave drifting over the sea,
3742 Attached to nothing.
3744 The people are busy with purpose,
3745 Where I am impractical and uncouth.
3746 I am apart from all other people
3747 Yet I am sustained by Nature, their mother.
3749 21. Expressions of Tao
3751 Love is expressed by following Tao.
3753 Tao is evasive and intangible
3754 But expresses all form and substance;
3755 Tao is dark and subtle
3756 But expresses Nature;
3757 Nature is unchanging,
3758 But expresses sensation.
3760 Since before knowledge
3761 Tao has expressed these things.
3763 By faith in my senses.
3765 22. Contention and Contentment
3767 Accept and you become whole,
3768 Bend and you straighten,
3770 Decay and you renew,
3771 Want and you acquire,
3772 Fulfill and you become confused.
3774 The sage embraces the one
3775 As the World embraces Tao;
3776 He does not display himself, so is clearly seen,
3777 Does not justify himself, so is famed,
3778 Does not boast, so is credited,
3779 Does not glory, so excels,
3780 Does not contend, and so no one contends against him.
3782 The mythic masters said, "Accept and you become whole",
3783 Once whole, the World is your home.
3787 Nature says only a few words:
3788 High wind does not last long,
3789 Nor does heavy rain.
3790 If Nature's words do not last
3791 Why should those of man?
3793 To follow Tao, become Tao; Tao will embrace you.
3794 To give love, become love; love will embrace you.
3795 To lose Tao, become lost; loss will embrace you.
3796 You must trust in order to be trusted.
3800 If you stand on tiptoe you can not stand steady;
3801 If you stride too long you can not stride well;
3802 If you display yourself you can not be clearly seen;
3803 If you justify yourself you can not be respected;
3804 If you promote yourself you can not be believed;
3805 If you pride yourself you can not excel.
3806 These behaviours are dregs and tumors,
3807 Disgusting things avoided by love.
3809 25. Four Infinities.
3811 Before the World exists
3815 Ubiquitous and ever moving,
3816 The mother of the World.
3817 I can not know its name, so I call it Tao;
3818 I can not know its limit, so I call it infinite.
3820 Being infinite, it flows away forever
3821 Flowing away forever, it will return to the Self.
3823 For the Self follows the way of the World
3824 The World follows the way of Nature
3825 And Nature follows the way of Tao.
3829 Therefore Nature is infinite,
3830 Therefore the World is infinite,
3831 Therefore the Self is infinite.
3832 There are four infinities,
3833 And the Self is one of them.
3835 26. Gravity and Calm
3837 Gravity is the root of Lightness,
3838 Calm, the master of Haste
3840 The commander of a great fleet should not act lightly or hastily.
3841 Acting lightly, he loses touch with the World,
3842 Acting hastily, he loses control of the Self.
3844 The sage will travel all day without losing his vehicles.
3845 Surrounded by desirable things,
3846 He remains calm and unattached.
3850 A good traveller leaves no trail to be followed
3851 A good speaker leaves no questions to be asked
3852 A good accountant leaves no workings to be checked
3853 A good container leaves no lock to be opened
3854 A good fastener leaves no knots to be unravelled
3856 So the sage nurtures all men
3857 And abandons no one.
3858 He accepts everything
3859 And rejects nothing.
3860 He attends to the smallest details.
3862 So the strong must guide the weak,
3863 For the weak are raw material to the strong.
3864 If the guide is not respected
3865 Or the material is not nurtured
3866 Confusion will result, no matter how clever one is.
3867 This is the essence of subtlety.
3869 28. Being the Female
3871 Knowing the male, being the female,
3872 Being the course through which flows the World,
3873 One possesses unfailing Love
3874 And exists again as a newborn.
3876 Knowing the light, being the dark,
3878 One becomes unerring Love
3881 Knowing honour, being humble,
3882 Being the valley of the World,
3884 And one becomes as unshaped wood.
3886 When wood is shaped it becomes tools.
3887 Used by the sage, tools become powerful;
3888 A good carpenter wastes little.
3892 Those who wish to change the World
3893 According with their desire
3896 The World is shaped by Tao;
3897 It cannot be shaped by the Self.
3898 If one tries to shape it, one damages it;
3899 If one tries to possess it, one loses it.
3902 Sometimes things will flourish,
3903 And sometimes they will not.
3904 Sometimes life is hard
3905 And sometimes it is easy.
3906 Sometimes people are strong
3907 And sometimes they are weak.
3908 Sometimes you get where you are going
3909 And sometimes you fall by the way.
3911 The sage is never extreme, extravagant, or complacent.
3915 Powerful men are well advised not to use violence,
3916 For violence has a habit of returning;
3917 Thorns and weeds grow wherever an army goes,
3918 And lean years follow a great war.
3920 A general is well advised
3921 To achieve nothing more than his orders,
3922 No matter how strong his army;
3923 To carry out his orders
3924 But not glory, boast or be proud;
3925 To do what is dictated by necessity,
3926 But not by bloodlust;
3927 For even the fiercest force will weaken with time,
3928 And then its violence will return, and kill it.
3930 31. Tools of Violence
3932 Soldiers are tools of violence, feared by all;
3933 The sage will not employ them.
3934 His purpose is creation;
3935 Their purpose is destruction.
3937 Weapons are tools of violence, not of the wise man;
3938 He uses them when there is no choice
3939 For he values peace and tact,
3940 And does not delight in conquest.
3942 For who delights in conquest
3943 Delights in the slaughter of men;
3944 Who delights in the slaughter of men
3945 Cannot control them.
3947 Slaughters should be mourned
3948 And conquest should be celebrated with a funeral.
3952 Tao has no true definition.
3953 Like unshaped wood, it has no use;
3954 If a ruler understands this
3955 His whole country flourishes and obeys
3956 In harmony with his Self,
3957 Just as sweet rain falls
3958 Needing no instruction
3959 To slake the thirst of all.
3961 When Tao is shaped by use,
3962 The shape gains a name in the World;
3963 One should not keep too many names
3964 Lest their shapes stop up the Self;
3965 Instead let Tao flow through the Self into the World
3966 As water courses down a riverbed into the sea.
3970 He who understands the World is learned;
3971 He who understands the Self is enlightened.
3972 He who conquers the World has strength;
3973 He who conquers the Self has love.
3974 He who is contented has riches;
3975 He who is determined has purpose.
3976 He who maintains his home will long endure
3977 He who maintains his influence will live long after death.
3979 34. Tao Favours Nothing
3981 Infinite Tao flows everywhere, creating and destroying,
3982 Implementing all the World, attending to the tiniest details,
3983 Claiming nothing in return.
3985 It nurtures all things,
3986 Though it does not control them;
3988 So it seems inconsequential.
3990 It is the substance of all things;
3991 Though it does not control them;
3993 So it seems all-important.
3995 Because it favours no finite thing,
4000 Tao lacks art and flavour;
4001 It can neither be seen nor heard,
4002 Yet its application cannot be exhausted.
4004 So, if you offer music and food
4005 Strangers may stop with you;
4006 But if you accord with the shape of Tao
4007 The people of the World will keep you
4008 In safety, health, community, and peace.
4012 To reduce someone's influence, first cause it to expand;
4013 To reduce someone's force, first cause it to increase;
4014 To overthrow someone, first cause them to be exalted;
4015 To take something from someone, first give it to them.
4017 This is the subtlety by which the weak overcome the strong,
4018 For fish should not leave their depths;
4019 And soldiers should not leave their camouflage.
4021 37. Quieting the Heart
4023 Tao does not act, yet leaves nothing undone.
4024 If the Self understands this
4025 All things of the World will naturally flourish;
4026 Flourishing, they will be restrained by Nature.
4028 Nature does not possess desire;
4029 Without desire, the heart becomes quiet,
4030 And so the whole World may be made tranquil.
4034 The kind act without self-interest;
4035 The just act to serve self-interest;
4036 The religious act to reproduce self-interest.
4038 When Tao is lost, there is love;
4039 When love is lost, there is kindness;
4040 When kindness is lost, there is justice;
4041 And when justice is lost, there is religion.
4043 Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
4044 Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
4045 So religions enthrall generation after generation.
4047 Religion is the dissolution of love and trust,
4048 The beginning of confusion.
4049 Belief is a colourful hope or fear,
4050 The origin of folly.
4052 The sage goes by knowledge, not by hope;
4053 He dwells in the fruit, not the flower;
4054 He accepts the former, and rejects the latter.
4058 In mythic times things were whole:
4059 All the sky was clear,
4060 All the earth was stable,
4061 All the mountains were strong,
4062 All the riverbeds were full,
4063 All of nature was alive,
4064 All the rulers were supported.
4066 For without clarity the sky tears;
4067 Without stability the earth cracks;
4068 Without strength the mountain collapses;
4069 Without water the riverbed stagnates;
4070 Without life nature dies back;
4071 And without support rulers fall.
4073 So the ruler depends upon his subjects,
4074 The noble depend upon the humble;
4075 Rulers call themselves orphaned, lonely or disabled,
4076 To win the people's sympathy,
4077 For wholeness gains no support.
4079 So there is weakness in power,
4080 And power in weakness;
4081 Rather than tinkle like jade,
4082 One should clatter like stones.
4084 40. Application of Tao
4086 The motion of Tao is to return;
4087 The use of Tao is to accept;
4088 All things are made of Tao,
4089 And Tao is made of nothing.
4093 When the strong learn Tao, they practice it diligently;
4094 When the average learn Tao, they practice it sometimes;
4095 When the weak learn Tao, they laugh out loud;
4096 Those who do not laugh do not learn at all.
4098 Therefore is it said:
4099 Who understands Tao seems foolish;
4100 Who progresses in Tao seems to fail;
4101 Who follows Tao seems to wander.
4103 For the greatest force appears vulnerable;
4104 The brightest truth appears coloured;
4105 The richest character appears incomplete;
4106 The strongest heart appears meek;
4107 The most beautiful nature appears fickle;
4109 For the square, perfected, has no corner;
4110 Art, perfected, has no meaning;
4111 Sex, perfected, has no climax;
4112 Form, perfected, has no shape.
4114 So Tao can not be sensed or known:
4115 It transmits sensation and transcends knowledge.
4120 Love bears restraint;
4121 Restraint bears acceptance;
4122 Acceptance bears the World;
4123 All things begin with love and end with restraint,
4124 But it is acceptance that brings harmony.
4126 As others teach, I teach:
4127 "Those without harmony end with violence";
4130 43. Overcoming the Impossible
4132 The soft overcomes the hard;
4133 The formless penetrates the impenetrable;
4134 Therefore I value taking no action.
4136 Teaching without words,
4137 Work without action,
4138 Are understood by no one.
4142 Fame or Self: which is dearer?
4143 Self or wealth: which is more valuable?
4144 Profit or loss: which is more torturous?
4146 Great love incurs great expense,
4147 And great wealth incurs great theft,
4148 But great contentment incurs no loss.
4151 He who knows when to stop
4152 Does not continue into danger,
4153 And may long endure.
4157 Great perfection seems imperfect,
4159 Great abundance seems empty,
4162 Great truth seems contradictory;
4163 Great cleverness seems stupid;
4164 Great eloquence seems awkward.
4166 Action overcomes contentment,
4167 But stillness overcomes desire;
4168 Therefore calm and quiet control the World.
4172 When the World is not in accord with Tao,
4173 Horses bear soldiers through the countryside;
4174 When the World is in accord with Tao,
4175 Horses bear horse-manure through the countryside.
4177 There is no greater curse than desire;
4178 There is no greater misery than discontent;
4179 There is no greater ailment than greed;
4180 He who is content to be content shall always be content.
4182 47. Knowledge and Experience
4184 Without taking a step outdoors
4185 You know the whole World.
4186 Without taking a look out the window
4187 You see the colour of the sky.
4189 The more you experience,
4191 The sage wanders without knowing,
4192 Looks without seeing,
4193 Accomplishes without acting.
4197 The follower of knowledge acquires as much as he can every day;
4198 The follower of Tao loses as much as he can every day.
4200 By attrition he reaches a state of inaction
4201 Wherein he does nothing, but leaves nothing undone.
4203 To conquer the world, do nothing;
4204 If you must do something,
4205 The world remains beyond conquest.
4207 49. The Worlds of Others
4209 The sage does not distinguish between Self and World;
4210 Therefore the needs of people in the World are as his own.
4212 He is good to those who are good;
4213 He is also good to those who are not good;
4214 For love is goodness.
4215 He trusts those who are trustworthy;
4216 He also trusts those who are not trustworthy;
4219 He is in harmony with the World;
4220 Therefore he nurtures the Worlds of others
4221 As a mother does her children.
4225 Death enters life as man enters woman.
4228 Thirty years of growth;
4229 Thirty years of decay;
4230 Thirty years inbetween;
4231 So death and life reproduce themselves.
4233 He who would prolong his life
4234 Will not meet tigers or rhinoceri in the wilds,
4235 Nor soldiers in battle
4236 So the rhinoceros sees no place in him for its horn,
4237 The tiger no place for its claw,
4238 The soldier no place for a weapon;
4239 So death finds no place to enter his life.
4246 Circumstance completes us.
4248 We worship Tao and honour love;
4249 For worship of Tao and honour of love
4250 Are performed just by being alive.
4253 Love nurtures, develops, cares for,
4254 Shelters, comforts and makes a home for us.
4256 Making without controlling,
4257 Giving without demanding,
4258 Guiding without interfering,
4259 Helping without profiting,
4264 The origins of the World are its mother;
4265 Know the mother, and you understand the child;
4266 Know the child, and you embrace the mother,
4267 Who will not perish when you die.
4269 Reserve your judgments and words
4270 And you maintain your influence;
4271 Draw conclusions and speak your mind
4272 And your cause is lost.
4274 As seeing detail is clarity,
4275 So maintaining tact is strength;
4276 Keep your eyes and mind open
4277 So that you may not regret your actions;
4282 With but a small understanding
4283 One may follow Tao like a main road,
4284 Fearing only to leave it;
4285 Following a main road is easy,
4286 But being sidetracked is also easy.
4288 For when palaces are kept up
4289 Fields are left to weeds
4290 And granaries empty.
4292 Wearing fine clothes,
4293 Bearing sharp swords,
4294 Glutting with food and drink,
4295 Hoarding wealth and possessions -
4296 These are the ways of theft
4297 And deviations from Tao.
4301 Love does not think of love
4302 For this reason is it strong;
4304 Yet leaves nothing undone.
4305 Desire is intent upon love
4306 For this reason is it weak;
4308 Yet gets nothing done.
4310 Nurture love in the Self, and love will be genuine;
4311 Nurture love in the family, and love will be abundant;
4312 Nurture love in the community, and love will multiply;
4313 Nurture love in the culture, and love will flourish;
4314 Nurture love in the World, and love will be ubiquitous.
4317 Judge a person by their love;
4318 Judge a family by its love;
4319 Judge a community by its love;
4320 Judge a culture by its love;
4321 Judge the World by its love.
4322 How can I know the love of the World?
4327 Who is filled with love is like a newborn.
4328 Wasps will not sting him;
4329 Tigers will not eat him;
4330 Hawks will not tear out his eyes.
4332 His bones are soft, yet his sinews are supple,
4333 So his grip is strong;
4334 He has no wife, yet his manhood is healthy,
4335 So his vigour is unspoiled;
4336 He sings all day yet his voice remains sweet
4337 So his harmony is perfect.
4339 To approach Nature is to know harmony;
4340 To achieve Nature is to be enlightened;
4341 But to surpass Nature invites calamity
4342 For emotion will burst the lungs
4343 And exhaustion will age the heart:
4344 The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
4348 He who knows does not speak;
4349 He who speaks does not know.
4351 Reserve your judgments and words;
4352 Dull your wit and simplify your purpose;
4353 Be humble as earth and a part of Nature.
4356 Friendship and enmity,
4358 Honour and disgrace,
4359 Will not affect you.
4360 The impartial Self is of most benefit to the World.
4364 A nation is best governed by innocence;
4365 A war is best waged by treachery;
4366 The World is best controlled by inaction;
4370 The more property and taxes there are,
4371 The more poverty prevails;
4372 The more guns and knives there are,
4373 The more chaos prevails;
4374 The more arts and sciences there are,
4375 The more deceit prevails;
4376 The more rules and regulations there are,
4377 The more theft prevails.
4379 Therefore the sage says:
4380 I take no action, and the people become civilized;
4381 I wage no war, and the people become just;
4382 I transact no business, and the people become wealthy;
4383 I have no desire, and the people become innocent.
4387 When government is lazy and blunt
4388 The people are kind and honest;
4389 When government is efficient and severe
4390 The people are discontented and deceitful.
4392 Misery may yield happiness;
4393 Happiness may conceal misery.
4394 Who can say which will be for the best?
4395 Nothing is straightforward.
4396 Honesty is ever corrupted;
4397 Kindness is ever seduced;
4398 Men have been like this for a long time.
4400 So the sage is firm but not cutting,
4401 Pointed but not piercing,
4402 Straight but not inflexible,
4403 Brilliant but not blinding.
4407 Manage a great nation
4408 As you would cook a delicate fish.
4410 When directing men to a purpose
4411 The sage is restrained;
4412 Restraint allows time to prepare and strengthen,
4413 To build loving relationships;
4414 With sufficient strength and love all resistance is overcome;
4415 When all resistance is overcome his purpose is achieved.
4417 Who can achieve his purpose is able to direct men
4418 And his influence upon them long endures.
4419 Deeply rooted and firmly established,
4420 His vision lives on even after death.
4424 Because the sage follows Tao his emotions do no hurt;
4425 It is not that they lose their power;
4426 But that they do not hurt others;
4427 Because they do not hurt others,
4428 He does not hurt others:
4429 Because his emotions do no hurt,
4430 His relations with people are loving.
4432 61. International Relations
4434 A nation acts as a hierarchy, a meeting place, and a female.
4435 A female seduces a male by being cool,
4436 Being cool is a means of submission.
4438 If a large country submits to a small country
4439 It will seduce the small country;
4440 If a small country submits to a large country
4441 It will seduce the large country;
4442 The large will submit in order to control
4443 And the small will submit in order to prosper.
4446 It is in the interests of a large country to give shelter,
4447 And in the interests of a small country to give service;
4448 If both would achieve their purposes,
4453 Tao is the source of all things,
4454 The treasure of the saint,
4455 And the refuge of the sinner.
4457 Fine words win honour
4458 And fine acts win respect,
4459 But if a man sins, do not abandon him;
4460 And if a man wins power, do not bribe him;
4461 Just be still and present accordance with Tao.
4463 Why do saints treasure Tao?
4464 Because it is easily found by seeking,
4465 And absolves every sin.
4466 It is the most valuable gift.
4468 63. Confront Difficulty
4471 Attend to do-nothing;
4472 Taste the flavorless,
4475 Return love for hate.
4477 Deal with difficulty while it is yet easy;
4478 Deal with the great while it is yet small;
4480 The difficult develops naturally from the easy
4481 And the great from the small;
4482 So the sage, by dealing with the small
4485 He who finds it easy to promise finds it hard to deliver;
4486 He who takes things lightly makes things hard;
4487 The sage confronts difficulty, and so has none.
4489 64. Care at Beginning and End
4491 What lies still is easy to grasp;
4492 What is far off is easy to plan for;
4493 What is cold is easy to shatter;
4494 What is small is easy to disperse.
4497 A tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;
4498 A dam taller than a river can overflow is born of a clod of earth;
4499 A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one's feet.
4501 Therefore deal with things before they happen;
4502 Create order before there is confusion.
4504 Yet he who acts, spoils;
4505 He who grasps, loses.
4506 People often fail on the verge of success.
4507 Take care at the end as at the beginning,
4508 So that you may avoid failure.
4510 The sage desires no desire,
4513 But gives the people what they can not find
4514 And helps all things accord with Nature
4515 Without interfering.
4517 65. Understanding History
4519 The mythic masters of Tao did not want to make people wise,
4520 But to keep them ignorant;
4521 For it is difficult to govern people who know too much.
4523 To govern a nation by imparting knowledge to its people
4524 Destroys the nation.
4525 To govern a nation by decreasing the knowledge of its people
4528 Understanding these two paths is understanding history;
4529 Understanding history gives clarity of vision
4530 By which one may see through deceit.
4532 66. Lead by Following
4534 How does the river carve out the valley?
4535 By flowing beneath it.
4536 Thereby the river is master of the valley.
4538 In order to master people
4539 One must speak as their servant;
4540 So when the sage is elevated to power
4541 People do not feel oppressed.
4543 In order to lead people
4544 One must follow them;
4545 So when the sage restrains people
4546 They do not feel hindered.
4548 Thus the popularity of the sage does not fail,
4549 He does not seem superior, so no one wishes to usurp him.
4553 It may seem that my teaching means nothing;
4554 It describes the infinite, so of course it means nothing;
4555 If it meant something it would long since have been refuted.
4557 Yet I have three treasures, which I follow and commend to you:
4559 By which one finds courage.
4560 The second is restraint.
4561 By which one finds strength.
4562 The third is not contending.
4563 By which one finds influence.
4565 Those who are fearless, but without love,
4566 Strong, but without restraint,
4567 Or influential, yet contentious,
4570 Only love conquers all and is defeated by none.
4571 It is Nature's finest tool and sharpest weapon.
4575 A good soldier does not use violence;
4576 A good fighter does not use anger;
4577 A good conqueror does not use attack;
4578 A good ruler does not use authority;
4579 So not contending is the best way to use men.
4583 There is a saying among soldiers:
4584 It is easier to lose a yard than take an inch.
4586 In this way one may deploy troops without marshalling them,
4587 Reveal weapons without exposing them,
4588 Assault the foe without charging them,
4589 And apply force without aggression.
4591 Conversely there is no disaster like underestimating your enemy;
4592 For false confidence will lose you your most valued assets.
4593 When two equally matched forces meet
4594 The general who conserves life will win.
4598 My words are easy to understand
4599 And my actions are easy to perform
4600 Yet no man can understand or perform them.
4602 My words have logic; my actions have meaning;
4603 Yet these cannot be known and I cannot be known.
4605 We are each unique; no man understands another.
4606 Though the sage wears coarse clothes, his heart is jade.
4610 Who knows what he knows is healthy;
4611 Who ignores what he ignores is sick;
4612 Who grows sick of sickness recovers;
4613 The sage is never sick, but always sick of sickness.
4617 When people do not fear, they are easily conquered.
4619 Praise their goods and children
4620 And they will not dislike yours.
4621 Know your superiority,
4622 But do not tell it to them;
4624 But do not let them know;
4625 Reject what is yours
4626 And accept what is theirs.
4630 Who is brave and bold may die;
4631 Who is brave and subtle may live.
4632 Which course best serves one's purpose?
4633 Fate favours some and destroys others.
4634 The sage does not know why.
4636 Fate does not contend, yet all things are conquered by it;
4637 It does not ask, yet all things answer to it;
4638 It does not call, yet all things come to it;
4639 It does not plan, yet all things are determined by it.
4641 Fate's hands are vast, its fingers spread wide,
4642 Yet none slip through its grasp.
4646 People do not fear death, so do not threaten them with death.
4648 If people feared death, and you executed all who did not love you
4649 There would be no people left but you and the executioner.
4650 You would then need to kill him.
4651 You would then need to chop off your own hand.
4655 If rulers take too much grain
4656 People rapidly starve;
4657 If rulers take too much freedom
4658 People easily rebel;
4659 If rulers take too much happiness.
4662 By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
4666 Man is born soft and tender,
4667 But dies hard and stiff.
4668 Plants and animals, in life, are supple and juicy;
4669 In death, brittle and dry.
4670 So hardness and stiffness are attributes of death,
4671 And softness and tenderness attributes of life.
4673 Just as a sapless tree splits and decays
4674 A strong but inflexible force will meet defeat;
4675 So the hard and mighty lie beneath our feet
4676 While the tender and weak toss in the breeze above.
4680 Is the movement of Nature not unlike drawing a bow?
4681 What is higher descends and what is lower ascends;
4682 What is longer shortens and what is shorter lengthens;
4683 Nature's way decreases those who have more than they need
4684 So to increase those who need more than they have.
4686 It is not so with Man.
4687 Man decreases those who need more than they have
4688 So to increase those who have more than they need.
4690 The sage works regardless of personal reward or recognition;
4691 To benefit the World is to benefit the Self.
4693 78. Accept Responsibility
4695 Nothing in the World is as yielding as water;
4696 Nor can anything better overcome the hardened.
4698 Just as the yielding overcomes the hardened,
4699 The weak may overcome the strong;
4703 "Who accepts responsibility for his people rules the country;
4704 Who accepts responsibility for the World rules the World"
4705 Yet his words are not understood.
4709 When conflict is reconciled, some hatred remains;
4710 How can this be put right?
4712 The sage accepts less than is due
4713 And does not blame or punish;
4714 Love seeks agreement
4715 Where justice seeks payment.
4717 The mythic masters said: "Nature is impartial;
4718 Therefore it serves those who serve all."
4722 Imagine that there is a small country with few people;
4723 Who have a hundred times more than they need;
4724 Who love life and do not wander far;
4725 Who own ships but do no foreign trade;
4726 Who own weapons but do not threaten war;
4727 Who are literate but keep no histories;
4728 Who cook well, dress beautifully, dwell safely
4729 And delight in their own culture,
4730 But live within cock crow of their neighbours.
4732 People in such a place would never leave.
4736 Truth is not rhetorical;
4737 Therefore rhetoric is not true;
4738 Lovers do not contend;
4739 Therefore competitors do not love;
4740 The enlightened keep no knowledge;
4741 Therefore the learned are not enlightened.
4743 The sage does not aim to increase himself;
4744 But the more he does for others the more he is satisfied;
4745 And the more he gives the more he gets.
4747 The best way is to benefit all and harm none;
4748 So the sage achieves his purpose without contention.
4750 Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they're open.
4751 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar, aka Lord Dewar
4775 /\/\ (. ).) `_'_', ( )
4778 / \ ~====' /_____/` D)
4780 .__|~-/^\-~|_/_ |^^^^^^^|| |
4783 _- ,`_'_' .~\ \|__ __|-____ / )
4784 < -(. ).) > \ ( .\ (. ) \(_/ )
4785 ~- _) \_- ooo @ (_) @ \(_//.
4786 / /_C (-.____) /((O)/ \ ._/\~_.
4787 / |_\ / / /\\\\`-----'' _|>o< |__
4788 | \ooooO ( \ \\ \\___/ \ `_'_', /
4789 \ \__-| \ `)\\-^\\ ^--. /_(.(.)- _\
4790 \ \ ) |-`--.`--=\-\ /-//_ ' ( c D\
4791 \_\_) |-___/ / \ V /.~ \/\\\ (@)___/ ~|
4792 / | / | |. /`\\_/\/ / /
4793 / | ( C`-'` / | \/ (/ /
4794 /_________- \ `C__-~ | / (/ /
4795 | | | \__________| \ (/
4802 #################### ##
4803 #################### ##
4824 <=============**==============>
4833 [Reuters 8/16/92] SHANGHAI--A 24-year-old bus passenger, Dong Huibo, died
4834 in the street, after tangling with one of the city's dreaded woman bus
4835 conductors. His nightmare began inside the bus when the ticketpuncher
4836 snarled an insult about the shape of his backside. She swore at him,
4837 slapped his face and broke his glasses, made a grab for his testicles, then
4838 stood back and aimed a vicious kick at his private parts. As he scrambled
4839 out of a window, the driver--also a woman--slammed her foot on the
4840 accelerator pedal and sent him flying. (From: Di Bi Cao)
4842 -----------------------------------------
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4865 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@|
4866 -----------------------------------------
4883 Ronald Wilson Reagan can be rearranged into Insane Anglo Warlord
4884 and George Herbert Walker Bush into Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog, and of
4885 course H. Ross Perot can be rearranged into Sport Horse and Short Poser.
4887 HSIN-HSIN-MING (AFFIRMING FAITH IN MIND)
4889 wong@rkna50.riken.go.jp (Wong Weng Fai) posted a version of this,
4890 and I thought I would send another, longer version. This is from
4891 (if my memory serves) Roshi Kapleau's "Zen--Dawn in the West",
4892 so I assume it is his translation.
4894 The Great Way is not difficult
4895 For those who do not pick and choose.
4897 When preferences are cast aside
4898 The Way stands clear and undisguised.
4900 But even slight distinctions made
4901 Set Heaven and Earth far apart.
4903 If you would clearly see the truth,
4904 Discard opinions pro and con.
4906 To founder in like and dislike
4907 Is nothing but the mind's disease.
4909 And not to see the Way's deep truth
4910 Disturbs the Mind's essential peace.
4912 The Way is perfect like vast space,
4913 Where there's no lack and no excess.
4915 Our choice to choose and to reject
4916 Prevents our seeing this simple truth.
4918 Both striving for the outer world
4919 As well as for the inner void
4920 Condemns us to entangled lives.
4922 Just calmly see that all is One
4923 And by themselves false views will go.
4925 Attempts to stop activity
4926 Only fill you with activity.
4928 Remaining in duality
4929 You'll never know of unity.
4931 And not to know this unity
4932 Lets conflict lead you far astray.
4934 When you assert that things are real,
4935 You miss their true reality.
4936 But to assert that things are void
4937 Also misses reality.
4939 The more you talk and think on this,
4940 The further from the truth you'll be.
4942 Cut off all useless thoughts and words
4943 And there's nowhere you cannot go.
4944 Returning to the root itself,
4945 You'll find the meaning of all things.
4947 If you pursue appearances,
4948 You overlook the primal source.
4950 Awakening is to go beyond
4951 Both emptiness as well as form.
4953 All changes in this empty world
4954 Seem real because of ignorance.
4956 Do not go searching for the truth,
4957 Just let those fond opinions go.
4959 Abide not in duality;
4960 Refrain from all pursuit of it.
4962 If there's a trace of right and wrong,
4963 True Mind is lost, confused, distraught.
4965 From One-Mind comes duality,
4966 But cling not even to this one.
4968 When this One-Mind rests undisturbed,
4969 Then nothing in the world offends.
4971 And when nothing can give offense,
4972 Then all obstructions cease to be.
4974 If all thought-objects disappear,
4975 The thinking subject drops away.
4977 For things are things because of mind,
4978 As mind is mind because of things.
4980 These two are merely relative,
4981 And both at source are emptiness.
4983 In emptiness these are not two,
4984 Yet in each are contained all forms.
4986 Once coarse and fine are seen no more,
4987 Then how can there be taking sides?
4989 The Great Way is without limit,
4990 Beyond the easy and the hard.
4992 But those who hold to narrow views
4993 Are fearful and irresolute;
4994 Their frantic haste just slows them down.
4996 If you're attached to anything,
4997 You surely will go far astray.
4999 Just let go now of clinging mind,
5000 And all things are just as they are.
5001 In essence nothing goes or stays.
5003 See into the true self of things,
5004 And you're in step with the Great Way,
5005 Thus walking freely and undisturbed.
5007 But live in bondage to your thoughts,
5008 And you will be confused, unclear.
5010 This heavy burden weighs you down-
5011 O why keep judging good and bad?
5013 If you would walk the highest way,
5014 Do not reject the sense domain.
5016 For as it is, whole and complete,
5017 This sense world is enlightenment.
5019 The wise do not strive after goals,
5020 But fools themselves in bondage put.
5022 The One Way knows no differences;
5023 The foolish cling to this and that.
5024 To seek Great Mind with thinking mind
5025 Is certainly a grave mistake.
5027 From small mind comes rest and unrest,
5028 But mind awakened transcends both.
5030 Delusion spawns dualities-
5031 These dreams are naught but flowers of air-
5032 Why work so hard at grasping them?
5034 Both gain and loss, and right and wrong-
5035 Once and for all get rid of them.
5037 When you are no longer asleep,
5038 All dreams will vanish by themselves.
5040 If mind does not discriminate,
5041 All things are as they are, as one.
5043 To go to this mysterious source
5044 Frees us from all entanglements.
5046 When all is seen with "equal mind",
5047 To our self-nature we return.
5049 This single mind goes right beyond
5050 All reasons and comparisons.
5052 Stop movement and there's no movement,
5053 Stop rest and no-rest comes instead.
5055 When rest and no-rest cease to be,
5056 Then even Oneness disappears.
5057 This ultimate Finality's
5058 Beyond all laws; can't be described.
5060 With single mind one with the Way,
5061 All ego-centered strivings cease.
5063 Doubts and confusion disappear,
5064 And so true faith pervades our life.
5066 There is no thing that clings to us,
5067 And nothing that is left behind.
5069 All's self-revealing, void and clear,
5070 Without exerting power of mind.
5072 Thought cannot reach this state of truth;
5073 Here feelings are of no avail.
5075 In this true world of emptiness,
5076 Both self and other are no more.
5078 To enter this true empty world,
5079 Immediately affirm "Not-Two".
5081 In this "Not-Two" all is the same,
5082 With nothing separate or outside.
5084 The wise in all times and places
5085 Awaken to this primal truth.
5087 The Way's beyond all space, all time;
5088 One instant is ten thousand years.
5090 Not only here, not only there,
5091 Truth's right before your very eyes.
5093 Distinctions such as large and small
5094 Have relevance for you no more.
5096 The largest is the smallest too-
5097 Here limitations have no place.
5099 What is is not, what is not is-
5100 If this is not yet clear to you,
5101 You're still far from the inner truth.
5103 One thing is all, all things are one.
5104 Know this and all's whole and complete.
5106 When faith and mind are not separate,
5107 And not separate are mind and faith,
5108 This is beyond all words, all thought.
5115 You don't understand because you are a technocrat, an engineer.
5116 You work with your hands.
5117 I however am a visionary. I work with my mouth.
5120 So we'll go to the top of the toppest blue space,
5121 The Official Katroo Birthday Sounding-Off Place!
5122 Come on! Open your mouth and sound off at the sky!
5123 Shout loud at the top of your voice,
5127 And I may not know why
5128 But I know that I like it.
5129 _Three cheers_! I AM I!"
5130 -- Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
5139 Human conduct is ever unreliable
5140 until man is anchored in the Divine,
5141 Everything in future will improve
5142 if you are making a spiritual effort now.
5143 -- Swami Sri Yukteswar
5145 A strange weed this be
5146 what's restoreth my vitality.
5149 Q: Is an opinion true or false?
5150 A: Depends on whether it's mine or yours....
5153 Would anyone ever admit that an opinion was wrong?
5154 Wouldn't most people change the opinion instead,
5155 having then a new, well-considered, and more correct opinion?
5158 Through the dark of future past,
5159 The magician longs to see.
5160 One chants out between two worlds,
5161 "Fire, walk with me!"
5163 It's really very simple... I found wearing women's clothes... relaxed me.
5166 the first differentiation between reality as conceived and reality as it IS
5167 consists of an analogy: conceptions of reality (all ideas entertained by a
5168 knower) are maps, while reality is the territory being mapped.
5169 whether or not two individuals can be said to live in the same territory
5170 is unclear, because their conceptions may be different enough that their maps
5171 of reality are very different. it is also unclear whether there can be said
5172 to be two individuals at all--if the self and other are one, then all
5173 distinctions between selves ultimately disappear in the final analysis.
5176 This message partially funded by the Apathy Partnership of Earth (APE).
5178 Styrofoam never dies for as long as you live.
5179 -- Deputy Andy Brennan, Twin Peaks
5188 A dog howling at the moon,
5189 not because he's a dog,
5190 but because he wants to.
5193 I want to share something with you, the three
5194 little sentences that will get you through life:
5196 #2. Ooh, good idea boss!
5197 #3. It was like that when I got here...
5198 -- Homer Simpson to Bart
5200 you wouldn't know the truth if it bit off your nose, stuck a gasoline
5201 nozzle into the gaping wound, filled you up with high octane, and
5204 In a world where children blow up children,
5205 everyone's a threat.
5206 -- psycho cop, on Star Trek: The Next Generation
5210 environments based in chaotic realms inevitably concern themselves less with
5211 conservation of mass or energy, ignore laws regarding increasing entropy,
5212 cease to be rational or defined. chaotic ones within orderly realms still
5213 recall this power and warp the space where they stand.
5219 | \\_/_/ /__|O||O|__ \
5220 / |_ | "I do solemnly swear by the sacred |/_ \_/\_/ _\ |
5221 | ||\_ ~| bedpan to fix the patient, and | | (____) | ||
5222 | ||| \/ ease his wretched suffering, even \/\___/\__/ //
5223 | |||_ until all hope is lost." (_/ ||
5229 / ||||__ (____(____)
5232 When they came for the Fourth Amendment I didn't say anything
5233 because I had nothing to hide.
5234 When they came for the Second Amendment I didn't say anything
5235 because I didn't own a gun.
5236 When they came for the Fifth and Sixth Amendments I didn't say anything
5237 because I had committed no crimes.
5238 When they came for the First Amendment I couldn't say anything.
5240 (taken from the Urine Nation News, spring/summer 1993, number 12, page 1)
5243 something may be great,
5244 but the bother of not doing it
5245 while continuing to think about it
5249 Then we sat on the sand for some time and observed,
5250 how the oceans that covered the world were perturbed,
5251 by the tides from the orbiting moon overhead,
5252 "How relaxing the sound of the waves is," you said.
5253 I began to expound upon tidal effects,
5254 when you asked me to stop, looking somewhat perplexed,
5255 so I did not explain why the sunset turns red,
5256 and we watched the occurrence in silence instead.
5260 Felis catus, Your visual, olfactory,
5261 is your taxonomic nomenclature, and auditory senses,
5262 an endothermic quadruped, contribute to your hunting skills,
5263 carnivorous by nature? and natural defenses.
5265 I find myself intrigued A tail is quite essential
5266 by your subvocal oscillations, for your acrobatic talents,
5267 a singular development you would not be so agile,
5268 of cat communications, if you lacked its counterbalance,
5269 that obviates your basic and when not being utilized,
5270 hedonistic predilection, to aid in locomotion,
5271 for a rhythmic stroking of your fur it often serves to illustrate,
5272 to demonstrate affection. the state of your emotion.
5274 Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display,
5275 connote a fairly well developed cognitive array,
5276 and though you are not sentient, Spot,
5277 and do not comprehend, I nonetheless consider you
5278 a true and valued friend.
5282 There is no secret to excel in playing the shakuhachi.
5283 Blow not intensely, but from your heart.
5284 Although technique is secondary, it helps to express your true self.
5285 If we are natural, we make fine sound.
5286 If we have an open mind, our sound will be mellow.
5287 If we have right attitudes toward life,
5288 our music will be acceptable to everyone.
5289 Take care of your sound as you would care for yourself.
5292 You can't save money by spending it. Beware claims to the contrary.
5295 If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.
5296 This is true because the mind is the governing aspect of human life.
5297 If the river flows clearly and cleanly through the proper channel,
5298 all will be well along its banks.
5300 The Integral Way depends on decreasing, not increasing:
5301 To correct your mind, rely on not-doing.
5302 Decrease thinking and clinging to complications;
5303 keep your mind detached and whole.
5304 Eliminate mental muddiness and obscurity;
5305 keep your mind crystal clear.
5306 Avoid daydreaming and allow your pure original insight to emerge.
5307 Quiet your emotions and abide in serenity.
5308 Don't go crazy with the worship of idols, images, and ideas;
5309 this is like putting a new head on top of the head you already have.
5311 Remember: if you can cease all restless activity,
5312 your integral nature will appear.
5314 -- Hua Hu Ching -- 45
5316 Dualistic thinking is a sickness.
5317 Religion is a distortion.
5318 Materialism is cruel.
5319 Blind spirituality is unreal.
5321 Chanting is no more holy than listening to the
5322 murmur of a stream, counting prayer beads no more
5323 sacred than simply breathing, religious robes no
5324 more spiritual than work clothes.
5326 If you wish to attain oneness with the Tao, don't get
5327 caught up in spiritual superficialities.
5328 Instead, live a quiet and simple life, free of ideas and
5330 Find contentment in the practice of undiscriminating
5331 virtue, the only true power.
5332 Giving to others selflessly and anonymously, radiating
5333 light throughout the world and illuminating your
5334 own darkness, your virtue becomes a sanctuary for
5335 yourself and all beings.
5337 This is what is meant by embodying the Tao.
5339 -- Hua Hu Ching -- 47
5341 ________________ _______________
5346 | ___\ \| | / / \____________ \ \
5351 | | __ | | (o-) _ | |
5352 | __\ (_o) | / \ | |
5353 | | | Heh Heh Heh / ) ) | |
5354 \ || \ / Huh Huh Huh / ) / | |
5355 | |__ \ / \ |___ - | |
5356 | | (*___\ / \ *' | |
5357 | | _ | / \ |____ | |
5358 | | //_______| ####\ | |
5359 | / |_|_|_|___/\ ------ |_/
5361 | _----_______/ \_____ |
5363 |_____/ \__________|
5365 "Beavis and Butthead are catching up in the poles."
5366 "Yeah, our poles are rising."
5368 The chief cause of problems is solutions. -- Eric Severeid
5370 [CND, 12/15/93] A women trafficking gang, consisting of 69 members, was
5371 rounded up by the Inner Mongolia police, the Inner Mongolian Daily said.
5372 The gang, operating in several nearby provinces, enticed a total of 200
5373 unemployed women to make the journey to Inner Mongolia with the promise
5374 of good jobs and shelter. The women, ranging from 15 to 41, then were sold
5375 as wives or servants to local peasants who had difficulties in finding
5379 A genuine ASCII stereogram!
5380 Here's an ASCII single image random dot stereogram for your enjoyment. To
5381 get the 3d effect, you need to diverge (unfocus) your eyes such that two
5382 adjacent letters in the same row come together. To help you focus, try to
5383 make the two capital O's at the top look like three. Once you've done that,
5384 the rest of the image should jump out of the screen at you!
5386 n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n
5387 f f f f f f f f f f f f f f
5388 e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
5389 a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
5390 a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
5391 r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
5392 r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
5394 Try moving your head back from the screen and moving it about a bit
5395 once you have focused on the image to increase the stereo effect even
5399 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5400 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5401 . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5402 . . . . . . . . . . .
5418 . . . . . . . . . . .
5419 . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5420 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5421 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5423 The following a 3-d Maze (3x4) consisting of the following objects:
5424 circle, square, asterisk, hour-glass, triangle, and a square with two lines
5425 in it. The rules are as follows: You can 'warp' from one part of the maze to
5426 another by matching similar objects. Each 'warp' counts as one move. You
5427 can also travel along the lines, if there is a line. This also counts as one
5428 move. (I got the idea of this from a GAMES magazine I read a LONG time ago)
5429 Try to go from "START" to "END" in the least amount of moves. I would give
5430 out a prize to somebody, if I could think of one(that doesn't cost anything,
5431 of course!). (Take this as a first maze...I didn't plan it out, and it's not
5432 very difficult.) I would suggest that people that have worked with
5433 stereograms EXTENSIVELY try this, as it is hard to move your eyes around and
5434 still keep focused on the 3-D image. E-mail me the number of moves it took
5435 you and the path you followed (e.g. 6 Sqauare -warp- Asterisk Circle...etc.),
5436 I'll post the list of people that reply to it within the next week and got
5437 the lowest number of moves. Good luck!!
5439 [qL|[NYcUCdH>,(&[qL|[NYcUCdH>,(&[qL|[NYcUCdH>,(&[qL|[NYcUCdH>,(&[qL|[NYcUCdH>,(
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5441 rwA#nbud>*Dj+X<TrwA#nbud>*Dj+X<TrwA#nbud>*Dj+X<TrwA#nbud>*Dj+X<TrwA#nbud>*Dj+X<
5442 $*-Xj+V&%Ui\START*-Xj+V&%UiSTART;*-Xj+V&%UiSTART;*-Xj+V&%UiSTART;*-Xj+V&%Uieg%(
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5444 WL(-W->WTPh:UQ:oWL(-W->WT:UQ:oWL(-eBW->WT:UQ:oW-YoeBW->WT:UQ:oW-YBW|H->WT:UQ:oW
5445 cTV:wpR6GN\ne![|cTV:wpR6Gn<e![|cT:YQwpR6Gn<e![T4YH\QwpR6Gn<e!4YH\QQpR6GHln<e!4Y
5446 ycYu]kP@LbRF<D?`ycYu]kP@LF4<D?`ycuc]kP@LF4<D?ybcu]W]kP@LF4<D?yb]KW]k@':LF4<D?yb
5447 H6hhYb"6^EwE*rEoH6hhYb"6^Ea*rEoH6h]Yb"6^Ea*ro<Hh"]bD$"6^Ea*ro<H]DbD$6zP^Ea*ro<H
5448 zp@.Gx,Tu(Q!.hKbzp@.Gx,Tu!t.hKbzp.8?Gx,Tu!tKbbzp.8?xcy,Tu!tKbp.8?Xxy,TuB&!tKbp.
5449 =V\idlNwT]T;S"1(=V\idlNwT;S"1(=V\ic|dlNwT;1(=V\ic|dlN<fwT;1(=V\iclN;h<fwT;1(=V\
5450 1<Q)K|.BH?n:K-gc1<Q)K|.BH?n:K-gc1<Q)K|.BH?n:K-gc1<Q)K|.BH?n:K-gc1Q)5K|.BH?n:K-g
5451 lR,gO$66yAP&W<?>lR,gO$66yAP&W<?>lR,gO$66yAP&W<?>lR,gO$66yAP&W<?>l,gMO$66yAP&W<?
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5454 b*cB2RFU5R+{3myvb*cB2RFU5R+{3myvb*cB2RFU5R+{3myvb*cB2RFU5R+{3myvbcBi2RFU5R+{3my
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5457 wn(odb-='HALW=^Wwn(odb-='LW:=^Ww(o?db-='LW=^W/(o?fb-=1T'LW=^Wop?fb-=1')OLW=^Wop
5458 S<>"\$f";MP\$4?hS<>"\$f";\$S4?hS>"!\$f";\$4?hh>"!q$f"F*;\$4?h"v!q$f"*;]j\$4?h"v
5459 =/twTn#S9ikXS%`y=/twTn#S9iS%[`y/t2nwTn#S9i[`y't2n/Tn#\\S9i[`y2Yn/Tn#\S?I9i[`y2Y
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5461 Sy<6*yAW|!l;tZ]nSy<6*yAW|!l;t]n'Sy<6*yAW|!l;t]nSy+<6*yAW|!l;t]nSy<6X*yAW|!l;t]n
5462 &)v;_!*qY*L)-IQd&)v;_!*qY*L)-Qd5&)v;_!*qY*L)-Qd&)Bv;_!*qY*L)-Qd&)v;6_!*qY*L)-Qd
5463 t?K!lfksx)kzAp2Wt?K!lfksx)kzA2W:t?K!lfksx)kzA2Wt?%K!lfksx)kzA2Wt?K!Llfksx)kzA2W
5464 UAsuytGXa{(cnug]UAsuytGXa{(cng](UAsuytGXa{(cng]UAzsuytGXa{(cng]UAsuXytGXa{(cng]
5465 |Is@[A-F0)KmcN>o|Is@[A-F0)Kmc>o#|Is@[A-F0)Kmc>o|Ins@[A-F0)Kmc>o|Is@>[A-F0)Kmc>o
5466 NHnuKxzh"2zQ=hq+NHnuKxzh"2zQ=hNmhHnuKxzh"2zQ=hNHn85uKxzh"2zQNHn85uKxzh".I2zQNHn
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5468 zE"A{TfCX?9H9e;:zE"A{TfCX?9H;8:z"mA{TfCX?9H;8z="mATRwfCX?9H;="m{TRwbCX?zt9H;="m
5469 OI5{{UQa5D.Vo/rVOI5{{UQa5D./@rOoI{D{UQa5D./@rotI{DU.ZQa5D./@tI{pU.ZNa5D85./@tI{
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5471 Yo{BgD`f\`$JRtu'Yo{BgD`f\JRtu'Yo{BgDis`f\JRtu'YBg3#Dis`f\JRtYBg3#Dis`f\ygJRtYBg
5472 80[vV7`fchW6A#'x80[vV7`fchW6A'x-80[vV7`fchW6A'x80r[vV7`fchW6A'x80r[vV7`fchW6A'x
5473 O"<a1OA^o=:]aa=(O"<a1OA^o=:]a=([O"<a1OA^o=:]a=(O"Z<a1OA^o=:]a=(O"Z<a1OA^o=:]a=(
5474 V+{S>As"N5\Ul_^TV+{S>As"N5\Ul^TkV+{S>As"N5\Ul^TV+;{S>As"N5\Ul^TV+;{S>As"N5\Ul^T
5475 /U!sJ3m%/qr?4m!I/U!sJ3m%/qr?4!IB/U!sJ3m%/qr?4!I/Uw!sJ3m%/qr?4!I/Uw!sJ3m%/qr?4!I
5476 yh6Sd(VC3g&>\H<.yh6Sd(VC3g&>\<.Vyh6Sd(VC3g&>\<.yhs6Sd(VC3g&>\<.yhs6Sd(VC3g&>\<.
5477 ;*<*[r!OIx.k(ZB^;*<*[r!OIk(ZB^;*<*[rkw!OIk(ZB^<*[i^rkw!OIk(Z<*[i^rkw!OI]Fk(Z<*[
5478 9xGH.E=u,tZXVx!<9xGH.E=u,tZx!<9xGH;W.E=u,tZx9x'GHW.TzE=u,tZx9xHW.TzE=.|u,tZx9xH
5479 \Hu"\@V#8"mLukmM\Hu"\@V#8"mLuM\Hs;u"\@V#8"mM\PHs;u\@DV#8"mM\PHs;\@DECV#8"mM\PHs
5480 +TnXOmPMQKTVwlSV+TnXOmPMQKTVwV+TJInXOmPMQKTV+@TJInOmmPMQKTV+@TJIOmmizPMQKTV+@TJ
5481 JaXq{$*|_pP|-`[wJaXq{$*|_pP`[wJaXqS*{$*|_pP`Ja,Xq*{K3$*|_pP`Jaq*{K3$*g.|_pP`Jaq
5482 A7_qF(|hvg5>t;!nA7_qF(|hv>t;!nA7_qF(f"|hv>t;!n_qFIf(f"|hv>t;_qFIf(f"|hvY*>t;_qF
5483 Clzp3ggIZF7:E.cqClzp3ggIZF7:E.cqClzp3ggIZF7:E.cqClzp3ggIZF7:E.cqClzp3ggIZF7:E.c
5484 UENDu6z[k<anY>&JUENDu6z[k<anY>&JUENDu6z[k<anY>&JUENDu6z[k<anY>&JEND>u6z[k<anY>&
5485 h-Q!-z98>A%65jWBh-Q!-z98>A%65jWBh-Q!-z98>A%65jWBh-Q!-z98>A%65jWBh-Q!-z98>A%65jW
5486 #7ch;MFM9k0{T2."#7ch;MFM9k0{T2."#7ch;MFM9k0{T2."#7ch;MFM9k0{T2."#7ch;MFM9k0{T2.
5487 IMfNj5t*M,K`xKz9IMfNj5t*M,K`xKz9IMfNj5t*M,K`xKz9IMfNj5t*M,K`xKz9IMfNj5t*M,K`xKz
5491 ## # # # # ## #### #
5492 ## # # # #### ######## # ##
5494 ### ## # ## # ### ### ## ##
5495 # #### ### # # # ## # # # # ###
5496 ## ############# # # # ## ###
5497 # # # # ## ### ## ###
5498 # # ## # ## ### # ###
5500 # #### # ## #### ###
5501 ##### # # ## # # # ##### #
5502 # # # # # # ## # ##### #
5506 # ## # # ## ##### ##
5507 ###### # # # # ### ###
5508 ## # # # # ###### ##
5509 ## # ##### # ##### ### ## ##
5510 # ## ## ## # ## ## # ### ####
5511 ### #### # # #### # # ########
5512 ##### # ## ### # ### #
5513 #### ## # ### #### ##
5518 # # # ##################
5520 ### # # ## #### ## ##
5523 ## # ## # ## ## #####
5524 # ### ## # ## #### ## # ###
5525 ## ##### # ######### # ####
5547 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5548 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"" ""$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5549 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5550 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" " " o "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5551 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ " o "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5552 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ o o "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5553 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o " o"$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5554 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" " $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5555 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" " o " " "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5556 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o " "o o $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5557 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ o" " o o $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5558 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ "$$ " o " " $$ "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5559 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$ o o " o " $$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5560 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o$$ o o o $$$ "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5561 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o $$$ " o o " " $$$ " "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5562 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o$$$$ " o $$$$ "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5563 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ " $$$$ " oo$$$$$$$oooo $$$$" " $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5564 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" " $$$$$o """ o o"""o$$$$" " ""$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5565 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ " ooooo$$$$$$$$oo o o oo$$$$$$$ooooo o o $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5566 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$o $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5567 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ o$$$"" " $ ""$$$$$$$$" ""$$$$$$$$"" " """"$$o" "$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5568 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$oo$" " $o $"$$$$oo " o$$$$" o$o " ""$oo"$$$$$$$$$$$$
5569 $$$$$$$$$$$$$ o" " o " $$" o "" o o " o o$o " o "" "$$$$$$$$$$$
5570 $$$$$$$$$$$$" $ " " $$ "$$$$$$$$ $$ o o o $ ""$$$$$$$$$$
5571 $$$$$$$$$$$" o o o o o$$ "$$$$$$ o $$ o o o $$$$$$$$$
5572 $$$$$$$$$$ o $ " $$oo "$$$$$$" oo$$ $ $$$$$$$$
5573 $$$$$$$$$ " o " "$ $$$$$$ "$" " " " o $$$$$$$
5574 $$$$$$$$ " " " " o "o$$$$$$o" o " o $$$$$$
5575 $$$$$$$" " o " o $$$$$$$$$o " o o " " o $$$$$
5576 $$$$$"o " o o o " "$$$$" ""$$$oo o " " $$$$
5577 $$$$"o o " $ o " oo$$$$"o o"$$$$oo o " o "$$
5578 $$$$ " $ o oo$o$$"$" o o """$$$oooo "" o " o $$
5579 $$$$$ " " o " o o o o o o o " " " o$$$
5580 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5581 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5587 ___\ \ \ /\___/___ \
5589 ____/ /_______/ \ / _\/_____
5591 __/ / \ \ / / / / _\__
5592 / / / \_______\/ / / / / /\
5593 /_/___/___________________/ /_______/ /___/ \
5594 \ \ \ ___________ \ \ \ \ \ /
5595 \_\ \ / /\ \ \ \ \___\/
5597 \__/ / \ \ \_______\/
5608 "$mmmmm m$" mmmmmmm$"
5610 mmmmmmm$$$$$$$$$"mmmm
5611 mmm$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ m$$$$m " m "
5612 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$"$$$
5613 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm $$$$$$$$$$
5614 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$""" m
5615 "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$ " "
5616 """""""$$$$$$$$$$$m """"
5617 mmmmmmmm" m$ "$mmmmm
5618 $$"""""" "$ """"""$$
5626 _ _ _ _ _ _ _---| | _---| \ ` ' /
5627 ]-I-I-I-I-[ ---| | ---| |. |
5628 \ ` '_/ | / \ | | /^\|
5629 [*] __| ^ / ^ \ ^ | |*||
5630 |__ ,| / \ / `\ / \ | ===|
5631 ___| ___ ,|__ / /=_=_=_=\ \ |, _|
5632 I_I__I_I__I_I (====(_________)___|_|____|____
5633 \-\--|-|--/-/ | I [ ]__I I_I__|____I_I_|
5634 |[] '| | [] |`__ . [ \-\--|-|--/-/
5635 |. | |' |___|_____I___|___I___|---------|
5636 / \| [] .|_|-|_|-|-|_|-|_|-|_|-| [] [] |
5637 <===> | .|-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-| | / \
5638 ] []|` [] ||.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.||- <===>
5639 ] []| ` | |/////////\\\\\\\\\\.||__. | |[] [
5640 <===> ' ||||| | | | ||||.|| [] <===>
5641 \T/ | |-- ||||| | O | O | ||||.|| . |' \T/
5642 | . _||||| | | | ||||.|| | | |
5643 ../|' v . | .|||||/____|____\|||| /|. . | . ./
5644 .|//\............/...........\........../../\\\
5652 ___---___---_________________________________
5653 =============================================
5655 |-------------------------------------------
5656 |-___-----___-----___-----___-----___-----__
5657 / _ \===/ _ \ / _ \===/ _ \ / _ \===/ _
5658 ( (.\ oOo /.) ) ( (.\ oOo /.) ) ( (.\ oOo /.
5659 \__/=====\__/ \__/=====\__/ \__/=====\_
5660 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5661 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5662 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5663 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5664 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5665 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5666 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5667 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5668 ||||||| ||||||| |||||||
5669 (oOoOo) (oOoOo) (oOoOo)
5670 J%%%%%L J%%%%%L J%%%%%L
5671 ZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZ
5672 ==========================================
5673 __|_________________________________________
5676 ____----------- _____
5677 \~~~~~~~~~~/~_--~~~------~~~~~(__) \
5680 / ___ ~~--[""] | __/__|__-------'_
5681 > /~` \ |-. `\~~.~~~~~ _ ~ - _
5682 ~| ||\% | | ~ ._ ~ _ ~ ._
5683 `_//|_% \ | ~ . ~-_ /\
5684 `--__ | _-____ /\ ~-_ \/.
5685 ~--_ / ,/ -~-_ \ \/ _______---~/
5686 ~~-/._< \ \`~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ##--~/
5687 \ ) |`------##---~~~~-~ ) )
5723 oooo$$$$$$$$$$$$oooo
5724 oo$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$o
5725 oo$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$o o$ $$ o$
5726 o $ oo o$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$o $$ $$ $$o$
5727 oo $ $ "$ o$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$o $$$o$$o$
5728 "$$$$$$o$ o$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$o $$$$$$$$
5729 $$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5730 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ """$$$
5731 "$$$""""$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ "$$$
5732 $$$ o$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ "$$$o
5733 o$$" $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$o
5734 $$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" "$$$$$$ooooo$$$$o
5735 o$$$oooo$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ o$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
5736 $$$$$$$$"$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$""""""""
5737 """" $$$$ "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$" o$$$
5738 "$$$o """$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"$$" $$$
5739 $$$o "$$""$$$$$$"""" o$$$
5741 "$$$$o o$$$$$$o"$$$$o o$$$$
5742 "$$$$$oo ""$$$$o$$$$$o o$$$$""
5743 ""$$$$$oooo "$$$o$$$$$$$$$"""
5744 ""$$$$$$$oo $$$$$$$$$$
5758 \._____.-~\ . ~\. ./
5762 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5766 ,agd888b,_ "Y8, ___`""Ybga,
5767 ,gdP""88888888baa,.""8b "888g,
5768 ,dP" ]888888888P' "Y `888Yb,
5769 ,dP" ,88888888P" db, "8P""Yb,
5770 ,8" ,888888888b, d8888a "8,
5771 ,8' d88888888888,88P"' a, `8,
5772 ,8' 88888888888888PP" "" `8,
5773 d' I88888888888P" `b
5779 `8, ,d8888888baaa ,8'
5780 `8, 888888888888' ,8'
5781 `8a "8888888888I a8'
5782 `Yba `Y8888888P' adP'
5784 `"Yba, d8888P" ,adP"' Normand Veilleux
5785 `"Y8baa, ,d888P,ad8P"' from
5786 ``""YYba8888P""'' Spaceship Earth
5789 =========================================================================
5790 ________________ _______________ _______________
5791 /_______________/\ /_______________\ /\______________\
5792 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \ ||||||||||||||||| / ////////////////
5793 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/ ||||||||||||||||| / ////////////////
5794 \\\\\\_______/\ ||||||_______\ / //////_____\
5795 \\\\\\\\\\\\\ \ |||||||||||||| / /////////////
5796 \\\\\\\\\\\\\/____ |||||||||||||| / /////////////
5797 \\\\\___________/\ ||||| / ////
5798 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \ ||||| / ////
5799 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/ ||||| \////
5801 =========================================================================
5803 88 d8'd8' 88 88 ad88888ba ,adba, ,d8
5804 88 d8'd8' 88 88 d8" 8 8 "8b 8I I8 ,d8"
5805 88 "" "" aa88aaa88aa Y8, 8 8 "fbdP' ,d8"
5806 88 ""88"""88"" `Y8a8a8a, ,d8"
5807 88 aa88aaa88aa `"8"8"8b, ,d8"
5808 "" ""88"""88"" 8 8 `8b ,d8" ,adba,
5809 aa 88 88 Y8a 8 8 a8P ,d8" 8I I8
5810 88 88 88 "Y88888P" 8" "fbdP'
5831 ** * ********* * ***
5832 ***** **********************
5833 ******** *************** ****
5834 ****** ***************** ** **
5835 ** ******************* *** ********
5836 ******************** *** *******
5837 ********************* *** ** ****
5838 ********* * *********************** *** ****
5839 ********** ************************ **** ** ***
5840 **** *********************** * ****
5841 ************** ****** * *** * **
5842 *********** ** **** * *** * ** ********** *
5843 ************* ***** ***** ** * ** ****** *
5844 * ************* **** ******* *** **
5845 ************** **************** *********** **
5846 ****** ******************************* **
5847 ********************************* **
5848 ******************************** ** **
5849 ******************************* ** *********
5850 **** *************************** *** *****
5851 ***** * *** ******************** **
5852 ***** * ***************** ** ******
5853 **** ********************* * *****
5854 ***** ****************** **
5855 **** **************** * *****
5856 * ***************** ** ******
5857 ** ************** ** **
5859 *** ************* **
5860 * *** *********************
5861 ****** ******* * *** ***
5863 ************ ********
5864 ********************** * **********
5865 ************************* ***********
5866 ************************** ***********
5867 ************************* ***********
5868 ************************ **********
5869 ********************* *********
5870 **************** ***
5880 \. \. "~" ./ /c-..,__
5881 ^r- .._ .- .-" `- . ~"--.
5885 ,.__.--._ _j \ ~ . ; |
5886 ( ~"-._~"^._\ ^. ^._ I . l
5887 "-._ ___ ~"-,_7 .Z-._ 7" Y ; \ _
5888 /" "~-(r r _/_--._~-/ / /,.--^-._ / Y
5889 "-._ '"~~~>-._~]>--^---./____,.^~ ^.^ !
5892 ~-._~~~---._,____..--- \
5899 / `-.____/ |||||||/`-.____________
5900 \-'_ \-' ||||||||| `-._
5901 -- `-. -/||||||||\ `` -`.
5902 |\ /||||||\ \_ | `\\
5903 | \ \_______...-//|||\|________...---'\ \ \\
5904 | \ \ || | \ ``-.__--. | \ | ``-.__--.
5905 | |\ \ / | |\ \ ``---'/ / | | ``---'
5906 _/ / _| ) __/_/ / _| ) __/ / _| |
5907 /,__/ /,__/ /,_/,__/_/,__/ /,__/ /,__/ tbk
5912 o o o o o o o o "o "$" "
5918 oo$$$oo " " $ $o $ " o
5919 o $$"$$$$$o oo$$$$$$$$oo o"oo"oo o
5920 o$$"$$o$$$$$$"$o$o$o$o$o$$o "o$ "o $ "o
5921 $$"$o$$o"$"$$$o$$o$o$o$o$$$o$$$o $ $ $" o
5922 $$"$o$o$"$"$"$o$o$o$o$o$o$$$o$o$"o "o"oo"
5923 " "$o$$o$o"$"$"$$"$o$o$o$o$o"$"$o"$"$o "o o"
5924 $o$o$o$"$"$$o$"$$$$o$o$o$"$$o$"$"$oo $
5925 "o$o"$"$$o$o$"$"$"$o$o"$$o$o$"$"$"$
5926 $"$$o$o$o$"$"$"$$$$$o$o$o"$"$"$o$
5927 o "$o$o$o$o$"$"$o$o"$o$$o$"$"$"$o$
5928 $o "o$o$o"$"$"$o$"$$o$o$"$"$"$$o"
5929 $$ $$$$$$$$$"$o$$o$o$o$$"$"$o"$$
5930 $" $$$$$$$o$"$$o$o$o$o$"$"$"$$o
5931 o o$$$$$$$o"$o$o$"$$o"$"$"$"o$"
5932 oo$$$$$$$o$"$o$o$"$o$"$"$"$"$
5933 $$$$$$$$$$o$"$o$o$"$o$"$"$$""
5934 $$o$$$$$o$o"$$o$o$"$o$"$$"
5935 o $$o$$$"o$o$"$o$o$"$o$"$o$
5936 $$$"$o"$$o$o$$"$$o$$o"
5939 o o o $"$$$"$$"$oo"$o$o$$$o
5940 o o $$$o$$"$$"$$$$$o$$o"$o$
5941 " o$$o$"$"$$$$o$"o$o$"$"$$
5942 " " $$""o$$$$"$o$"$$$$$$$$$$"" "
5943 o ooo$$"o$$$"$$"$$"$$$$$$$$""
5944 o o$o$"$$"" $" $o$o$o$
5946 "o "o" " " $ "$$$$"$$ o o$$$$"o o "o "o "o
5947 " " o " "o" """o""$$$$$$o o $$o$ " " "o "o o
5948 " " " " " " $$" $" " " o
5949 o""""$""""" oo$$ $$ o " "
5952 o """""""" "o "o o"""" " "
5954 " "$ooooooooooooooo o " "
5959 Aw mom, you act like I'm not even wearing a bungie cord! -- Calvin
5965 YES ============================= NO
5966 +-----------|| Does the Darn Thing work? ||-----------+
5967 | ============================= |
5969 +----------+ +---------+ +---------+
5970 | Don't | NO | Does | +-------+ YES | Did you |
5971 | mess | +---| anyone |<------| YOU |<---------| mess |
5972 | with it! | | | know? | | MORON | | with it |
5973 +----------+ | +---------+ +-------+ +---------+
5975 | +------+ +-----------+ |
5977 | | IT | +--------+ +-----------+
5978 | +------+ | YOU | YES | WILL THEY |
5979 | | +------->| POOR |<------------| CATCH YOU?|
5980 | | | |BASTARD!| +-----------+
5981 | | | |________| | NO
5984 | | | +---------------+ +-----------+
5985 | | | NO | CAN YOU BLAME | |DESTROY THE|
5986 | | +------| SOMEONE ELSE? | | EVIDENCE |
5987 | | +---------------+ +-----------+
5990 | | ============================ |
5991 | +---->|| N O ||<---------+
5992 +------------>|| P R O B L E M ||
5993 ============================
6001 ,ad8"" ,ad8"" 8"Y8a, "Y8a,
6002 ,ad8"" ,ad8"" 8 "Y8a, "Y8a,
6003 ,ad8"" ,ad8"" 8 "Y8a, "Y8a,
6004 ,gPPR8, ,ad8"" ,ad88a, "Y8a, "Y8a,
6005 dP' `Yb ,ad8"" ,ad8"" "Y8a, ,ad8"" ,ad8"8
6006 8) (8,ad8"" ,ad8"" Y888"" ,ad8"" 8
6007 Yb d8P" ,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,ad8"" 8
6008 "8ggg8" ,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,8
6009 ,gPPR8, ,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,ad8""
6010 dP' `Yb ,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,ad8""
6011 8) (8,ad8"" ,ad8"" ,ad8""
6012 Yb d8P" ,ad8"" ,ad8""
6013 "8ggg8" ,ad8"" ,ad8""
6020 .... NO! ... ... MNO! ...
6021 ..... MNO!! ...................... MNNOO! ...
6022 ..... MMNO! ......................... MNNOO!! .
6023 .... MNOONNOO! MMMMMMMMMMPPPOII! MNNO!!!! .
6024 ... !O! NNO! MMMMMMMMMMMMMPPPOOOII!! NO! ....
6025 ...... ! MMMMMMMMMMMMMPPPPOOOOIII! ! ...
6026 ........ MMMMMMMMMMMMPPPPPOOOOOOII!! .....
6027 ........ MMMMMOOOOOOPPPPPPPPOOOOMII! ...
6028 ....... MMMMM.. OPPMMP .,OMI! ....
6029 ...... MMMM:: o.,OPMP,.o ::I!! ...
6030 .... NNM:::.,,OOPM!P,.::::!! ....
6031 .. MMNNNNNOOOOPMO!!IIPPO!!O! .....
6032 ... MMMMMNNNNOO:!!:!!IPPPPOO! ....
6033 .. MMMMMNNOOMMNNIIIPPPOO!! ......
6034 ...... MMMONNMMNNNIIIOO!..........
6035 ....... MN MOMMMNNNIIIIIO! OO ..........
6036 ......... MNO! IiiiiiiiiiiiI OOOO ...........
6037 ...... NNN.MNO! . O!!!!!!!!!O . OONO NO! ........
6038 .... MNNNNNO! ...OOOOOOOOOOO . MMNNON!........
6039 ...... MNNNNO! .. PPPPPPPPP .. MMNON!........
6040 ...... OO! ................. ON! .......
6041 ................................
6045 --/- ___ / \/ / / / \
6055 // / / // / /\ /-_-/\//-__-
6056 / / // / \__// / / / //
6057 // / / // / // / // /
6058 /// // / / / // / //
6061 /// / / / // // / // //
6063 /// / // / / // / / / /
6095 /.../###/______________\ \###\
6096 /........................\ \###\
6097 /..........................\ \###\
6098 ----------------------------- \###/
6100 \_________________________________/
6103 ___. .. . _ .. . ___. .__ . . _ . . __ __ _ __ _ . .___
6104 | | ||\||- ||\| | | ||_)|\| | ||\| | ||_)| ||_) | || | |
6105 ` `-`` ``- `` ` ``` ` `-`` \` ` `-`` ` ``` `-`` \`-`| `-``-` `
6133 ;;;;: ==;; :==== :+++=;; ::;=i===+: :=;;=+: ,,,,:==+;
6134 =tt;;: i+; ++++ :ii=: :::i++= ==;;+: :::=;+; ,
6135 :; iIt=: ;t+; ii=;::;+;=+; +;=; ;i+i, ==;=+; :,;;;i : ,
6136 :: :tIi: +i+ =+::=;;,;;;+; +;=; :=i==+;,:,;=;;+= ::;=;++ : ;
6137 ,i; iIt: t+= :+=,,,,::: ;,+;=;;: ;:,,;==;+=;+= ::;;=i; : ;ii
6138 RYi +Yt: ++i :i;,::==;; ;:i;=;;: ======+=i=++ :;=tYY: : :tt
6139 VXY= =Yi; :t=+ it==+It;; ;:+:=;:: :,;;=:=+==+ :;tYVY :: =Iii
6140 tVYt ;Yt, i+= +t+;=iI,; ;:;:;;:= :i :=;+ :;i+tt : :Iti
6141 iYY: :Yi, :i+: :t+;++i:; ;,;,;;;= :t +=+ ;i+ii :: =Y+
6142 =YY= ;Vi I++ :++=;==;;; +,=,,,,+ ;i;::;it, :i+t=;;: +I+
6143 IX+ =V; +i+=;;==;::,:::,,t,+,,,,;;iiii+iIiX=:=+ii;:;: iI+
6144 iXi =VItYIi=+======;;::;;ii;:,,,,,;iittiYV+XXttiit+, Yt
6145 IVYXYYIYi+;;;;;;;;;;;;;+it+:::::::=====+IttIItiitMBttti
6146 +tVVVttti+;::;;======+YBBVVVVXRVti+++==+IXIiYi+iRWWi+i=
6147 +=ttYVIi= ....,,,,+iIRWWWWWWWMBBRYI+....... +YMBYX==++
6148 ==+t: .;;===::,,:,,;=iIIItIIt=:,,:::===iii=;.,iXY+i;i
6149 t;+.IIY+++iii++;===:==++++I,:;;:,:=iiVXIBVRt+;,.IXY;t
6150 ii+, =itIItY==+tt+=+++;=ti;=;+M+i=;;=;=i+=it+tVti+==;.itI= +=ii
6151 i:===iIttIii+,:,, ,,:+++;t=t;V++;=;=;:,, ,,:;+IYii+==;.+Y+Ii===:i
6152 ti iii=i;;,, ;i: =i ,;.i=t=I=;Ri=, ,; ,it: ,:.,==;;;i+=YYttt,
6153 iit :Y++IIIIi+;;,,,,,,:;:i+;I=i;=II=;:;;;;;;;;;+++tIt+ii;iII; iYi=
6154 t= iV+tYYYVYVt===;;;===ii+=ti+=+=iii+==+;=+=IYVXRitYYItYXtVt= :+=
6155 Yi XX+iYYYVYR+i+++===;tIti=i+ttit;;=+====+;=IRVRRXtIIYM+YYI+ ++=I
6156 tt==Y+iYYYVYRI+++++=+IIti+++tt+=iYI+;;==+=+ttMMMRBXiiYi=+YYIt=;;
6157 t+iY:;iYYYYXRYi+++++Yt+iIt=+iItVXYYtIXBXYYVRWWWBXIi++=+=X+ ;It
6158 ti;I iYYYIYYVVRI++++i+ti++=:,;;++IX+YWWWMBWWWXYYi+++=;t:;IItY
6159 tt:,+;YYYYYYYYX+++====:::;=:;;;::++iYRWWBYt+tt+==++==:=;:=+
6160 tYYYYIYYt++++=;=YYI+;,,BYBBYIi++iii+=+I+++++;=I
6161 +YYYYYYt+++==iYYII;ittitVBBXBI+++==+i++=+=;=:i
6162 +YYYIYt+++iBt=:,...:;;=++itXXI++==i++==;;ii:
6163 IYYYI=;+=iitI;,;.,=iitIiiI;++=+++===;=:I;
6164 YYYt==tittIi;+:::=+tItIBIt+=+i++==;+=;+
6165 iYYIIIttt+=;=::::::=++ti+++=i==;+i=:=
6166 tIYYIIIVi++;;:::=+;+IYt+=;;IVY+:,;
6167 ;,ttIYIY++ii;=;==Y+iVYt===YIi;;Ii
6168 ;=:,:=iI====;;;;:=;;+ii=+i+iIttIi
6169 :==+++,;=;::::::::=;=+t++==it+iti
6184 / / / /\ \ Pat \ \ \
6185 / / / / \ \ Taylor / \ \
6186 / / / / /\ \ \ / /\ \ \
6187 / / / / / /\ \ \ / / /\ \_\
6188 / / / / /_/ \ \_\ / / / \/_/
6189 / / / / \ \ / / / / / / __ __
6190 / / / / /\ \ \/ / / / / / /\_\ /\ \
6191 / / / / / /\ \/ / / / / / / / / \ \ \
6192 / / /_/ / / \ / / / / / / / /____\_\ \
6193 / / /__\/ / / / / / / / / / /__________\
6194 \/_______/ / / / / / / \/_____________/
6216 L;;PMMMbaa_ "d88ad8'
6218 ,V;;;;;;;;;;"Man,8b.
6219 gd;;;;;;;;;;;;;"Mb;Mb.
6220 gd;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;"Mb,
6221 d8b;;;;;;;;b;;;;;;;;;;;"b,
6222 7P"8ba;;;;;B;;;;;;;;;;;;"Na
6223 8" "8b;;a";;;;;;;;;;;;;lB.
6224 B "8b,d;;paaaaaaqaL;;;"B
6225 ,B P" """' ""Y8bmdMb
6242 '8 .adP""9a .d" d lb
6251 ,oood8888888888booo,
6282 $ oo 8' `""booooooob 8' ooo 8
6283 $ o$"$o ,P o 8 8 d8"""" 8 `8
6284 $' d$' d8 od do d8 d8 8 `8 8
6285 $' d$' dP 8' d8 d8' 8 8 `8 `b
6286 $' od$ dP ,8' d8' d8 8b 8 `"b 8b
6287 $' od' d"' od od 88 `8 "8 `8 `8,
6288 $ od' 8 8' `8 8b 8 8 "o `8,
6289 $oo"" 8b 8 `8o 8bo "8 8b 8b 8b
6290 " 8b 8' 8o $$$ "8 8 `b `"oo
6291 Yb `b `8"$$$" 8b 8b 8b $$o
6292 `8 `b 8o "b `$o$$$$"
6296 happiness is a state of mind
6297 more than anything else,
6298 but so is everything else.
6301 Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
6305 1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
6306 2) "You and what army?"
6307 3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop."
6309 For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
6312 I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
6313 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
6315 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
6317 The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but
6318 a steady left tail light. This means:
6320 (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to call
6321 the problem to the driver's attention.
6322 (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
6323 (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
6324 (d) the driver is from out of town.
6327 (The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
6328 countries to signal turns.)
6332 1. Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
6333 2. Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
6334 3. What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
6335 4. We won't need reservations.
6336 5. It's always sunny there this time of the year.
6337 6. Don't worry, it's not loaded.
6338 7. They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
6340 Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
6341 but it's very funny--Did you ever try buying them without money?
6344 Lactomangulation, n.:
6345 Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
6346 that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
6347 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
6349 If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
6352 Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
6354 Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
6356 The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
6357 human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of
6358 ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that
6359 we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction,
6360 have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of
6361 dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and
6362 of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the
6363 revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a
6367 "Krusty non-toxic Cologne
6368 'The smell of the big top'
6369 Warning: Use in a well ventilated area.
6370 May stain furniture.
6371 Prolonged use may cause chemical burns."
6374 a girlfriend is a bottle of wine,
6375 a wife is a wine bottle.
6377 The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
6378 Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
6379 to fit their views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
6380 be one of the facts that needs altering.
6381 -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
6383 In the beginning was The Plan
6384 And then came The Assumptions
6385 And the Assumptions were without form
6386 And The Plan was completely without substance
6387 And the darkness was upon the face of the workers.
6388 And they spoke amongst themselves, saying
6389 "It is a crock of sh*t, and it stinketh."
6390 And the workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth,
6391 "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
6392 And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them,
6393 "It is a container of excrement and it is very stong
6394 Such that none may abide by it."
6395 And the Managers went unto the Directors and sayeth,
6396 "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
6397 And the Directors spoke amongst themselves, saying one to another,
6398 "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
6399 And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them,
6400 "It promotes growth and is very powerful."
6401 And the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto Him,
6402 "This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency
6403 Of this Company, and these Areas in particular."
6404 And the President looked upon The Plan,
6405 And saw that it was good, and The Plan became Policy.
6406 This is how sh*t happens.
6408 be unafraid to think fully on a small matter. -- fred t. hamster
6410 The late Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma sect of the Tibetan Buddhist
6411 tradition, wrote one book on the evils of tobacco. He detailed a number of
6412 problems, both physical and spiritual, which would derive from the use of
6413 tobacco. Interestingly, he claims the origin of the plant to be a demoness
6414 who vowed to take rebirth as a plant to afflict humankind.
6417 be unafraid to walk across the water. -- fred t. hamster
6425 | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
6426 | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
6427 | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
6428 | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
6429 | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
6430 | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
6431 | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
6432 // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
6433 // ( ) / / \` \__ \\
6434 //-------------------------------------------------------------\\
6436 Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
6437 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
6438 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas... with the
6439 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
6440 -- H. S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
6442 dude, i have your tickets
6443 for the grateful briquettes
6444 on saturday the 20th.
6446 so get out your wallets
6447 i need the rental lease
6448 or be hit with mallets
6449 for my friend has no peace
6450 and i have no ballots.
6451 without which you get no tickets
6452 for my friend has no spigots
6453 disgorging money in hiccups
6454 in the land of honey and pickups.
6457 Some people imagine that only the person who physically carries out the
6458 killing is creating a negative karmic effect, and that the person who just
6459 gave the orders is not--or, if he is, then only a little. But you
6460 should know that the same karmic result comes to everyone involved,
6461 including even anyone who just felt pleased about it--and therefore how
6462 much more so the person who actually ordered that the killing be carried
6463 out. Each person gets the whole karmic result of killing one animal. It
6464 is not as if one act of killing could be divided up among many people.
6466 From the Nying-ma _kunzang lama'i shelung_ (The Words of My Perfect Teacher)
6467 written by Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887), (Padmakara translation group,
6468 trans., New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994, 104.)
6470 did you hear about the professor that got some human lips grafted onto his
6471 anus? then when his students were kissing butt, they could get some response.
6472 and he can also now wear a hat on his ass and sit on his head, and no one
6473 knows the difference...
6476 Software undergoes alpha testing as a first step in getting user
6477 feedback. Alpha is Latin for "doesn't work."
6480 Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it's released. Beta is
6481 Latin for "still doesn't work."
6484 Instrument of torture. The first computer was invented by Roger
6485 "Duffy" Billingsly, a British scientist. In a plot to overthrow Adolf
6486 Hitler, Duffy disguised himself as a German ally and offered his
6487 invention as a gift to the surly dictator. The plot worked. On April
6488 8, 1945, Adolf became so enraged at the "Incompatible File Format"
6489 error message that he shot himself. The war ended soon after Hitler's
6490 death, and Duffy began working for IBM.
6493 Central propulsion unit. The CPU is the computer's engine. It
6494 consists of a hard drive, an interface card and a tiny spinning wheel
6495 that's powered by a running rodent--a gerbil if the machine is a 286,
6496 a ferret if it's a 386 and a ferret on speed if it's a 486.
6499 Black hole. Default directory is where all files that you need
6503 Terse, baffling remark used by programmers to place blame on users for
6504 the program's shortcomings.
6507 A document that has been saved with an unidentifiable name. It helps
6508 to think of a file as something stored in a file cabinet--except when
6509 you try to remove the file, the cabinet gives you an electric shock
6510 and tells you the file format is unknown.
6513 Collective term for any computer-related object that can be kicked or
6517 The feature that assists in generating more questions. When the help
6518 feature is used correctly, users are able to navigate through a series
6519 of Help screens and end up where they started from without learning
6523 Information is input from the keyboard as intelligible data and output
6524 to the printer as unrecognizable junk.
6527 A programmer's feeble attempt at repentance.
6530 Of computer components, the most generous in terms of variety, and the
6531 skimpiest in terms of quantity.
6534 A joke in poor taste. A printer consists of three main parts: the
6535 case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.
6538 Computer avengers. Once members of that group of high school nerds
6539 who wore tape on their glasses, played Dungeons and Dragons, and
6540 memorized Star Trek episodes; now millionaires who create
6541 "user-friendly" software to get revenge on whoever gave them noogies.
6544 Object that raises the monitor to eye level. Also used to compensate
6545 for that short table leg.
6547 Scheduled Release Date:
6548 A carefully calculated date determined by estimating the actual
6549 shipping date and subtracting six months from it.
6552 Of or pertaining to any feature, device or concept that makes perfect
6553 sense to a programmer.
6556 Collective term for those who stare vacantly at a monitor. Users are
6557 divided into three types: novice, intermediate and expert.
6558 - Novice Users--People who are afraid that simply pressing a key
6559 might break their computer.
6560 - Intermediate Users--People who don't know how to fix their computer
6561 after they've just pressed a key that broke it.
6562 - Expert Users--People who break other people's computers.
6565 H8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@S
6566 FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/
6567 DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$
6568 UKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ
6569 JKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH
6570 JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH
6571 &^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^J
6572 KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)(8&*:KL)
6573 +J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*&^jj\+J23*
6574 H8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@Si8!p(_;XLk/\c@S
6575 FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/
6576 DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$
6577 UKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ
6578 JKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH
6579 JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH
6580 FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/?*&l|FD/
6581 DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$%#DJK%$
6582 UKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ+IO3GUKJ
6583 JKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH//8JHJKH
6584 JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH&HJKL|JKH
6585 &^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^JKjgzh~&^J
6587 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;itIRXItIt=:;iVRIIII:;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6588 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;:+ItXRYtIIi;IIRXiII+=;;:::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6589 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;::;==+ittYRViII+iiRRtIIiiti++=;;::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6590 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;::;=+iitIIiitIXViII+tYRtIII=iIYIti++=;::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6591 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;:;=+iitIi+=;;=+ttYYtIiiiYIII+==;;=+tItii+=::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6592 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;:;=+itIt+:;=+itt++=ttitt+tiiII+iti++=;;+IIii+=::;;;;;;;;;;;;+V=;;
6593 ;;;;;;;;;;;;::=+itIt;;=+itt+;;=+iiii+i==tiII==;=iti++=:=IIii+;::;;;;;;;;;+YMRt;
6594 ;;;;;;;;;;;::=+itY;:=+itt=;+itIYIt+;;+Iiiii+IIt+=;=tt++=:+Yti+=::;;;;;;;:WXXWt;
6595 ;;;;;;;;;;,;+iiII;;=+iI=;+itYI+;;++tIItIYtiIiiYYti+;+Ii+=;=Yti+=::;;;;;;+RBRM;;
6596 ;;;;;;;;;::=+iIY;;+itI;=itYY+;+=tXtIIIIWWIIIIt:+YIt+;=Ii+=;=Yti+=,;;;;;;YMBWY=+
6597 ;;;;;;;;;,;+itY=;=+iI==itYI;=it=BMIIIiMB=;IIIt+=iVt+=;=t++=:iYii+;,;;;;=XXWWVMY
6598 ;;;;;;;;::=iiII:;+iIt;+iIV;;+titV.:IIiMt.;YYVRBBBBBY++:Iti+;:YIi+=,;;;iXXRWWBi;
6599 ;;;;;;;;,;+iYV+:=++t;;==tt,+YYIII;:ii+IVRBXRBRRRBBBX=+;+t++;:IIi+==+iIItYYVt;;;
6600 ;;;;;;;;::+IWWIVXRYi++ii=i;RXXXXtiXXXMMV=;+iRMWWWMYti+;tti=;=titIIIIIti=;;;;;;;
6601 ;;;;;;;;;,=XWWXMWXViItt+iYiYMWWWMY+MVBMW+;;MWWBViIYt+==tiiIIIIIIti+=;:;;;;;;;;;
6602 ;;;;;;;;;,;tRY+ittt+tIVBIIVt:=tIYVVYVBRV==XWRt;;iIiitIIIIIItti++=::;;;;;;;;;;;;
6603 ;;;;;;;;;;,+++iiiI+YRYi;+itYY+;=+ittiiIIYBBBiitIIIIIIIIii=:IIii+;,;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6604 ;;;;;;;;;;:;;,;i+VBMX+tI+;+itIYt==ittVRWWWWIIIIItItti+++;;IIii+;,;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6605 ;;;;;;;;;;;;,,:tYYYYi=+itt+;=+iiIIIIYWWWWWWIIIII=itii+;:+Itii+:,;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6606 ;;;;;;;;;;;;::,==iIIIi=;=+iiiIIIIIItWWRMWWWVIII+ii+=;;+IIii+=::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6607 ;;;;;;;;;;;::,,,:;+IIIIt+iIIIIItiiiMWWXWWWWMiII==;;+tItii+=::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6608 ;;;;;;;;;;,:,,,,,,:;iIIIIIIti+;;;+IWWWXWWWWWYIi+tIYtii+=;::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6609 ;;;;;;;;;;,,:::,,,::::=itiiiIII+itIWWWMWWWWWXI+tiii+=;:::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6610 ;;;;;;;;;;;:,,:,,:;;;;;:IYIIItiIItMWWWWWWWWWXI;=;;:::;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
6616 ___-==++""" . /. . . \ . """++==-___
6617 __-+"" __\ .. . . | .. . | . . . /__ ""+-__
6618 /\__+-"" `-----=====\_ <O> _/=====-----' ""-+__/\
6629 WHY GOD NEVER RECEIVED TENURE AT ANY UNIVERSITY
6631 1. He had only one major publication.
6632 2. It had no references.
6633 3. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.
6634 4. Some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6635 5. It may be true that he created the world,
6636 but what has he done since then?
6637 6. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
6638 7. The scientific community has had a hard time
6639 replicating his results.
6640 8. He never applied to the Ethics Board
6641 for permission to use human subjects.
6642 9. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it up
6643 by drowning the subjects.
6644 10. When subjects didn't behave as predicted,
6645 he deleted them from the sample.
6646 11. He rarely came to class, just told students
6648 12. Some say he had his son teach the class.
6649 13. He expelled his first two students for learning.
6650 14. Although there were only ten requirements,
6651 most students failed his tests.
6652 15. His office hours were infrequent and usually
6653 held on a mountaintop.
6655 When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully
6656 because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up
6657 at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them.
6658 -- Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
6661 the foot is forgotten...
6664 Talent, will, and genius are natural phenomena, like volcanoes,
6665 lakes, mountains, winds, stars, clouds.
6666 -- George Sand -- 1874
6668 Creeping Featurism is the desire to add every technologically possible
6669 feature to a product whether or not the market needs it or will pay
6671 -- Leu Platt, CEO Hewlett Packard
6673 everybody's equal, but nobody's the same. -- fred t. hamster
6675 Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
6678 The successful mother sets her children free
6679 and becomes more free herself in the process.
6680 -- Robert J. Havinghurst
6682 No amount of energy will take the place of thought.
6683 A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity.
6686 It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.
6689 It's strange the way the imagination, having exhausted one field,
6690 turns for rest and reinvigoration to another.
6693 Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
6696 People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding.
6697 -- Dr. Wilhem Stekel
6699 Love is the greatest refreshment of life.
6702 An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it.
6705 I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent
6706 that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.
6709 You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.
6712 The greater the difficulty
6713 the more glory in surmounting it.
6716 Society is always engaged in a vast conspiracy to preserve itself--at the
6717 expense of the new demands of each new generation.
6718 -- John Haynes Holmes
6720 The only thing that is really difficult is to prove what one believes.
6723 There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for
6724 all one's life--reciprocity.
6727 Each time we make a decision, it is determined by the good or evil forces,
6728 respectively, which are dominant.
6731 We taste and feel and see the truth.
6732 We do not reason ourselves into it.
6735 You inside and the wind outside, tangled on the window blind, tell me why you
6736 treated me so unkind. Down where the sun don't shine I'm lonely and I call
6737 your name, no place to go ain't that a shame....
6740 The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough
6741 to believe the best is yet to come.
6744 "Observing formations of pigs flying south for the winter is several orders
6745 of magnitude more likely than having two competing C[++] compilers deal
6746 with more than eight lines of source code the same way."
6747 -- Steve Rimmer -- windows columnist
6749 If asses were rainbows, we'd all have a pot of gold.
6758 Good judgment is a result of experience.
6759 Experience is a result of poor judgment.
6762 in programming, insanity is not a handicap.
6771 you don't have to get mad every time you have the right to. -- fred t. hamster
6773 It's actually quite straightforward, but first you must be familiar
6774 with the 9 Palaces and 24 Directions.
6777 Every fairly intelligent person realizes that
6778 the price of respectability is a muffled soul
6779 bent on the trivial and mediocre.
6782 People will admit to anything on the Internet. -- fred t. hamster
6784 If all the beasts were gone, men would die
6785 from great loneliness of spirit,
6786 for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man.
6787 All things are connected.
6788 Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth.
6789 -- Chief Seathl (Seattle) of Suwamish tribe,
6790 State of Washington, 1855
6792 keep doing good, but don't be a do-gooder. -- fred t. hamster
6794 All systems of thought confine their thinkers within the accepted boundaries.
6795 To free the mind from this conceptual jail, step back from and outside of the
6796 system; detachment enables both sides of the system (that which is within
6797 and that which is not within) to be perceived and dealt with as an object
6801 That which exists requires no reaffirmation by the mind; it simply is.
6802 It is that which does not exist that needs constant renewing contact by
6803 the mind; else it would fade from its only sphere of influence, the internal
6804 stage upon which it dances and captures the imagination.
6807 Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, no matter how stupid.
6808 -- Frank Zappa (paraphrase unfortunately... know the exact quote?)
6812 i am the beaver who reincarnated as a carpenter.
6813 i am the squirrel who came back as jimmy carter.
6814 if there's anything more fun than programming (where i actually use my brain
6815 mainly and not my body), then i don't want to know what it is.
6816 algorithms are my bread.
6817 objects are my butter.
6818 state machines are my toaster.
6819 library hierarchies are my table.
6820 my house is composed of invisible data and my nation rides along cables.
6821 i really need a girlfriend.
6824 every religion constitutes a view of reality and a view of the world.
6825 each one might suit a particular person differently.
6826 for any religion to claim that it is the one true religion is ridiculous
6827 because it asserts that its one way of viewing reality is the only correct
6828 one. surely this is a bad case of religious egotism or selfishness.
6831 talking about dharma is like making a home movie. when you watch it later,
6832 you see it, you hear it, and yet it isn't really there and the vital
6833 experience of being there is missing. but when you are there... you know
6834 it and feel it in a way your brain can't accurately record for later
6838 Deja Fu: The feeling that somehow, somewhere, you've been kicked in the
6839 head like this before.
6841 A day without sunshine is like night.
6843 There is a CD out entitled "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane". If you buy
6844 this, take it home, play it, and enjoy it, should you take it back and
6847 College is a fountain of knowledge... and the students are there to drink.
6849 A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
6851 Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true.
6852 I have the heart of a young boy--in a jar on my desk.
6853 -- Stephen King, 3/8/90
6855 He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.
6857 Photons have mass? I didn't know they were catholic!
6859 If you had everything, where would you keep it?
6861 I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
6862 has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
6863 -- Supposedly an English Professor, Ohio University
6865 What was sliced bread the greatest thing since?
6867 When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared
6868 for the occasional division by zero.
6870 When you're swimmin' in the creek
6871 And an eel bites your cheek
6873 -- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
6875 Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
6876 A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with
6877 brightly colored machine tools.
6879 "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking
6880 zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
6883 Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3--not even for very large values of 2.
6885 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
6887 There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD.
6888 We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
6890 If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet,
6891 what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
6894 One night I walked home very late and fell asleep in somebody's satellite
6895 dish. My dreams were showing up on TV's all over the world.
6898 My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of
6899 Oreo cookies while I'm in the waiting room. Sometimes she has to cancel
6900 the rest of the afternoon's appointments.
6903 Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've
6904 forgotten this before.
6907 Smoking cures weight problems... eventually.
6910 I have an inferiority complex. But it's not a very good one.
6913 I was in the supermarket the other day, and I met a lady in the aisle where
6914 they keep the generic brands. Her name was 'woman'.
6917 I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the
6921 I'd like to sing you a song now about my old girlfriend. It's
6922 called, 'They'll Find Her When the Leaves Blow Away 'Cause I'm
6923 Not Raking 'Til Spring.'
6926 When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?'
6927 I said, 'No, I made a few mistakes.'
6930 I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
6933 The other day, I was walking my dog around my building... on the ledge.
6936 Some people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.
6939 I spilled spot remover on my dog. He's gone now.
6942 Referring to a glass of water: I mixed this myself. Two parts H, one
6943 part O. I don't trust anybody!
6946 I went to the cinema, and the prices were: Adults $5.00, children $2.50.
6947 So I said, 'Give me two boys and a girl.'
6950 I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered
6951 French Toast during the Renaissance.
6954 There's a pizza place near where I live that sells only slices. In the back
6955 you can see a guy tossing a triangle in the air.
6958 I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically.
6961 I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy
6962 was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24
6963 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row.'
6966 There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people
6967 were trapped on the escalators.
6970 I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap
6971 Department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would
6972 know when to stop unwrapping.
6975 I was born by Cesarean section... But not so you'd notice. It's just that
6976 when I leave a house, I go out through the window.
6979 When I was little, my grandfather used to make me stand in a closet for five
6980 minutes without moving. He said it was elevator practice.
6983 I didn't get a toy train like the other kids. I got a toy subway instead.
6984 You couldn't see anything, but every now and then you'd hear this rumbling
6988 Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and
6989 sang 'Happy Birthday'.
6992 A wino asked me for change... I gave him my shirt.
6995 I bought this thing for my car. You put it on your car, it sends out this
6996 little noise, so when you drive through the woods, deer won't run in front
6997 of your car. I installed it backwards by accident... Driving down the
6998 street with a herd of deer chasing me.
7001 The ice cream truck in my neighborhood plays 'Helter Skelter'.
7004 The sky already fell. Now what?
7007 My girlfriend and I went on a picnic. I don't know how she did it, but she
7008 got poison ivy on the brain. When it itched, the only way she could scratch
7009 it was to think about sandpaper.
7012 Trees that grow in smoggy cities are needed to make carbon paper.
7015 What's another word for Thesaurus?
7018 When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms
7019 with me. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'
7022 Why doesn't the fattest man in the world become a hockey goalie?
7025 You know how it is when you decide to lie and say the check is in the mail,
7026 and then you remember it really is?
7029 I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No
7030 brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.
7033 My watch is three hours fast, and I can't fix it. So I'm going to move to
7037 When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.
7040 One time I went to a museum where all the work on display had been done by
7041 children. They had all the paintings up on refrigerators.
7044 When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was
7045 an only child... Eventually.
7048 One day I got on the bus, and when I stepped in, I saw the most gorgeous
7049 blond Chinese girl. I sat beside her. I said, 'Hi', And she said, 'Hi',
7050 and then I said, 'Nice day, isn't it?' And she said, 'I saw my analyst
7051 today and he says I have a problem. So I asked, 'What's the problem?'
7052 She replied, 'I can't tell you. I don't even know you.' I said, 'Well,
7053 sometimes it's good to tell your problems to a perfect stranger on a bus.'
7054 So she said, 'Well, my analyst said I'm a nymphomaniac and I only like
7055 Jewish cowboys... By the way, my name is Denise.' I said, 'Hello, Denise.
7056 My name is Bucky Goldstein.'
7059 Today I was arrested for scalping low numbers at the deli. I sold a #3 for
7063 Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just
7064 whipped out a quarter?
7067 I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.
7070 What happens if you put a slinky on an escalator?
7073 If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
7076 If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?
7079 If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
7082 In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over
7083 what I considered to be an odd number.
7086 Is "tired old cliche" one?
7089 My aunt gave me a walkie-talkie for my birthday. She says if I'm good,
7090 she'll give me the other one next year.
7093 At an October re-trial in Leeds, England, jurors took about an
7094 hour to acquit police officer Andrew Whitfield, 30, of stealing a
7095 calculator worth about $4. The cost of the trial, plus the original
7096 mistrial, plus keeping Whitfield on paid suspension for 14 months
7097 as required by law, was about $158,000.
7098 -- News of the Weird -- Compiled by Chuck Shepard
7100 Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world,
7101 I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not
7102 with those flies and death and stuff.
7106 If you could live forever, would you and why?
7108 I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because
7109 if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we
7110 cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
7111 -- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest
7113 Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions
7114 in the brain as marijuana... The researchers also discovered other
7115 similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are.
7116 -- Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show, August 22
7118 I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
7119 -- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he
7120 failed to pay his taxes.
7122 Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your
7124 -- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson
7125 for a federal anti-smoking campaign
7127 I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
7128 -- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward
7130 Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates
7132 -- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.
7134 Beginning in February 1976 your assistance benefits will be discontinued...
7136 it has been reported to our office that you expired on January 1, 1976.
7137 -- Letter from the Illinois Department of Public Aid
7139 The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history... This century's
7140 history... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.
7141 -- Dan Quayle, then Indiana senator and Republican vice-presidential
7142 candidate during a news conference in which he was asked his opinion
7145 I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly
7147 -- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why
7148 we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries
7150 After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal,
7151 the school board is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of
7152 David Steele to the post.
7153 -- Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island
7155 The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.
7156 -- Dizzy Dean explaining how he felt after being hit on the head
7157 by a ball in the 1934 World Series
7159 there are some who believe that intelligence can only be won at the cost of
7160 other's intelligence; that is, there is no way to be intelligent without being
7161 more intelligent than someone else. i hypothesize that talking to this kind
7162 of person is a very draining experience because all that they are interested
7163 in is proving how much smarter they are than you are.
7164 i believe that people who want to increase intelligence everywhere are easy
7165 to talk to; they want you to know what they know and vice-versa, not to prove
7166 that they are the most intelligent person in the room.
7169 You are 97% water; the other 3% keeps you from drowning.
7172 It got to the end of our show, so I was just wandering around. I had
7173 this maternity dress on and a white face and I was doing unattractive
7174 things, spitting on people, things like that.
7175 -- Iggy Pop, sept. 22, 1968, several minutes before he signed his first
7178 The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive
7179 valiantly; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and speed
7180 themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best, know the triumph of high
7181 achievement; and who, at the worst, if they fail, fail while daring
7182 greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid
7183 souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
7184 -- Theodore Roosevelt
7186 I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian
7187 because I hate plants.
7190 My young brother asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get
7191 buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should
7192 have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally,
7193 but I didn't want to upset him.
7194 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 10
7196 When I go to heaven, I want to see my grandpa again. But he better have
7197 lost the nose hair and the old-man smell.
7198 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 5
7200 I once heard the voice of God. It said "Vrrrrmmmm." Unless it was just
7202 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 11
7204 I don't know about you, but I enjoy watching paint dry. I imagine that
7205 the wet paint is a big freshwater lake that is the only source of water
7206 for some tiny cities by the lake. As the lake gets drier, the population
7207 gets more desperate, and sometimes there are water riots. Once there was
7208 a big fire and everyone died.
7209 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 13
7211 I like to go down to the dog pound and pretend that I've found my dog.
7212 Then I tell them to kill it anyway because I already gave away all of
7213 his stuff. Dog people sure don't have a sense of humor.
7214 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 14
7216 I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I
7217 don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes
7218 on the last day of their life?
7219 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7221 It sure would be nice if we got a day off for the president's birthday,
7222 like they do for the queen. Of course, then we would have a lot of people
7223 voting for a candidate born on July 3 or December 26, just for the long
7225 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 8
7227 As you make your way through this hectic world of ours, set aside a few
7228 minutes each day. At the end of the year, you'll have a couple of days
7230 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 7
7232 Democracy is a beautiful thing, except for that part about letting just
7234 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 10
7236 Home is where the house is.
7237 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 6
7239 Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That
7240 is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number.
7241 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7243 It would be terrible if the Red Cross Bloodmobile got into an accident.
7244 No, wait. That would be good because if anyone needed it, the blood would be
7246 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 5
7248 Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the
7249 things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.
7250 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 13
7252 I bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.
7253 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 13
7255 For centuries, people thought the moon was made of green cheese. Then
7256 the astronauts found that the moon is really a big hard rock. That's what
7257 happens to cheese when you leave it out.
7258 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 6
7260 Think of the biggest number you can. Now add five. Then, imagine if you
7261 had that many Twinkies. Wow, that's five more than the biggest number
7262 you could come up with!
7263 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 6
7265 The only stupid question is the one that is never asked, except maybe
7266 "Don't you think it is about time you audited my return?" or "Isn't it morally
7267 wrong to give me a warning when, in fact, I was speeding?"
7268 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7270 Once, I wept for I had no shoes. Then I came upon a man who had no feet.
7271 So I took his shoes. I mean, it's not like he really needed them, right?
7272 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7274 I often wonder how come John Tesh isn't as popular a singer as some
7275 people think he should be. Then, I remember it's because he sucks.
7276 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7278 If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world
7279 peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the
7281 -- Deep Thoughts Jr., Age 15
7283 Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
7285 Lobotomies for republicans? Why be redundant?
7287 The last time we mixed politics and religion,
7288 people got burned at the stake.
7292 Minimum wage for politicians.
7295 i dancing nude green
7297 (a haiku-style anagram for "inova engineering and production")
7300 If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
7302 A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
7304 Eagles may soar, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
7306 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
7308 A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7310 He who hesitates is probably right.
7312 Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
7314 The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
7316 To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
7318 Two wrongs are only the beginning.
7320 You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
7322 The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
7324 Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
7326 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
7328 A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
7330 Change is inevitable... except from vending machines.
7332 Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
7334 Half the people you know are above average.
7336 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
7338 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
7340 If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
7342 Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or
7343 the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when
7344 they bark, they shoot bees at you?
7347 Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not
7348 whether you win or lose... it's how drunk you get.
7351 Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably.
7352 The lesson is, never try.
7355 It's not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but
7356 somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.
7359 Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What
7365 Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal!
7366 Homer: Heh heh heh... ooh... yeah.... right, Lisa. A wonderful...
7369 Marge: Do you want your son to be Chief Justice of the
7370 Supreme Court, or a sleazy male stripper?
7371 Homer: Can't he be both, like the late Earl Warren?
7372 Marge: Earl Warren was never a stripper!
7373 Homer: Oh, now who's being naive?
7375 Homer: But every time I learn something new, it pushes out
7376 something old! Remember that time I took a home
7377 wine-making course and forgot how to drive?
7378 Marge: That's because you were drunk!
7381 Oh, Lisa, you and your stories: Bart's a vampire, beer
7382 kills brain cells. Now let's go back to that...
7383 building...thingie... where our beds and TV... is.
7386 Operator! Give me the number for 911!
7389 Lenny: Hey, Homer? What do I tell the boss?
7390 Homer: Tell him I'm going to the back seat of my car with
7391 the woman I love, and I won't be back for ten minutes!
7393 Big brother representative: Now, Mr. Simpson, may I ask why
7395 Homer's brain: Don't say revenge. Don't say revenge.
7396 Homer: Ummm... revenge?
7397 Homer's brain: Okay, that's it. I'm outta here.
7398 (step step step step step...slam)
7400 Homer: Okay, brain. You don't like me, and I don't like
7401 you, but let's get through this thing and then I can
7402 continue killing you with beer.
7403 Homer's Brain: It's a deal!
7405 Homer: But Marge! I was a political prisoner!
7406 Marge: How were you a political prisoner?
7407 Homer: I kicked a giant mouse in the butt! Do I have to
7410 Homer: Bart, a woman is like a beer. They look good, they
7411 smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just
7412 to get one! (chugs beer)
7414 Old man: Take this doll, but beware; it carries a terrible curse.
7415 Homer: Ooo, that's bad.
7416 Old man: But it comes with a free serving of frozen yogurt!
7418 Old man: The frozen yogurt is also cursed.
7420 Old man: But it comes with your choice of toppings!
7422 Old man: The toppings contain potassium benzoate...
7424 Old man: That's bad.
7425 Homer: Can I go now?
7427 Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say
7428 you're prejudiced against all races.
7431 Homer's brain: Use reverse psychology.
7432 Homer: Oh, that sounds too complicated.
7433 Homer's brain: Okay, don't use reverse psychology.
7434 Homer: Okay, I will!
7436 Homer: When I first heard that Marge was joining the police academy, I thought
7437 it would be fun and zany, like that movie--Spaceballs. But instead it was
7438 dark and disturbing. Like that movie--Police Academy.
7440 Marge: Homer, did you call the audience "Chicken"?
7441 Homer: No! I swear on this bible!
7442 Marge: That's not a bible. That's a book of carpet samples.
7443 Homer: Mmmm... fuzzy.
7445 Lisa: Dad, we did something very bad!
7446 Homer: Did you wreck the car?
7448 Homer: Did you raise the dead?
7450 Homer: But the car's okay?
7451 Bart & Lisa: Uh-huh.
7452 Homer: All right then.
7454 Mmmmm... reprocessed pig fat... -- Homer Simpson
7456 (praying): Dear Lord, the gods have been good to me. As
7457 an offering, I present these milk and cookies. If you
7458 wish me to eat them instead, please give me no sign
7459 whatsoever... thy will be done (munch munch munch).
7462 Homer: (On George HW Bush) I didn't vote for him!
7463 Marge: You didn't vote for anybody.
7464 Homer: I voted for Prell to go back to the old glass bottle.
7465 Then I became deeply cynical.
7467 What's the point of going out? We're just going to
7468 wind up back here anyway.
7471 I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.
7474 All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me--so let's
7475 just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer.
7478 You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline --
7479 it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear
7480 weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
7483 Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to
7484 keep your mouth shut.
7485 -- Ernest Hemmingway
7487 Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has
7489 -- Winston Churchill
7491 He was a wise man who invented beer.
7494 Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.
7495 -- Catherine Zandonella
7497 A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.
7500 "Sir, if I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee."
7501 -- Lady Nancy Astor speaking to Winston Churchill
7502 "Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it."
7503 -- Churchill's reply
7505 If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.
7508 Work is the curse of the drinking class.
7511 When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
7514 Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
7515 -- Benjamin Franklin
7517 If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it
7518 makes beer shoot out your nose.
7519 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
7521 Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is
7522 beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but
7523 the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
7526 The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
7529 Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine.
7532 People who drink light "beer" don't like the taste of beer; they just
7534 -- Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI
7536 Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.
7539 Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
7540 oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
7544 I drink to make other people interesting.
7545 -- George Jean Nathan
7547 They who drink beer will think beer.
7548 -- Washington Irving
7550 An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with
7552 -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemmingway
7554 You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
7557 I will not carve gods.
7558 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7560 I will not spank others.
7561 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7563 I will not aim for the head.
7564 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7566 I will not barf unless I'm sick.
7567 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7569 I will not expose the ignorance of the faculty.
7570 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7572 I saw nothing unusual in the teacher's lounge.
7573 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7575 I will not conduct my own fire drills.
7576 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7578 Funny noises are not funny.
7579 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7581 I will not snap bras.
7582 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7584 I will not fake seizures.
7585 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7587 This punishment is not boring and pointless.
7588 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7590 My name is not Dr. Death.
7591 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7593 I will not defame New Orleans.
7594 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7596 I will not prescribe medication.
7597 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7599 I will not bury the new kid.
7600 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7602 I will not teach others to fly.
7603 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7605 I will not bring sheep to class.
7606 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7608 A burp is not an answer.
7609 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7611 Teacher is not a leper.
7612 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7614 Coffee is not for kids.
7615 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7617 I will not eat things for money.
7618 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7620 I will not yell "She's Dead" at roll call.
7621 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7623 The principal's toupee is not a Frisbee.
7624 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7626 I will not call the principal "spud head".
7627 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7629 Goldfish don't bounce.
7630 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7632 Mud is not one of the 4 food groups.
7633 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7635 No one is interested in my underpants.
7636 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7638 I will not sell miracle cures.
7639 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7641 I will return the seeing-eye dog.
7642 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7644 I do not have diplomatic immunity.
7645 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7647 I will not charge admission to the bathroom.
7648 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7650 The cafeteria deep fryer is not a toy.
7651 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7653 All work and no play makes Bart a dull boy.
7654 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7656 I will not say "Springfield" just to get applause.
7657 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7659 I am not authorized to fire substitute teachers.
7660 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7662 My homework was not stolen by a one-armed man.
7663 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7665 I will not go near the kindergarten turtle.
7666 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7668 I am not deliciously saucy.
7669 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7671 Organ transplants are best left to professionals.
7672 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7674 The Pledge of Allegiance does not end with "Hail Satan".
7675 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7677 I will not celebrate meaningless milestones.
7678 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7680 There are plenty of businesses like show business.
7681 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7683 Five days is not too long to wait for a gun.
7684 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7686 I will not waste chalk.
7687 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7689 I will not skateboard in the halls.
7690 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7692 Underwear should be worn on the inside.
7693 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7695 I will never win an emmy.
7696 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7698 I will not torment the emotionally frail.
7699 -- Bart Simpson (at the blackboard)
7701 Bitter, unsuccessful middle aged loser wallowing in an unending sea of inert,
7702 drooping loneliness looking for 24 year old needy leech-like hanger-on to
7703 abuse with dull stories, tired sex and Herb Alpert albums.
7704 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7705 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7707 Me--trying to sleep on the bus station bench, pleading with you to give me a
7708 cigarette; you--choking on my odor, tripping over your purse trying to get
7709 away; at the last moment, our eyes meeting. Yours were blue.
7710 Can I have a dollar?
7711 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7712 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7714 Imp and angel. Disembodied head in jar, 24, seeks pixie goddess to fiddle with
7715 while Rome burns. You bring marshmallows. No. I make joke. You like laugh?
7716 I like comebacks and confessions. Send photo of someone else.
7717 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7718 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7720 I am spitting kitty. Ftt Fttttttt. I am angry bear. Grrrrr. I am large
7721 watermelon seed stuck in your nose. Zermmmmmmmmmm. I am small biting spider
7722 in your underwear. Yub yub yub. No mimes.
7723 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7724 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7726 Three toed mango peeler searching for wicked lesbian infielder. Like screaming
7727 and marking territory with urine? Let's make banana enchiladas together in my
7728 bathtub. You bring the salsa.
7729 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7730 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7732 Mongoloid spastic underwear model with extra limb (you guess where?) in search
7733 of bottlenosed dolphin and extra prickly cactus juice. Soup is good food.
7734 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7735 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7737 I like eating mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwiches in the rain, watching
7738 Barney Miller reruns, peeing on birds in the park and licking strangers on the
7739 subway; you eat beets raw, have climbed Kilimanjaro, and sweat freely and
7740 often. Must wear size five shoes.
7741 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7742 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7744 Timber! Falling downward is the lumber of my love. You grind your axe of
7745 passion into my endangered headlands. Don't make me into a bureau. I want
7746 to be lots and lots of toothpicks.
7747 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7748 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7750 Small lumpy squid monkey seeks healthy woman with no identifying scars, any
7751 age. Must have all limbs. Recommend appreciation of high-pitched, screeching
7752 noises. Must like being bored and lonely. Must not touch the squids, EVER.
7753 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7754 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7756 There is a little place in the jumbled sock drawer of my heart where you
7757 match up all the pairs, throw out the ones with holes in them, and buy me
7758 some of those neat dressy ones with the weird black and red geometrical
7760 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7761 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7763 Mmmm Pez! Rabid Wonder Woman fan looking for someone in satin tights,
7764 fighting for our rights and the old red, white 'n blue. You look like
7765 Linda Carter? Big plus. Know all words to theme song? Marry me.
7766 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7767 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7769 Sanctimonious mordacious raconteur seeking same for hijinks and hiballs.
7770 SJM 27 wants to look someone in the eye so don't be tall. Or, if you can't
7771 help it, enjoy laying down. Wanna swim upstream?
7772 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7773 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7775 Remember that summer you spent with your parents in Hawaii and how mad you
7776 were that they made you go? And how you were hopelessly bored until you saw
7777 the most gorgeous man you'd ever encountered strolling down the beach looking
7778 at you, skillfully removing your skimpy bikini with his piercing eyes? And
7779 how you spent the last month imagining him taking you in every possible way,
7780 masturbating feverishly day and night, wishing he would reappear, but he never
7781 did because you were 15 and he would have gone to jail? That was me, and
7783 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7784 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7786 Angry, simple-minded, balding, partially blind ex-circus flipper boy with a
7787 passion for covering lovers in sour cream and gravy seeks exotic, heavily
7788 tattooed piercing fanatic, preferably hairy, either sex, for whippings,
7789 bizarre sex and fashion consulting. No freaks.
7790 -- from "A Collection of Personal Ads From Alternative Newspapers,"
7791 by Skippy Williams and Zohre Crumpton, 1996, Simon and Schuster.
7793 A freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho
7794 Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned
7795 we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear
7796 of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign
7797 a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical
7798 "dihydrogen monoxide." And for plenty of good reasons, since
7800 1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting;
7801 2. it is a major component in acid rain;
7802 3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state;
7803 4. accidental inhalation can kill you;
7804 5. it contributes to erosion;
7805 6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes;
7806 7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.
7808 He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical. Forty-three said
7809 yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical was water. The
7810 title of his prize winning project was, "How Gullible Are We?".
7811 The conclusion is obvious.
7813 If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put down the video camera
7815 -- Bobcat Goldthwait
7817 I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because
7818 it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive,
7819 but I have photographs of her.
7822 I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other
7823 one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they
7824 are always locking three.
7827 Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
7830 Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like
7831 one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you
7832 two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay and before they leave you,
7833 they should have to find you a temp.
7836 I don't know what's wrong with my television set. I was getting C-Span and
7837 the Home Shopping Network on the same station. I actually bought a
7841 I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language
7842 that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may may be. But I
7843 think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't
7844 afraid of vacuum cleaners.
7847 Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how
7848 dogs spend their lives.
7851 Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to
7852 listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating
7856 The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering
7857 from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they
7858 are okay, then it's you.
7861 Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image
7862 there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe
7863 laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body
7864 before you do the wash.
7867 USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people
7868 make up 75 percent of the population.
7871 A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. 'You know
7872 a cow was murdered for that jacket?' she sneered. I replied in a psychotic
7873 tone, 'I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too.'
7876 I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
7879 The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty
7880 impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife
7881 they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle
7882 openers. "Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me,
7883 he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here."
7886 Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my
7887 fishburger and I realize, Oh my God... I could be eating a slow learner.
7890 Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography.
7893 Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.
7894 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7896 Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.
7897 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7899 I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom
7900 and democracy--but that could change.
7901 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 5/22/89
7903 One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that
7904 one word is 'to be prepared'.
7905 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 12/6/89
7907 May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.
7908 -- The Quayles' 1989 Christmas card
7910 Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
7911 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7913 We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward.
7914 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7916 I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the
7918 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7920 The future will be better tomorrow.
7921 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7923 We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.
7924 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7926 People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a
7927 tremendous impact on history.
7928 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7930 I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.
7931 -- Vice President Dan Quayle to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/89
7933 We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm
7934 commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.
7935 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7937 I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.
7938 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7940 I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.
7941 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7943 A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
7944 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7946 When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and
7947 the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame
7948 for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings?
7949 The killers are to blame.
7950 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7952 Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.
7953 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 5/20/92 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
7955 Murphy Brown is doing better than I am. At least she knows she still has a job
7957 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/18/92
7959 We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.
7960 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 9/22/90
7962 For NASA, space is still a high priority.
7963 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 9/5/90
7965 Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.
7966 -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 9/18/90
7968 The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle
7969 may or may not make.
7970 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7972 We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the
7973 mistakes we may or may not have made.
7974 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7976 It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities
7977 in our air and water that are doing it.
7978 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7980 [It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system.
7981 -- Vice President Dan Quayle
7983 Public speaking is very easy.
7984 -- Dan Quayle to reporters in 10/88
7986 We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice.
7989 The president has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
7990 -- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on "Larry King Live"
7992 The police are not here to create disorder.
7993 They're here to preserve disorder.
7994 -- Former Chicago mayor Daley
7995 during the infamous 1968 convention
7997 Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas.
7998 -- Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery
8000 It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.
8001 -- Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle
8003 The internet is a great way to get on the net.
8004 -- Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole
8006 It is bad luck to be superstitious.
8009 It's like an Alcatraz around my neck.
8010 -- Boston mayor Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces
8012 They're multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take
8014 -- Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the
8015 Air Force nearly $1,000 for an ordinary pair of pliers
8017 We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.
8018 -- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks
8020 I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers.
8021 We are the president.
8022 -- Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents
8024 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
8025 -- Former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge
8027 China is a big country, inhabited by many chinese.
8028 -- Former French President Charles de Gaulle
8030 That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and
8031 i'm just the one to do it.
8032 -- A congressional candidate in Texas
8034 Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
8035 -- Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
8037 Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
8038 -- General William Westmoreland, during the war in Viet Nam
8040 If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut
8041 right out from under your feet.
8042 -- Former British foreign minister Ernest Bevin
8044 Almonds and peaches are members of the Rosaceae family (roses) and are
8045 both in the subfamily Amygdaloideae, which also includes plums, cherries
8048 The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
8050 Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
8052 Nutmeg is toxic and can cause fatal overdoses just from eating too much.
8054 Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real
8055 brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp).
8057 In Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie," mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who
8058 has a speaking role.
8060 Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make--$5 million going to actor's salaries.
8062 A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the
8063 production of Guinness beer.
8065 Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los
8066 Angeles de Porciúncula" or "The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of Angels,
8067 of Porziuncola", although its official name is simply "El Pueblo de
8068 la Reina de Los Angeles".
8070 A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
8072 An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
8074 Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
8076 Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
8078 In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed
8079 on an analog watch is 10:10.
8081 Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
8083 Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
8085 The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint--no two lions have the same
8086 pattern of whiskers.
8088 Bob Dylan's given name is Robert Allen Zimmerman.
8090 Research by the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth in
8091 2003 demonstrated that goldfish have a memory-span of at least three
8092 months and can distinguish between different shapes, colours and sounds.
8094 The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
8096 It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog
8097 throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's
8098 mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's
8099 contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
8101 Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
8103 ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first
8104 names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
8106 The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister,
8107 Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles
8108 at a religious retreat in India.
8110 The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
8112 The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator,
8113 Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z, hence "Oz."
8115 Horses and rabbits cannot normally vomit, but have been observed in
8116 extreme cases appearing to vomit. For example, horses with severe colic
8117 can produce fermented stomach contents, and rabbits have been observed
8118 expelling stomach contents due to over-eating or health issues.
8120 Virgina Woolf liked to write standing up.
8121 Mark Twain often wrote while lying down.
8123 Testimonial from Col. George Harvey, Mark Twain's publisher:
8124 I think that perhaps the funniest thing about Mark Twain now is not
8125 his writing, but his bed. He lies in bed a good deal; he says he has
8126 formed the habit. His bed is the largest one I ever saw, and on it is
8127 the weirdest collection of objects you ever saw, enough to furnish a
8128 Harlem flat--books, writing materials, clothes, any and everything that
8129 could foregather in his vicinity.
8130 He looks quite happy rising out of the mass, and over all prowls a
8131 huge black cat of a very unhappy disposition. She snaps and snarls and
8132 claws and bites, and Mark Twain takes his turn with the rest; when she
8133 gets tired of tearing up manuscript she scratches him and he bears it
8134 with a patience wonderful to behold.
8135 -- interview subtitled "Mark Twain's Bed," Washington Post,
8136 March 26, 1905, p. F12
8138 Testimonial from Katy Leary, Mark Twain's servant:
8139 Mr. Clemens borrowed a kitten one time, called Bambino, from Clara, who
8140 had him in the sanitarium, and had trained him to wash his own face in the
8141 bowl every morning--which shows that he was a very smart little cat. He
8142 used to have this kitten up in his room at the Fifth Avenue house and he
8143 taught it to put out a light, too. He had a tiny little lamp to light his
8144 cigars with at the head of the bed, and after he got all fixed and didn't
8145 want the light any more, he taught that cat to put his paw on the light
8146 and put it out. Bambino would jump on the bed, look at Mr. Clemens to see
8147 if he was through with the light, and when Mr. Clemens would bow twice to
8148 him, he'd jump over on to that table quick, and put his little paw right
8149 on the lamp! Mr. Clemens was always showing him off; he did that for a lot
8150 of people that come there to call.
8151 One night he got kind of gay, when he heard some cats calling from the
8152 back fence, so he found a window open and he stole out. We looked high
8153 and low but couldn't find him. Mr. Clemens felt so bad that he advertised
8154 in all the papers for him. He offered a reward for anybody that would
8155 bring the cat back. My goodness! the people that came bringing cats to
8156 that house! A perfect stream! They all wanted to see Mr. Clemens, of
8158 Two or three nights after, Katherine heard a cat meowing across the
8159 street in General Sickles' back yard, and there was Bambino--large as
8160 life! So she brought him right home. Mr. Clemens was delighted and then
8161 he advertised that his cat was found! But the people kept coming just
8162 the same with all kinds of cats for him--anything to get a glimpse of
8164 -- A Lifetime with Mark Twain, by Mary Lawton
8166 If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to
8167 yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because
8168 for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.
8169 -- Rainer Maria Rilke
8171 Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of human existence.
8172 -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8174 If we concede that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of
8178 What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself;
8179 when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it
8180 must go seeking, and where all its equipment will avail nothing. Seek? More
8181 than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist,
8182 to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into
8186 As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
8187 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8189 I believe that everything depends on attention. I only see you if I pay
8190 attention. I only exist, in my own eyes, if I pay attention to myself.
8193 The sex was so good that even the neighbors had a cigarette.
8195 If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
8197 I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
8199 If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.
8201 Good girls get fat, bad girls get eaten.
8203 The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.
8205 A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.
8207 I need someone really bad... are you really bad?
8209 If, a two letter word for futility.
8211 Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.
8213 To all you virgins, thanks for nothing.
8215 The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.
8217 My kid had sex with your honor student.
8219 Don't hit me. My lawyer's in jail.
8221 If something goes without saying, LET IT!
8223 If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished.
8225 IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you've got.
8227 Hard work has a future payoff, laziness pays off now.
8229 Life's a buffet... so eat me!
8231 Montana--At least our cows are sane!
8233 Jesus died for my sins and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
8237 Guns don't kill people, postal workers do.
8241 God must love stupid people, he made so many.
8243 I said "no" to drugs, but they just wouldn't listen.
8245 The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
8247 There's too much youth, how about a fountain of smart.
8249 Forget about World Peace... Visualize Using Your Turn Signal!
8251 Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear.
8253 I know what you're thinking, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
8255 Don't drink and drive, you might hit a bump and spill your drink.
8257 Elvis is dead, and I'm not feeling too good myself.
8259 Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
8261 Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
8263 Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
8265 Always be nice to your children because they are
8266 the ones who will choose your rest home.
8269 I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles.
8271 Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.
8273 I'm not offended by all the dumb blond jokes because I know I'm not
8274 dumb... and I also know that I'm not blond.
8277 You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a
8278 smart woman with a dumb guy.
8281 I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home
8282 which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls
8283 every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that
8284 comes home late at night.
8287 I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.
8290 I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told
8291 me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don't even want to do anything that
8292 feels GOOD for 36 hours.
8295 I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
8298 I think--therefore I'm single.
8301 Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.
8304 Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as
8305 assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly
8306 promoted as a male schlemiel.
8309 I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on
8310 how to combine marriage and a career.
8313 Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
8314 should live next door and just visit now and then.
8315 -- Katharine Hepburn
8317 God is my favorite fictional character.
8320 Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
8321 -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
8323 I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
8324 -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
8326 I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the
8327 best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't
8329 -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
8331 But what... is it good for?
8332 -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
8333 commenting on the microchip
8335 This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a
8336 means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
8337 -- Western Union internal memo, 1876
8339 The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for
8340 a message sent to nobody in particular?
8341 -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment
8342 in the radio in the 1920s
8344 The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than
8345 a 'C,' the idea must be feasible.
8346 -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's
8347 paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service
8348 (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
8350 Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
8351 -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
8353 I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary
8355 -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone
8358 A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
8359 America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.
8360 -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies
8362 We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
8363 -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
8365 If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
8366 literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.
8367 -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M
8370 So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built
8371 with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll
8372 give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for
8373 you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they
8374 said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'
8375 -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P
8376 interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer
8378 Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and
8379 the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He
8380 seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
8381 -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary
8384 You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your
8385 muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to
8386 accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight
8388 -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by
8391 Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're
8393 -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill
8396 Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
8397 -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929
8399 Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
8400 -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
8401 Ecole Superieure de Guerre
8403 Everything that can be invented has been invented.
8404 -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899, arguing
8405 that the office should be closed
8407 Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
8408 -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
8410 The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion
8411 of the wise and humane surgeon.
8412 -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary
8413 to Queen Victoria 1873
8415 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
8416 -- Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981, but he asserts that he did not say this.
8418 Three things are certain:
8419 Death, taxes, and lost data.
8420 Guess which has occurred.
8423 Your life's work has been destroyed.
8424 Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?
8427 I am the Blue Screen of Death.
8428 No one hears your screams.
8430 Seeing my great fault
8431 Through darkening blue windows
8434 The code was willing,
8435 It considered your request,
8436 But the chips were weak.
8439 Could be a fatal error.
8443 It might be very useful.
8446 Errors have occurred.
8447 We won't tell you where or why.
8450 Server's poor response
8451 Not quick enough for browser.
8452 Timed out, plum blossom.
8454 Chaos reigns within.
8455 Reflect, repent, and reboot.
8459 Only perfect spellers may
8462 This site has been moved.
8463 We'd tell you where, but then we'd
8467 scatt'ring petals to the wind:
8471 Close all that you have.
8472 You ask way too much.
8474 First snow, then silence.
8475 This thousand dollar screen dies
8478 With searching comes loss
8479 and the presence of absence:
8480 "My Novel" not found.
8482 The Tao that is seen
8483 Is not the true Tao, until
8484 You bring fresh toner.
8486 The Web site you seek
8487 cannot be located but
8488 endless others exist
8490 Stay the patient course
8491 Of little worth is your ire
8495 your expensive computer
8499 of carbon and silicon
8500 the software can't bridge
8503 Today it is not working
8504 Windows is like that
8507 Would be life without meaning
8510 You step in the stream,
8511 but the water has moved on.
8512 This page is not here.
8519 Hal, open the damn file, Hal
8520 open the, please Hal
8523 We wish to hold the whole sky,
8527 The document you're seeking
8528 Must now be retyped.
8530 The ten thousand things
8531 How long do any persist?
8532 Netscape, too, has gone.
8535 Or a rude error message,
8536 These words: "File not found."
8539 All shortcuts have disappeared.
8540 Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
8542 Indecision may or may not be my problem.
8545 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
8546 This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
8549 If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He
8553 I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage.
8554 They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
8557 I would love to speak a foreign language but I can't.
8558 So I grew hair under my arms instead.
8561 The second day of a diet is always easier than the first.
8562 By the second day you're off it.
8565 Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
8568 If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's
8569 life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if
8570 there is a man on base.
8573 Somebody hits me, I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he
8574 hasn't eaten in a while.
8575 -- Charles Barkley, after blatantly elbowing an Angolan basketball
8576 opponent in the Olympics.
8578 I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said,
8579 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough.
8583 The show business newspaper Daily Variety reported in December that John
8584 Kricfalusi, creator of TV's "The Ren & Stimpy Show," was threatening legal
8585 action against the producers of the Comedy Central show "South Park" for
8586 ripping off a cartoon character. According to Kricfalusi, his character
8587 "Nutty the Friendly Dump," an animated piece of excrement, must have been
8588 the basis for "South Park"'s "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo," a holiday-
8589 dressed, singing, dancing piece of excrement.
8591 If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is
8592 no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
8594 If a deaf person swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
8596 If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is
8597 it considered a hostage situation?
8599 Is there another word for synonym?
8601 Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice?"
8603 When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs?
8605 Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"
8607 Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
8609 What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
8611 If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
8613 Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
8615 Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone
8618 If a stealth bomber crashes in a forest, will it make a sound?
8620 If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?
8622 Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
8624 Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
8626 If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to
8629 Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
8631 How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
8633 Why do they sterilize the needles for lethal injections?
8635 Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
8637 Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?
8639 Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies.
8642 In dog years, I'm dead.
8645 Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in
8646 case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in
8651 I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.
8654 Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend,
8655 and inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
8658 To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
8661 A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times
8665 Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is
8666 how dogs spend their lives.
8669 Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who stays up all night
8670 wondering if there really is a Dog?
8673 I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give
8677 I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts
8678 to bite people themselves.
8679 -- August Strindberg
8681 Ever consider what they [our pets] must think of us? I mean, here we come
8682 back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul--chicken, pork, half
8683 a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
8686 My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can.
8687 That's almost $7.00 in dog money.
8690 If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known
8691 will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
8694 You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.
8697 Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are
8701 Women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get
8703 -- Robert A. Heinlein
8705 In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have
8706 a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
8707 -- Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan
8709 When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
8712 Cat's Motto: No matter what you've done wrong, always try to
8713 make it look like the dog did it.
8716 Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won't buy
8717 the wag of his tail... No one appreciates the very
8718 special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
8719 -- Christopher Morley
8721 A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
8724 Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.
8727 The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
8730 He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life,
8731 his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat
8732 of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
8735 Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog
8739 I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
8742 If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
8745 Things that upset a terrier may pass virtually unnoticed by a Great Dane.
8748 I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt,
8749 and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
8752 There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
8755 One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
8756 No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
8759 (AP) Tokyo: Tokyo commuter Katsuo Katugoru caused havoc on a crowded tube
8760 train when his inflatable underpants unexpectedly went off. The rubber
8761 underwear was made by Katsuo himself, and designed to inflate to 30 times
8762 their original size in the event of a tidal wave.
8763 "I am terrified of water, and death by drowning is my greatest fear" said
8764 Katsuo, 48. "Unfortunately I set them off accidently while looking for a
8765 boiled sweet on a rush hour train. They were crushing everybody in the
8766 carriage until a passenger stabbed them with a pencil."
8768 Kindness cannot be taught by harshness --
8769 not by any amount of harshness.
8770 -- Raymond M. Smullyan / The Tao is Silent
8773 Full employment for lawyers
8777 Inflate your tires by all means, but then hide your bicycle pump where it
8779 -- attributed to a spokesman for the Nakhon Ratchasima hospital
8781 Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it
8782 holds the universe together....
8785 There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the
8786 Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced
8787 by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which
8788 states that this has already happened.
8791 Only two things are infinite, the universe and
8792 human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
8795 Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for
8796 those people who can't remember where they leave things.
8799 In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that
8800 our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
8803 It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception,
8804 is composed of others.
8805 -- John Andrew Holmes
8807 Technology is a way of organizing the universe so
8808 that man doesn't have to experience it.
8811 The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
8812 -- Kilgore Trout (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
8814 I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough
8815 to find your way around Chinatown.
8818 In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people
8819 very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
8822 The crux... is that the vast majority of the
8823 mass of the universe seems to be missing.
8826 Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
8827 bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
8828 bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
8831 There is a coherent plan in the universe,
8832 though I don't know what it's a plan for.
8835 We are an impossibility in an impossible universe. -- Ray Bradbury
8837 My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
8838 -- Christopher Morley
8840 I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing.
8841 It's not holding a charge.
8844 The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
8845 is that it has never tried to contact us.
8846 -- Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)
8848 As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using
8849 individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and
8850 employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
8851 -- pointy haired boss contest. (This was the winning quote from
8852 Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington)
8854 What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
8855 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
8857 E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used
8858 only for company business.
8859 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)
8861 This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important
8863 -- pointy haired boss contest
8864 (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
8866 Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe
8867 you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now,
8868 go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them.
8869 -- pointy haired boss contest
8870 (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing / 3M Corp.)
8872 My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed
8873 corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit
8874 it. The disk I gave her was write-protected.
8875 -- pointy haired boss contest. (CIO of Dell Computers)
8877 Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I' say."
8878 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
8880 "How About Friday?" My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for
8881 Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss
8882 work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her
8883 burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me."
8884 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
8886 "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is
8887 not going to discuss it with the employees."
8888 -- pointy haired boss contest
8889 (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
8891 We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform
8892 you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above."
8893 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
8895 One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project
8896 I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said "If
8897 I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!"
8898 -- pointy haired boss contest
8899 (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards)
8901 Speaking the Same Language: As director of communications I was asked to
8902 prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In
8903 the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach"
8904 used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the
8905 executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office and told that
8906 the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I
8907 asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia)?
8908 working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her
8909 demand that I be fired--and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR
8910 manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his
8911 dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me
8912 not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire
8913 staff came out--directing us that no words which could not be found in the
8914 local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I
8915 resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo
8916 by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.
8917 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Taco Bell Corporation)
8919 This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from a large
8920 communications company: "(Company name) is endeavorily determined to promote
8921 constant attention on current procedures of transacting business focusing
8922 emphasis on innovative ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of
8924 -- pointy haired boss contest. (Lucent Technologies)
8926 Marriage isn't a word, it's a sentence.
8927 -- unknown, seen on back of Charlottesville, VA cab
8929 Have you ever noticed... Anybody going slower than you is an idiot,
8930 and anyone going faster than you is a f*cking maniac?
8933 You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five
8934 miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where
8938 I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
8941 I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you
8942 must eat it with naked fat people.
8945 I went into a McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries."
8946 The girl at the counter said, "Would you like some fries with that?"
8949 The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be
8950 caught dead in otherwise.
8953 I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
8956 If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight.
8959 Don't spend two dollars to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the
8960 Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger.
8961 Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents.
8964 Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of
8965 Congress... But I repeat myself.
8968 Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least
8969 they can find Kuwait.
8972 My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake
8973 and threw her off the boat. That's how she learned how to swim. I
8974 said, "Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim."
8977 I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up
8981 What do people mean when they say the computer went down on me?
8984 Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when
8985 God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
8988 When you look at Prince Charles, don't you think that someone in the
8989 Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?
8992 Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to
8993 accept God's final word on where your lips end.
8996 [Modern economists are] "used to measuring the 'standard of living' by
8997 the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who
8998 consumes more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist
8999 economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since
9000 consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to
9001 obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption...
9002 The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic
9003 creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption
9004 to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity."
9005 -- E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977), from "Small Is Beautiful:
9006 A Study of Economics As If People Mattered", 1973.
9008 As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world
9009 is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of
9010 a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It is called
9011 a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and
9012 each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes.
9013 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
9015 When debugging, suspect the more complicated code,
9016 but keep an eye on the simple code lest it get too cocky.
9019 I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
9022 As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I am in touch
9023 with my inner sociopath.
9025 I have the power to channel my imagination into ever-soaring
9026 levels of suspicion and paranoia.
9028 I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones
9029 that are someone else's fault.
9031 I no longer need to punish, deceive, or compromise myself,
9032 unless I want to stay employed.
9034 In some cultures what I do would be considered normal.
9036 I honor my personality flaws for without them
9037 I would have no personality at all.
9039 Joan of Arc heard voices, too.
9041 I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those
9042 censorious, self-righteous people around me.
9044 I need not suffer in silence while I can still
9045 moan, whimper, and complain.
9047 As I learn the innermost secrets of people around me, they
9048 reward me in many ways to keep me quiet.
9050 When someone hurts me, I know that forgiveness is cheaper
9051 than a lawsuit, but not nearly as gratifying.
9053 The first step is to say nice things about myself.
9054 The second is to do nice things for myself, the third,
9055 to find someone to buy me nice things.
9057 As I learn to trust the universe,
9058 I no longer need to carry a gun.
9060 I am at one with my duality.
9062 Blessed are the flexible,
9063 for they can tie themselves into knots.
9065 Only a lack of imagination saves me from
9066 immobilizing myself with imaginary fears.
9068 I will strive to live each day as
9069 if it were my 50th birthday.
9071 I honor and express all facets of my being,
9072 regardless of state and local laws.
9074 Today I will gladly share my experience and advice, for there
9075 are no sweeter words than "I told you so."
9077 False hope is better than no hope at all.
9079 A good scapegoat is almost as good as a solution.
9081 Just for today, I will not sit in my living room all day in my
9082 underwear in the Hollywood Cafe. Instead, I will move my
9083 computer into the bedroom.
9085 Who can I blame for my problems?
9086 Just give me a minute.
9089 Why should I waste my time reliving the past when
9090 I can spend it worrying about the future?
9092 The complete lack of evidence is the surest
9093 sign that the conspiracy is working.
9095 I am learning that criticism is not nearly as
9096 effective as sabotage.
9098 Becoming aware of my character defects leads me
9099 naturally to the next step of blaming my parents.
9101 To have a successful relationship I must learn to
9102 make it look like I'm giving as much as I'm getting.
9104 I am willing to make the mistakes if someone else
9105 is willing to learn from them.
9107 Before I criticize a man, I walk a mile in
9108 his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he's
9109 a mile away and barefoot.
9111 Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
9113 Canadian = unarmed American with health care.
9115 Mohandas K. Gandhi's list of "Seven Blunders Of The World That Lead
9118 Science without humanity
9119 Pleasure without conscience
9120 Worship without sacrifice
9121 Knowledge without character
9122 Politics without principle
9123 Commerce without morality
9125 `Tis the longest Purse Conquers the longest Sword.
9128 A Man that will lie still, should never hope to rise;
9129 he that will lie in a Ditch and pray, may depend upon it he
9130 shall lie in the Ditch and die.
9133 He that has Truth on his Side, is a fool, as well
9134 as a Coward, if he is afraid to own it because of
9135 the Currency or Multitude of other Men's Opinions.
9138 Writers' earnings are the reward of industry and the prize of learning.
9141 Absolute necessity forces many a poor distressed
9142 person to do things which his very soul abhors.
9145 The rising greatness of the British nation
9146 is not owing to war and conquests,
9147 to enlarging its dominion by the sword,
9148 or subjecting the people of other countries to our power;
9149 but it is owing to trade.
9150 An estate is a pond, trade is a spring,
9151 conquest is a Thing attended with Difficulty, Hazard,
9152 Expense, and a Possibility of Miscarriage.
9155 24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a case. coincidence?
9158 When Human Folk at Table Eat,
9159 A Kitten must not mew for meat,
9160 Or Jump to grab it from the Dish
9161 (Unless it happens to be fish).
9164 When I am at peace with myself, and in good spirits--for
9165 instance, on a journey, in a carriage, or after a good meal,
9166 or while taking a walk, or at night when I can't sleep--then
9167 thoughts flow into me most easily and at their best. Where
9168 they come from and how -- that I cannot say; nor can I do
9170 -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
9172 It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has
9173 become easy to me. I assure you no one has given so much
9174 care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely
9175 a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently
9176 and diligently studied.
9177 -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
9179 If one has talent it pushes for utterance and torments
9180 one; it will out. And then one is out without questioning.
9181 And, look you, there is nothing in this thing of learning
9182 out of books. Here, here and here [the ear, the head, the
9183 heart] is your school. If everything is right there, then
9184 take your pen and down with it; afterwards ask the opinion
9185 of a man who knows his business.
9186 -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
9188 It is no just function of government to prohibit what is not wrong.
9191 If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
9192 than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not
9193 your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you.
9194 May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you
9195 were our countrymen.
9198 You may call, you may call,
9199 But the little black cats won't hear you,
9200 The little black cats are maddened,
9201 By the green light of the moon.
9202 -- Elizabeth Coatsworth
9204 on exception handling...
9205 the point is to create dependable systems. some languages are better than
9206 others for this. some languages provide no support for verification, although
9207 the semantics of most programming constructs are well established. exceptions
9208 predate much of the work done in formal verification of the last 30 years.
9209 many people have tried (with varying degrees of success) to fit exceptions into
9210 the grand scheme and make them verifiable. flaviu cristian has shown how
9211 exception handlers can be fitted with preconditions for their activation and
9212 postconditions for their completion.
9213 however, an attempt to postfit a system with hooks for verifiability will
9214 fail if the system is very large. and programming in this manner is simply a
9215 living hell. the programmer is not generally equipped to set up all of his
9216 handlers for this type of reasoning, even if he has a clear idea for when the
9217 handlers are to be invoked.
9218 what is needed is a general language structure that is capable of embodying
9219 the reasons and the services of the exception-like items in the system.
9222 why aren't programs published in better boxes?
9223 thicker cardboard, smaller profiles, thin like coffee table books,
9224 packaged with only essentials and fitting together well...
9225 you'd be proud to have a software library if the damn boxes weren't
9226 so flimsy and didn't take up so much room.
9228 Here's a thought... The government should only be allowed to test urine for
9229 drugs if they collect the pee in their own mouths.
9231 the drug war is a war on liberty that cannot possibly be won without the
9232 utter removal of all rights or at least the indefinite suspension thereof.
9233 urine testing is the best emblem of this horrible war; it makes the police
9234 look like a bunch of perverted piss sniffers. it is not cost effective
9235 for testing large numbers of people and it is insanely easy to fake if one
9236 wants to anyway. we need to stop the drug war and start the war on ignorance.
9237 this ignorance is an ignorance of the REAL scientifically determined results
9238 of using the drugs in question. studies show that marijuana, for example,
9239 DOES have therapeutic results and that it is almost completely HARMLESS.
9240 smoke inhalation is not harmless, but there are other ways to get stoned than
9241 by inhaling burning vapors. the root ignorance that MUST be warred upon is
9242 an ignorance of the fact that people should leave each other alone and not
9243 be such shrieking paranoid shrews about what their neighbors are doing.
9244 put down your goddamned binoculars, you nosy cretin, and get to the business
9245 of living your own life.
9247 drug prices are caused to soar by the organized crime elements
9248 that are behind the drug war (and behind the republican party).
9249 organized crime at the same time causes the war to look just as
9250 ridiculous as the carrie nation hatchet smashing of beer kegs so
9251 that people will buy more drugs and think that governmental
9252 authority is a crock. who benefitted from the intense CAMP
9253 activity in california? the mafia, because prices on marijuana
9254 soared. who got screwed by CAMP? the people, who made their
9255 honest living off of growing marijuana, which at the time was
9256 our nation's largest commodity. it's time to toss the republican
9257 crooks out of office on their asses. american patriots smoke pot:
9258 george washington, thomas jefferson, benjamin franklin, and thou,
9259 if you like. unamerican creeps are against marijuana and against
9260 the right of the america people to control their own destiny.
9261 i think it really is that simple.
9263 ode to a petty tyrant...
9264 what you don't seem to realize is that productivity is mood dependent.
9265 you seem to think that i need to be degraded repeatedly as some form of
9266 character builder, but what if someone came to this school as your student
9267 who had already been degraded enough in his life? what if every time you
9268 were cutting on them in some sly tricky sarcastic form you were in fact
9269 rubbing a sore spot and only inflaming their opinions as to your anus-nature?
9270 did you realize that one of your students comes back to the office
9271 and just swears and swears at the computer he's working at? this wasn't
9272 because the machine was bad, or his program was bad, or he was bad,
9273 but because he was mad at _you_.
9274 the solution, i think, is to respect people a whole lot more. we're
9275 not here for professors to deride us. this isn't some f*cking fraternity
9276 with you chumps as the chief hazing marshalls. we're here to learn and if
9277 our learning is colored with hues of condemnation and abuse, it diminishes
9278 you, it diminishes us, and it diminishes the whole search for truth and
9282 i don't believe the druidic and grecian universities had this
9283 same kind of "cut him up, slice and dice!" attitude that prevails
9284 at our fine american universities in this day and age. that
9285 attitude is surely a holdover from roman times, when the
9286 patriarchal society demanded discipline and obedience from all
9287 of its members, especially those with license to think. this
9288 approach is impractical these days (because it doesn't work
9289 very well), except at the higher levels in education, where
9290 it is still fervently practiced. root it out, toss it away;
9291 we don't need authoritarian learning, we need to follow the truth
9292 back to all its origins and forward to the myriad potential fruits.
9293 your rule book stopped being effective a long time ago.
9296 on artistic and technical integrity...
9297 in the beginning, i had a totally egotistical attitude that the rest of the
9298 world was screwed and i was right. this is actually somewhat correct, because
9299 one must have his own voice and thoughts, except for the fact that i was not
9300 _that_ correct and the world was not _that_ wrong. but at least what i chose
9301 to say and what i chose to be were right for me. over the past few years i
9302 have sought to learn the phd game, but i have been doing it by suppressing
9303 my own voice and allowing others to tell me what i should say. this is
9304 fundamentally f*cked, because now i have become dependent on them as my voice
9305 instead of relying on the tao to guide the research and for my own voice to
9306 speak what needs to be said. is it any wonder that i have devolved to this
9307 state of being unable to say anything on my own? after years of thinking for
9308 myself, i have allowed myself to become placed in a situation where i was
9309 dependent on someone else as my source of "the scoop". numerous problems
9310 result when others' biases are not what i want to express, yet they have
9311 potency to affect my presentation. the fact that when the bogus guru doesn't
9312 understand something, he usually tells you that you are the one who does not
9313 understand, is no help. he has no subtlety and yet seeks the original
9314 thoughts, leading him to warp other people's original thoughts into his own
9315 mental framework, often losing the original spark and leading the ideas astray
9316 into his own personal interests. i need to cut loose and start thinking on my
9317 own again. if the ideas in my research here have any merit at all, they have
9318 to be proven using my own metrics, not others' metrics. and this no longer
9319 seems possible in this stringently bulletheaded "hard science" department
9320 which instead only enforces conventional viewpoints and does not reach out
9321 into the unknown where the really interesting concepts live....
9324 niceness here is the ineffable.
9325 the only difference between you and the wolf is that you want to be nice,
9326 and fail. the wolf only wants to appear nice while remaining vile inside,
9327 and he succeeds. your demeanor to others is sometimes nice and sometimes
9328 not nice because of your failures in actually being the way you want to
9329 be. and the reason that you fail to be the way you want to be is that you
9330 lack the spiritual strength to keep it up. you can't synchronize your
9331 noble desires with your weak mind/body, and it is mainly because you reject
9332 spirituality itself that you fail in achieving spiritual strength.
9333 one cannot succeed in something one does not believe in except through
9334 dumb beginner's luck. and yet to fully believe in something is to be
9335 trapped in it, without the capacity to disbelieve and free oneself.
9336 you need a fluid belief that accepts what is true within the constraints
9337 of its validity. can this flow be strong enough to become who and what
9341 eek on the candidate from louis cypher... i notice with some lack of
9342 surprise that "ollie north" can be rearranged into the nice phrase
9343 "o, rot in hell". i think this needs to be made more public. perhaps
9344 we should publish an epigram regarding this particular correspondence
9345 between reality and republicanism.
9347 1. Commit to your business.
9348 2. Share your profits with all your associates.
9349 3. Motivate your partners.
9350 4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.
9351 5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
9352 6. Celebrate your success.
9353 7. Listen to everyone in your company.
9354 8. Exceed your customers' expectations.
9355 9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
9357 -- "Sam's Rules For Building A Business", from "Made In
9358 America: My Story", by Sam Walton.
9360 Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously.
9361 Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show
9362 enthusiasm--always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a
9363 silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula
9364 on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of
9365 this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really
9366 fools the competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart
9370 If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the
9371 impersonators would be dead.
9374 In elementary school, in case of fire you have to line
9375 up quietly in a single file line from smallest to
9376 tallest. What is the logic? Do tall people burn slower?
9377 -- Warren Hutcherson
9379 Every time a baseball player grabs his crotch, it makes
9380 him spit. That's why you should never date a baseball player.
9383 Some women hold up dresses that are so ugly and they
9384 always say the same thing: 'This looks much better on.'
9394 The creeping cat, looked
9398 The cat always leaves a mark on his friend.
9401 A herd of buffalo can move only as fast as the slowest buffalo.
9402 when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back
9403 that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a
9404 whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps
9405 improving by the regular culling of the weakest members.
9406 In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as
9407 the slowest brain cells. Intake of alcohol, we all know, kills brain
9408 cells, but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells
9409 first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker
9410 brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
9411 That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
9413 1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech
9414 which you are used to seeing in print.
9415 2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
9416 3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
9417 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
9418 5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon
9419 word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
9420 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
9422 -- George Orwell, "Politics And The English Language."
9424 Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
9425 -- Felix von Leitner (leitner@inf.fu-berlin.de)
9427 linux: the choice of a GNU generation.
9428 -- ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on t-shirts in 1993
9430 There are two types of Linux developers--those who can
9431 spell, and those who can't. There is a constant pitched
9432 battle between the two.
9434 > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain
9435 > why I should use Linux over BSD?
9437 No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on
9438 creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and
9439 it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just
9440 to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name".
9441 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird
9442 abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people
9443 just because it sounds too technical.
9444 -- Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux
9446 When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people
9447 just stare at you blankly and say, "Hey, I got those with the
9448 system, *for free*".
9451 We come to bury DOS, not to praise it.
9452 -- Paul Vojta, regarding Linux
9454 How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers
9455 are for. I only coded it.
9456 -- Attributed to Linus Torvalds
9458 I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
9459 Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
9462 I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated
9463 Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you.
9464 -- Vance Petree, Virginia Power
9466 If you want to travel around the world and be invited to
9467 speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix
9471 All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory...
9474 Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as
9475 the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).
9478 I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source
9479 code than 10 minutes listening to Muzak waiting for technical
9480 support which isn't.
9481 -- Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center
9483 Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one
9484 hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix.
9485 -- Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum
9487 We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications.
9488 Having the source code means that we are not held hostage
9489 by anyone's support department.
9490 -- Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software
9492 We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
9494 The chat program is in public domain. This is not the GNU
9495 public license. If it breaks then you get to keep both pieces.
9496 -- Copyright notice for the chat program
9498 DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random
9499 spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving
9500 a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also
9501 MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS.
9504 MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight--it took over
9505 ten years of careful development.
9506 -- dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca
9508 On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT.
9511 People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
9512 -- Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel
9514 Linux: The OS people choose without $200,000,000 of persuasion.
9517 The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.
9520 Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this
9521 kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the
9522 "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along).
9523 Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)"
9524 series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets
9525 and deliver this message of joy to the masses.
9526 -- Linus Torvalds, in the announcement for Linux kernel version 1.3.27
9528 > Linux is not user-friendly.
9530 It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly
9533 I tried to get some documentation out of Digital on this, but
9534 as far as I can tell even _they_ don't have it ;-)
9537 Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence,
9538 no matter _what_ the circumstances.
9541 Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin
9542 really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me
9543 they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in
9544 excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what
9545 they say if they had.
9546 -- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0
9548 Ooohh... "FreeBSD is faster over loopback, when compared to Linux
9549 over the wire". Film at 11.
9552 C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
9553 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
9555 If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah.
9557 Let's put it this way:
9558 1. A 32-bit counter will expire in little over a year.
9559 2. A 64-bit counter will expire in little over 2^32 years,
9560 or roughly the time the sun (not the Sun) is expected to expire.
9561 3. The odds of your computer hardware surviving the
9562 aforementioned event without reboot are very slim.
9565 The only way tcsh "rocks" is when the rocks are attached
9566 to its feet in the deepest part of a very deep lake.
9569 In accord to UNIX philosophy, PERL gives you enough rope
9571 -- Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz: Programming Perl
9572 (aka the Camel Book).
9574 Anyone can build a fast processor.
9575 The trick is to build a fast system.
9578 Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring
9579 it is the "Microsoft approach to programming" and
9580 should never be allowed.
9583 One OS to rule them all,
9584 One OS to find them.
9585 One OS to call them all,
9586 And in salvation bind them.
9587 In the bright land of Linux,
9588 Where the hackers play.
9589 -- J. Scott Thayer, with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien
9591 I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil.
9592 I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the
9593 devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.
9594 -- From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire",
9595 Sept. 1996 issue of Inforworld.
9597 After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the
9598 doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with
9599 truth, you'd risk a matter/anti-matter explosion.
9600 -- From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire",
9601 Sept. 1996 issue of Inforworld)
9603 The local betaware broker was sitting in the bar, keeping an eye
9604 for potential customers. It was easy to spot him, once you knew
9605 the signs. A slightly paranoid look, but still eager to meet
9606 new people. Not unlike a drug dealer or prostitute. This guy,
9607 however, was carrying a laptop.
9608 I sat in the chair beside him. "Any new stuff for
9609 Linux configuration?", I said, looking at the opposite wall
9611 The broker looked at me, startled, then quickly away. Then
9612 back at me. "What are you, a cop?" The traditional greeting of
9613 the underworld. It made me feel right at home.
9614 "Nope, I just want to install Deb..."
9615 "Shutup. I don't want to go to jail."
9616 I turned around, looked around, then turned back, and put my
9617 knife against his ribs. "Sing or die: where's software for
9618 managing a group of Debian boxes easily?"
9619 His face was pale, and he whispered through his teeth.
9620 "cfgtool. At Lasu's site. http://www.iki.fi/liw/programs/".
9621 I stood up, and walked quickly to the kitchen, and on
9622 out. As I was closing the kitchen door behind me, I heard the
9623 all too familiar sound of MessySoft Police Cars braking in the
9624 street. It would be a hectic night, but I was still one step
9626 -- Lars Wirzenius, advertising his cfgtool program
9628 Microsoft seems to have gotten a lot of mileage out of the
9629 C2 rating for NT with no network connection. I wonder if a B3
9630 rating for Linux with no power cord might be of value.
9631 -- riordan@math.umn.edu
9633 In the United States there is more space where nobody is
9634 than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.
9635 -- Gertrude Stein, explaining early 20th century America
9637 Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning
9638 "to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet".
9641 Women complain about premenstrual syndrome, but I think of
9642 it as the only time of the month that I can be myself.
9645 Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.
9648 I just broke up with someone and the last thing she said
9649 to me was, 'You'll never find anyone like me again!'
9650 I'm thinking, "I should hope not! If I don't want you,
9651 why would I want someone like you?"
9654 If you want to say it with flowers, a single rose says: "I'm cheap!"
9657 According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable
9658 undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other
9659 women. They say that women are too judgemental, where, of course,
9660 men are just grateful.
9663 I am not the boss of my house. I don't know when I lost it.
9664 I don't know if I ever had it. But I have seen the boss's job
9665 and I do not want it.
9668 In the last couple of weeks I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra.
9669 Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough
9670 attention to women's breasts?
9673 My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care
9674 and vehicle maintenance.
9677 We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines.
9678 They don't know if we can fight, if we can kill. I think we can.
9679 All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, "You see
9680 the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms."
9683 There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men
9684 are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause
9685 severe swelling. So what's the problem?
9688 There's very little sexual advice in men's magazines,
9689 because men don't think there's a lot they don't know.
9690 Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, "I know what
9691 I'm doing, just show me somebody naked."
9694 Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to.
9695 I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.
9698 Men do not like to admit to even momentary imperfection.
9699 My husband forgot the code to turn off the alarm. When
9700 the police came, he wouldn't admit he'd forgotten the
9701 code... he turned himself in.
9704 If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.
9707 Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman
9708 I don't like and give her a house.
9711 One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting
9712 as an advisor to scientists is to discourage them from
9713 expecting too much from mathematics.
9716 I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
9718 It is easy to guess why the rabble dislike cats.
9719 A cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury,
9720 cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures.
9721 -- Charles Baudelaire
9723 An artist must regulate his life.
9725 Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from
9726 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy
9727 ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another
9728 bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various
9729 occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation,
9730 dexterity, natation, etc.)
9732 Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm
9733 symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a
9734 week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am.
9736 My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded
9737 bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in
9738 white water, moldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese
9739 (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their
9740 skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the
9741 Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of
9744 I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When
9745 walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me.
9747 My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I
9748 always apologize very politely.
9750 I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a
9751 hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my
9752 temperature and gives me another.
9753 -- Erik Satie's description of "A Day in the Life of a Musician"
9755 Confront a child, a puppy and a kitten with sudden danger;
9756 the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy
9757 will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation,
9758 the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.
9759 -- H.H. Munro (Saki)
9761 It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted;
9762 instead, men have been exhausted by the problems. Fresh talent approaching
9763 the analysis of a problem without prejudice will always see new
9764 possibilities -- some aspect not considered by those who believe that a
9765 subject is fully understood. Our knowledge is so fragmentary that
9766 unexpected findings appear in even the most fully explored topics...
9767 In summary, there are no small problems. Problems that appear small
9768 are large problems that are not understood. Instead of tiny details
9769 unworthy of the intellectual, we have men whose tiny intellects cannot rise
9770 to penetrate the infinitesimal. Nature is a harmonious mechanism where all
9771 parts, including those appearing to play a secondary role, cooperate in a
9772 functional whole. In contemplating this mechanism, shallow men arbitrarily
9773 divide its parts into essential and secondary, whereas the insightful
9774 thinker is content with classifying them as understood and poorly
9775 understood, ignoring for the moment their size and immediately useful
9776 properties. No one can predict their importance in the future."
9777 -- Santiago Ramon y Cajal, "Advice for a Young Investigator," 1897
9779 He who would do good to another must do it in Minute
9780 Particulars: General Good is the plea of the scoundrel,
9781 hypocrite and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot
9782 exist but in minutely organized particulars.
9785 The Atoms of Democritus
9786 And Newton's Particles of Light
9787 Are sands upon the Red Sea shore
9788 Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
9791 To see a world in a grain of sand
9792 And a heaven in a wild flower, and:
9793 And did those feet in ancient time
9794 Walk upon England's mountains green? ...
9795 And was Jerusalem builded here
9796 Among these dark Satanic mills?
9799 The harlot's cry from street to street,
9800 Shall weave Old England's winding sheet.
9803 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
9804 In the forests of the night,
9805 What immortal hand or eye
9806 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
9808 Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
9811 The cat, an aristocrat in type and origin, whom we
9812 have slandered, merits at least our esteem.
9815 society's crumbling, but at least we're getting it televised.
9818 I think maybe it's my purpose in life.
9819 -- The "Guiness Book of World Records" TV show's winner for the category
9820 of longest combined finger nails for ten fingers.
9822 If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will
9823 leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for
9824 the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always
9825 uncertain. The English have developed their government in this direction, it
9826 is called 'muddling through,' and although a rather silly, stupid sounding
9827 thing, it is the most scientific way of progressing. To decide upon the
9828 answer is not scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door
9829 to the unknown ajar.
9830 We are only at the beginning of the development of the human race; of
9831 the development of the human mind, of intelligent life; we have years and
9832 years in the future. It is our responsibility not to give an answer today as
9833 to what it is all about, to drive everybody down in that direction and say:
9834 'This is the solution to it all.' Because we will be chained to the limit
9835 of our present imagination, we will only be able to do those things that we
9836 think are the things to do. Whereas, if we leave some room for discussion,
9837 and proceed in a way analogous to the sciences, then this difficulty will
9838 not arise. I believe, therefore, that although it is not the case today,
9839 there may some day come a time, or I should hope, that the power of
9840 government should be limited. That governments ought not to be empowered to
9841 decide the validity of scientific theories. That is a ridiculous thing for
9842 them to try to do. That they are not to decide the various descriptions of
9843 history or of economic theory or of philosophy.
9844 Only in this way can the real possibilities of the future human race be
9845 ultimately developed.
9846 -- Richard Feynman, from "The Beat Of A Different Drum: The Life And
9847 Science of Richard Feynman," by Jagdish Mehra. Published by Oxford
9848 University Press 1996.
9850 hey, when you come to think of it, isn't it
9851 only the assholes in life who have zero tolerance
9852 about things? and now they're trying to promote
9853 that as a virtue. i just don't buy it.
9856 The spirit of the age cannot be compassed by the processes of human
9857 reason. It is an inclination, an emotional tendency that works upon weaker
9858 minds, through the unconscious, with an overwhelming force of suggestion
9859 that carries them along with it. To think otherwise than our contemporaries
9860 think is somehow illegitimate and disturbing; it is even indecent, morbid
9861 or blasphemous, and therefore socially dangerous for the individual. He is
9862 stupidly swimming against the social current. Just as formerly the
9863 assumption was unquestionable that everything that exists takes its rise
9864 from the creative will of a God who is spirit, so the nineteenth century
9865 discovered the equally unquestionable truth that everything arises from
9866 material causes. Today the psyche does not build itself a body, but on the
9867 contrary, matter, by chemical action, produces the psyche. This reversal of
9868 outlook would be ludicrous if it were not one of the outstanding features of
9869 the spirit of the age. It is the popular way of thinking, and therefore it
9870 is decent, reasonable, scientific and normal. Mind must be thought to be an
9871 epiphenomenon of matter. The same conclusion is reached even if we say not
9872 "mind" but "psyche," and in place of matter speak of brain, hormones,
9873 instincts or drives. To grant the substantiality of the soul or psyche is
9874 repugnant to the spirit of the age, for to do so would be heresy.
9875 -- Carl Jung, from his 1933 book, "Modern Man In Search Of A Soul"
9877 There are many ways to explain an event, and some are better than
9878 others. Even if neuroscientists someday decode the entire wiring
9879 diagram of the brain, human behavior makes the most sense when it
9880 is explained in terms of beliefs and desires, not in terms of volts
9881 and grams. Physics provides no insights into the machinations of a
9882 crafty lawyer, and even fails to enlighten us about many simpler
9883 acts of living things. As Richard Dawkins observed, 'If you throw
9884 a dead bird into the air it will describe a graceful parabola,
9885 exactly as physics books say it should, then come to rest on the
9886 ground and stay there. It behaves as a solid body of a particular
9887 mass and wind resistance ought to behave. But if you throw a live
9888 bird in the air it will not describe a parabola and come to rest on
9889 the ground. It will fly away, and may not touch land this side of
9890 the county boundary.' We understand birds in terms of their innards.
9891 To know why they move and grow, we cut them open and put bits under
9892 a microscope. We need yet another kind of explanation for artifacts
9893 like a chair and a crowbar: a statement of the function the object is
9894 intended to perform. It would be silly to understand why chairs have
9895 a stable horizontal surface by cutting them open and putting bits of
9896 them under a microscope. The explanation is that someone designed
9897 the chair to hold up a human behind.
9898 -- Steven Pinker, from his book, "How The Mind Works,"
9901 What wonder, then, that the world goes from bad to worse, and that
9902 its evils increase more and more, as boredom increases, and boredom is the
9903 root of all evil. The history of this can be traced from the very beginning
9904 of the world. The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored
9905 because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the
9906 world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was
9907 bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together, then Adam and Eve and
9908 Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world
9909 increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they
9910 conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens.
9911 This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a
9912 terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
9913 -- Soren Kierkegaard, from "Either/Or"
9915 Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man
9916 is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live
9917 without other security, than what their own strength, and their own
9918 invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place
9919 for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no
9920 Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
9921 imported by Sea; no commodious building; no Instruments of moving, and
9922 removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the
9923 Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is
9924 worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of
9925 man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
9928 A house without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered
9929 cat, may be a perfect house perhaps, but how can it prove its title?
9932 The group cannot function if it has to maintain a large amount of
9933 individual preconceptions and personal experiences. The design group must,
9934 as a whole, have the ability and the opportunity to leave things behind,
9935 that is, select what to remember.
9936 If designers are to come up with novel ideas, they may have to forget
9937 what was 'named and framed' as a problem or solution earlier in the process.
9938 A group of designers needs to work its way through ideas, visions, and
9939 operative images without being held up by heavy demands for documentation of
9940 the process. In a creative design process one thing leads to another,
9941 analogies and metaphors influence the design thinking in new ways, and a
9942 certain amount of chaos is always present...
9943 The characteristics of oral cultures can be applied to group design...
9944 Group members need to repeat themselves, to be redundant and nonlinear in
9945 their arguments, to forget, to make references and analogies in a situated
9947 -- Tone Bratteteig & Erik Stolterman, "Design in Groups--And All That
9948 Jazz," in: M. Kyng & L. Mathiassen, "Computers and Design in Context,"
9951 Where science has progressed by searching for commonalities and
9952 patterns, the arts have celebrated diversity and have resisted attempts to
9953 encapsulate their activities in rules and formulae. They are the ultimate
9954 manifestations of the unpredictabilities and asymmetries of Nature. After
9955 all, what more chaotically unpredictable outcomes are there than some of
9956 those that issue from the human mind? So intractable has been the problem
9957 of finding pattern in creative activity, that few would even seek it. If
9958 one looks not at science and art, but at scientists and artists, one finds a
9959 reflection of this divide. Two populations that overlap only a little,
9960 convergent thinkers and divergent thinkers, specialists and generalists --
9961 these labels reflect the differences of which we speak...
9962 While science has enlarged its past horizons beyond order and symmetry
9963 to embrace diversity and unpredictability, the humanities have yet to
9964 appreciate the full force of commonality and pattern as a unifying factor in
9965 the interpretation of human creativity. Just as science has begun to
9966 appreciate the ways in which its view of Nature must reconcile the ways in
9967 which Nature is both simple and complex, so the arts and humanities must
9968 appreciate the lessons to be drawn from the regularities of Nature. It is
9969 not enough to collect examples of diversity: the coexistence of diversity
9970 with universal behavior is what requires exploration and reconciliation.
9971 -- John D. Barrow, from "The Artful Universe," Clarendon Press:
9974 I first became interested in Darwin in college when I read about
9975 Darwin's experience with John Gould. When Darwin returned to England after
9976 he visited the Galapagos, he distributed his finch specimens to professional
9977 zoologists to be properly identified. One of the most distinguished experts
9978 was John Gould. What was the most revealing was not what happened to Darwin,
9979 but what had not happened to Gould.
9980 Darwin's notes show Gould taking him through all the birds he had
9981 named. Gould kept flip-flopping back and forth about the number of
9982 different species of finches: The information was there, but he didn't quite
9983 know what to make of it. He assumed that since God made one set of birds
9984 when he created the world, the specimens from different locations would be
9985 identical. It didn't occur to him to look for differences by location. Gould
9986 thought that the birds were so different that they might be distinct species.
9987 What was remarkable to me about the encounter is the completely
9988 different impact it had on the two men. Gould thought the way he had been
9989 taught to think, like an expert taxonomist, and didn't see, in the finches,
9990 the textbook example of evolution unfolding right before him. Darwin didn't
9991 even know they were finches. So the guy who had the intelligence, knowledge,
9992 and the expertise didn't see the differences, and the guy with far less
9993 knowledge and expertise came up with an idea that shaped the way we think
9995 Darwin came up with the idea because he was a productive thinker. He
9996 generated a multiplicity of perspectives and theories. Gould would compare
9997 new ideas and theories with his existing patterns of experience. He thought
9998 reproductively. If the ideas didn't fit with what he had been taught, he
9999 rejected them as worthless. On the other hand, Darwin was willing to
10000 disregard what past thinkers thought and was willing to entertain different
10001 perspectives and different theories to see where they would lead.
10002 Most of us are educated to think like John Gould. We were all born
10003 to be spontaneous, creative thinkers. Yet a great deal of our education may
10004 be regarded as the inculcation of mind-sets. We were taught how to handle
10005 problems and new phenomena with fixed mental attitudes (based on what past
10006 thinkers thought) that predetermine our responses to problems or situations.
10007 In short, we were taught 'what' to think instead of 'how' to think. We
10008 entered school as a question mark and graduated a period.
10009 -- Michael Michalko, in "Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative
10010 Genius," Ten Speed Press, 1998.
10012 The wisdom of the late industrial era was always to start with what
10013 the customer needed and backtrack to which products and services those needs
10014 called for. That fit when the customer already understood the need and the
10015 product, and innovation meant a different shaped bottle for liquid detergent.
10016 In BLUR, technical change is happening so fast, your product must educate the
10017 customer (beepers for kids on dates?) and the customer must educate you. You
10018 can't afford the time delay to put something new in front of the customer.
10019 Instead, start with what technology will make possible, co-develop it as
10020 fast as you can with the customer, and be flexible and adaptive enough to
10021 adjust it according to customer needs as you go. As in software, the first
10022 release is your take on things. The customer enters the feedback loop and
10023 starts to influence things with release 2.0 and beyond.
10024 -- Stan Davis & Christopher Meyer, "Blur: The Speed Of Change In The
10025 Connected Economy," Addison-Wesley 1998.
10027 The traditional hidden curriculum of school demands that people of a
10028 certain age assemble in groups of about thirty under the authority of a
10029 professional teacher for from five hundred to a thousand times a year. It
10030 does not matter if the teacher is authoritarian so long as it is the
10031 teacher's authority that counts; it does not matter if all meetings occur
10032 in the same place so long as they are somehow understood as attendance. The
10033 hidden curriculum of school requires--whether by law or by fact--that a
10034 citizen accumulate a minimum quantum of school years in order to obtain his
10036 The translation of the need for learning into the demand for schooling
10037 and the conversion of the quality of growing up into the price tag of a
10038 professional treatment changes the meaning of 'knowledge' from a term that
10039 designates intimacy, intercourse, and life experience into one that
10040 designates professionally packaged products, marketable entitlements, and
10042 -- Ivan Illich, from "After Deschooling, What?"
10044 I consider children to be very expensive and complicated pets.
10047 History tells us that the most successful cures for poverty come from
10048 within. Foreign aid can help, but like windfall wealth, can also hurt. It
10049 can discourage effort and plant a crippling sense of incapacity. As the
10050 African saying has it, 'The hand that receives is always under the one that
10051 gives.' No, what counts is work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity...
10052 To be sure, we are living in a dessert age. We want things to be
10053 sweet; too many of us work to live and live to be happy. Nothing wrong with
10054 that; it just does not promote high productivity. You want high productivity?
10055 Then you should live to work and get happiness as a by-product.
10056 Not easy. They who live to work are a small and fortunate elite. But
10057 it is an elite open to newcomers, self-selected, the kind of people who
10058 accentuate the positive. In this world, the optimists have it, not because
10059 they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they
10060 are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement,
10061 and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer
10062 the empty consolation of being right.
10063 The one lesson that emerges is the need to keep trying. No miracles.
10064 No perfection. No millennium. No apocalypse. We must cultivate a
10065 skeptical faith, avoid dogma, listen and watch well, try to clarify and
10066 define ends, the better to choose means.
10067 -- David Landis, from "The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations: Why Some Are
10068 So Rich And Some So Poor," W. W. Norton & Co., 1998.
10070 During my travels around the country, visiting inner-city neighborhoods
10071 and talking to young people I've met there, I have been struck again and
10072 again by the stark differences between their childhoods and my own. When I
10073 was growing up in the Bronx, I wasn't rich -- at least not in a material
10074 sense, but I had the matchless blessing of being reared by two devoted
10075 parents--backed up by a platoon of doting aunts and uncles--who gave me
10076 the love, discipline and motivation I needed to succeed.
10077 Too many of today's kids are not getting the same kind of nurturing
10078 environment that I -- and most Americans -- once took for granted. As many
10079 as 15 million youngsters are 'at risk' in today's America. They are in
10080 danger of being lost for good unless the more fortunate among us step
10081 forward and lend a hand... It is this glorious cycle of giving, receiving
10082 and giving back that we want to pass along to the next generation of
10083 Americans. We want them to believe in America, and we want them to know
10084 that America believes in them.
10085 -- Colin Powell's autobiography, "My American Journey" (Ballantine, 1996)
10087 In the past fifteen years one big American company after another has
10088 done this [i.e., downsized itself] -- among them IBM, Sears, and GM. Each
10089 first announced that laying off 10,000 or 20,000 or even 50,000 people would
10090 lead to an immediate turnaround. A year later there had, of course, been no
10091 turnaround, and the company laid off another 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 --
10092 again without results. In many if not most cases, downsizing has turned out
10093 to be something that surgeons have warned against: 'amputation before
10094 diagnosis.' The result is always a casualty.
10095 But there have been a few organizations -- some large companies (GE,
10096 for instance) and a few hospitals (Beth Israel in Boston, for instance) --
10097 that quietly, and without fanfare, did turn themselves around, by rethinking
10098 themselves. They did not start out by downsizing. If fact, they knew that
10099 to start by reducing expenditures is not the way to get control of costs.
10100 The starting point is to identify the activities that are productive, that
10101 should be strengthened, promoted, and expanded. Every agency, every policy,
10102 every program, every activity should be confronted with these questions:
10103 'What is your mission?' 'Is it still the right mission?' 'Is it still
10104 worth doing?' 'If we were not already doing this, would we go into it now?'
10105 This questioning has been done often enough in all kinds of organizations --
10106 businesses, hospitals, churches, an even local governments -- that we know
10108 The overall answer is almost never 'This is fine as it stands; let's
10109 keep on.' But in some -- indeed, a good many -- areas, the answer to the
10110 last question is 'Yes, we should go into this again, but with some changes.
10111 We have learned a few things.'
10112 -- Peter F. Drucker, from "Managing in a Time of Great Change,"
10113 Truman-Talley Books/Dutton, 1995.
10115 Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
10116 General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase 'It is
10117 the busiest man who has time to spare.' Thus, an elderly lady of leisure
10118 can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece
10119 at Bognor Reis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, half an
10120 hour in a search for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address,
10121 an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding
10122 whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the mailbox in the next
10123 street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man [or woman] for three
10124 minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person [man or woman]
10125 prostate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.
10126 Granted that work (and especially paperwork) is thus elastic in its
10127 demands on time, it is manifest that there need be little or no
10128 relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which
10129 it may be assigned. A lack of real activity does not, of necessity, result
10130 in leisure. A lack of occupation is not necessarily revealed by a manifest
10131 idleness. The thing to be done swells in importance and complexity in a
10132 direct ration with the time to be spent. This fact is widely recognized,
10133 but less attention has been paid to its wider implications, more especially
10134 in the field of publication administration. Politicians and taxpayers have
10135 assume (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number
10136 of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done.
10137 Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication
10138 of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work
10139 for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem
10140 equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of officials and the
10141 quantity of the work are not related to each other at all. The rise in the
10142 toil of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law and would be much the
10143 same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even
10144 disappear. The importance of Parkinson's Law lies in the fact that it is a
10145 law of growth based upon an analysis of the factors by which that growth is
10147 The validity of this recently discovered law must rest mainly on
10148 statistical proofs, which will follow. Of more interest to the general
10149 reader is the explanation of the factors underlying the general tendency to
10150 which this law gives definition. Omitting technicalities (which are
10151 numerous) we may distinguish at the outset two motive forces. They can be
10152 represented for the present purpose by two almost axiomatic statements,
10153 thus: (1) 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals' and (2)
10154 'Officials make work for each other.'
10155 -- C. Northcote Parkinson, from "Parkinson's Law & Other Studies
10156 in Administration," (1957; Buccaneer Books ed., 1996).
10158 The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
10159 -- Leonardo Da Vinci
10161 Though it may be discomforting to admit, throughout history children
10162 have always played violent games. Early in this century, young boys played
10163 'war' with lines of tin soldiers, knocking them down one by one, or in one
10164 fell swoop, in a simulated battle. The next generation played cowboys and
10165 Indians or cops and robbers, where the youngsters themselves fell down and
10166 played dead. When parents stopped buying soldier figures and fake guns,
10167 children created their own weapons and continued to play out good guy/bad
10168 guy plots. Children are attracted to violence and critical studies of
10169 older media forms, including the fairy tale, suggest it is not always in
10170 children's best interests to remove from their cultural experience all
10171 material that parents deem is too provocative or violent.
10172 This is not a simple issue.
10173 Clearly much of the concern about violence in video games and other
10174 media is misplaced--the main sources of violent behavior lies elsewhere.
10175 These include parental violence toward children and violence between
10176 nations which portray the use of force in the real world by important
10177 institutions--parents and government--as an acceptable way to solve
10178 problems or vent anger.
10179 Nevertheless, the impact of video games, television, film or other
10180 media violence (such as the gory details of murders in the print media)
10181 probably has a negative impact on violent behavior in society, as does the
10182 proliferation of weapons.
10183 The impact of media violence on an individual child's behavior is
10184 probably very specific to the child and his or her social context. There
10185 is no evidence, for example, that the use of "Beat-'em-up" video games
10186 leads to violent behavior of well-adjusted youth coming from loving
10187 families. The impact is also probably specific to age. Just as it makes
10188 sense to restrict a 10-year-old's access to movies with extreme violent
10189 content, so it makes sense to restrict age-inappropriate video games. Age
10190 ratings on video game packages do appear to be helpful and appropriate.
10191 Most violent games today are cartoon-like. This will change as games
10192 become more realistic and, 3D, and eventually realistic of virtual reality,
10193 ensuring that this issue will not disappear.
10194 It is inappropriate for children of any age to spend significant
10195 parts of life using violent video games, or any video games for that
10196 matter. Conversely, for most children it makes little sense to deny access
10197 to age-appropriate games simply for fear that these will lead to antisocial
10198 behavior. Successful parenting is a question of balance.
10199 -- Don Tapscott, "Growing Up Digital"
10201 Literacy-based education, as all other literacy experiences, assumes
10202 that people are the same. It presumes that each human being can and must
10203 be literate. Just as the goal of industry was to turn out standardized
10204 products, education assumes the same task through the mold of literacy.
10205 Diplomas and certificates testify how like the mold the product is. To
10206 those who have problems with writing or reading, the labels legasthenic and
10207 dyslexic are applied. Dyscalculus is the name given to the inability to
10208 cope with numbers. The question of why we should expect uniform cognitive
10209 structures covering the literate use of language or numbers, but not the
10210 use of sounds, colors, shapes, and volume, is never raised. Tremendous
10211 effort is made to help individuals who simply cannot execute the
10212 sequentiality of writing or the meaning of successive numbers. Nothing
10213 similar is done to address cognitive characteristics of persons inclined to
10214 means different from literacy...
10215 Education needs to reconsider its expectation of a universal common
10216 denominator, based on the industrial model of standardization. Rather than
10217 taming and sanitizing the minds of students, education has not only to
10218 acknowledge differences in aptitudes and interests but also to stimulate
10219 them. Every known form of energy is the expression of difference and not
10220 the result of leveling.
10221 -- Mihai Nadin, "The Civilization of Illiteracy," (1997)
10223 Anthropologists have identified a number of characteristics that seem
10224 common to most non-technological societies past and present. These
10225 societies tend to value practical rather than abstract knowledge, their
10226 'primitive' rituals are part of the regular day-to-day realities of life,
10227 the groups tend not to support specialists other than the shaman, every
10228 member of the group can to some extent do every task, and all share the
10229 responsibility for all others. Principally, the 'primitive' takes a holist
10230 view of life that examines all social decisions for their effect on the
10231 community and the environment.
10232 These social values may fit well in the webbed communities of the
10233 mid-twenty-first century because they are more appropriate to small,
10234 relatively simple social structures that up to now had seemed to be
10235 disappearing... For such communities, the most valuable skills would be
10236 generalist rather than specialist. They would prize the ability to
10237 connect, to think imaginatively, to understand how data are related, to see
10238 patterns in machine-generated innovation, and to assess its social effect
10239 before releasing it on society...
10240 Today, billions of human talents could be on the verge of
10241 self-expression if we are willing to take new views and see where they
10243 -- James Burke & Robert Ornstein, "The Axemaker's Gift: A Double-Edged
10244 History of Human Culture," (Grosset/Putnam 1995).
10246 (History is) indeed little more than the register of
10247 the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
10250 All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
10253 The beauty of the second amendment is that it will
10254 not be needed until they try to take it.
10255 -- Thomas Jefferson
10257 No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
10258 -- Thomas Jefferson
10260 Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are
10261 the people's liberty's teeth.
10262 -- George Washington
10264 Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks
10265 and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
10266 -- Thomas Jefferson
10268 Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force.
10269 Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.
10270 -- George Washington
10272 I have found a certain type calls himself a liberal... Now I always
10273 thought I was a liberal. I came up terribly surprised one time when I
10274 found out that I was a right-wing, conservative extremist...
10277 Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come
10278 from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history
10279 of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of
10280 governmental power, not the increase of it.
10283 I believe there are more instances of abridgment of freedom of the
10284 people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by
10285 violent and sudden usurpations...
10288 You vote for me and I'll give you family values... I promise you the
10289 most ethical administration in the history of our country.
10290 -- William Jefferson Clinton
10292 Many give lip service, but few delegate authority in important
10293 matters. And that means all they delegate is dog-work. A real
10294 leader does as much dog-work for his people as he can: he can do
10295 it, or see a way to do without it, ten times as fast. And he
10296 delegates as many important matters as he can because that creates
10297 a climate in which people grow.
10298 -- Robert Townsend, founder of Avis Rent-a-Car
10300 True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the
10301 enrichment of the leaders. In combat, officers eat last. Most
10302 people in big companies today are administered, not led. They are
10303 treated as personnel, not people.
10304 -- Robert Townsend, founder of Avis Rent-a-Car
10306 How do you spot a leader? They come in all ages, shapes, sizes,
10307 and conditions. Some are poor administrators, some are not overly
10308 bright. One clue: since most people per se are mediocre, the true
10309 leader can be recognized because, somehow or other, his people
10310 consistently turn in superior performances.
10311 -- Robert Townsend, founder of Avis Rent-a-Car
10313 Before you commit yourself to a new effort, it's worth asking
10314 yourself a couple of questions: "Are we really trying to do
10315 something worthwhile here? Or are we just building another
10316 monument to some diseased ego?"
10317 -- Robert Townsend, founder of Avis Rent-a-Car
10319 Beware the boss who walks on water and never makes a mistake.
10320 Save yourself a lot of grief and seek employment elsewhere.
10321 -- Robert Townsend, founder of Avis Rent-a-Car
10323 Every genius is a revolutionary who produces a good deal of commotion
10324 in the world. After he has abolished the old rules he writes his own, the
10325 new ones, which no one even half understands; and after he has stupefied
10326 and bewildered everybody, he leaves the world neither understood nor
10327 regretted. Not always does the next generation comprehend and appreciate
10328 him properly. Sometimes it may even take a whole century.
10329 -- Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
10331 To assume a cat's asleep
10332 Is a great mistake.
10333 He can close his eyes and keep
10334 Both his ears awake.
10337 A most nerve-wracking confirmation of this came some time ago during
10338 an interview with the producer and the writer of the TV mini-series 'Peter
10339 the Great.' Defending the historical inaccuracies in the drama -- which
10340 included a fabricated meeting between Peter and Sir Isaac Newton -- the
10341 producer said that no one would watch a dry, historically faithful
10342 biography. The writer added that it is better for audiences to learn
10343 something that is untrue, if it is entertaining, than not to learn anything
10344 at all. And just to put some icing on the cake, the actor who played Peter,
10345 Maximilian Schell, remarked that he does not believe in historical truth and
10346 therefore sees no reason to pursue it.
10347 I do not mean to say that the trivialization of American public
10348 discourse is all accomplished on television. Rather, television is the
10349 paradigm for all our attempts at public communication. It conditions our
10350 minds to apprehend the world through fragmented pictures and forces other
10351 media to orient themselves in that direction...
10352 As a medium for conducting public business, language has receded in
10353 importance; it has been moved to the periphery of culture and has been
10354 replaced at the center by the entertaining visual image... When a culture
10355 becomes overloaded with pictures; when logic and rhetoric lose their
10356 binding authority; when historical truth becomes irrelevant; when the
10357 spoken or written word is distrusted or makes demands on our attention that
10358 we are incapable of giving; when our politics, history, education,
10359 religion, public information, and commerce are expressed largely in visual
10360 imagery rather than words, then a culture is in serious jeopardy.
10361 -- Neil Postman, from "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public
10362 Discourse in the Age of Show Business," (Viking Press 1986).
10364 It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have
10365 'something worth fighting for,' they do not feel like fighting. People who
10366 live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own
10367 interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause. Craving, not having,
10368 is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
10369 'Things which are not' are indeed mightier than 'things that are.' In
10370 all ages men have fought most desperately for beautiful cities yet to be
10371 built and gardens yet to be planted...
10372 It is strange, indeed, that those who hug the present and hang on to
10373 it with all their might should be the least capable of defending it. And
10374 that, on the other hand, those who spurn the present and dust their hands of
10375 it should have all its gifts and treasures showered on them unasked.
10376 Dreams, vision and wild hopes are mighty weapons and realistic tools.
10377 The practical-mindedness of a true leader consists in recognizing the
10378 practical value of these tools. Yet this recognition usually stems from a
10379 contempt of the present which can be traced to a natural ineptitude in
10380 practical affairs. The successful businessman is often a failure as a
10381 communal leader because his mind is attuned to the 'things that are' and his
10382 heart set on that which can be accomplished in 'our time.' Failure in the
10383 management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in
10384 the management of public affairs. And it is perhaps fortunate that some
10385 proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not feel
10386 crushed but are suddenly fired with the apparently absurd conviction that
10387 they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the
10389 -- Eric Hoffer, "The True Believer", 1951
10391 Bought me a cat, the cat pleased me,
10392 I fed my cat under yonder tree,
10393 Cat goes fiddle-i-fee, fiddle-i-fee.
10394 -- Traditional Folk Song
10396 Love is one aspect of what I have called the productive orientation:
10397 the active and creative relatedness of man to his fellow man, to himself and
10398 to nature. In the realm of thought, this productive orientation is
10399 expressed in the proper grasp of the world by reason. In the realm of
10400 action, the productive orientation is expressed in productive work, the
10401 prototype of which is art and craftsmanship. In the realm of feeling, the
10402 productive orientation is expressed in love, which is the experience of
10403 union with another person, with all men, and with nature, under the
10404 condition of retaining one's sense of integrity and independence. In the
10405 experience of love the paradox happens that two people become one, and
10406 remain two at the same time. Love in this sense is never restricted to one
10407 person. If I can love only one person, and nobody else, if my love for one
10408 person makes me more alienated and distant from my fellow man, I may be
10409 attached to this person in any number of ways, yet I do not love. If I can
10410 say, 'I love you,' I say, 'I love you in you also myself.' Self-love, in
10411 this sense, is the opposite of selfishness. The latter is actually a greedy
10412 concern with oneself which springs from and compensates for the lack of
10413 genuine love for oneself. Love, paradoxically, makes me more independent
10414 because it makes me stronger and happier--yet it makes me one with the
10415 loved person to the extent that individuality seems to be extinguished for
10416 the moment. In loving I experience 'I am you,' you-the loved person,
10417 you-the stranger, you-everything alive. In the experience of love lies the
10418 only answer to being human, lies sanity.
10419 -- Erich Fromm, from "The Sane Society", 1955
10421 # NO WARRANTY: THIS WORK IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. THE AUTHOR
10422 # PROVIDES NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, EITHER EXPRESS OR
10423 # IMPLIED, REGARDING THE WORK, INCLUDING WARRANTIES WITH
10424 # RESPECT TO ITS MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY
10425 # PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
10427 # Author contact: Peter Alexander Merel
10428 # Internet: pete@cssc-syd.tansu.oz.au
10429 # UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!cssc-syd!pete
10430 # Snail: 1/18-20 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia
10431 # Phone: +61 2 911 3130
10433 # Copyright: Copyright (C) 1992 Peter Alexander Merel
10434 # Permission to copy all or part of this work is granted,
10435 # provided that the copies are not made or distributed
10436 # for resale (except nominal copying fee may be charged),
10437 # and provided that the NO WARRANTY, author-contact, and
10438 # copyright notice are retained verbatim & are displayed
10439 # conspicuously. If anyone needs other permissions that
10440 # aren't covered by the above, please contact the author.
10445 # Peter Merel's Interpolation based upon the translations of:
10446 # Lin Yutang, Ch'u Ta-Kao, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English,
10447 # Richard Wilhelm, and Aleister Crowley.
10449 Seeing is of course indispensable to learning, particularly in
10450 science, which is of the eye. Visual aids therefore have a place in the
10451 laboratory. And most students, not being future scientists, will learn
10452 more from good films of important experiments than from their own fumbling
10453 attempts. But sometimes they must fumble too, and have a teacher who
10454 fumbles on occasion, and thinks all the time he is in class. One learns
10455 not by a photographic copying of things shown, but by an internal drama
10456 imitative of the action witnessed. When the instructor gropes for a word,
10457 corrects himself, interjects a comment or an analogy not directly called
10458 for, he gives a spectacle of man thinking which no slick film or televised
10460 -- Jacques Barzun, from "Science: The Glorious Entertainment", 1964
10462 Far from behaving (or should one say behavioring?) with the regular
10463 intelligibility of a clock, the bent of the living and of man in particular
10464 is to MISbehave, in all senses of the word--from developing allergies,
10465 which make poison out of delicacies, to committing crimes which, as in
10466 saints and statesman, can later seem the highest wisdom. It is even proved
10467 by research that man must have his ration of dreaming, that is, of
10468 irregular and inaccurate thinking. These facts of experience require that
10469 any science of the regularities of behavior be always qualified and
10470 admonished by another discipline, a learned lore of misbehavior.
10471 -- Jacques Barzun, from "Science: The Glorious Entertainment", 1964
10473 Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather
10474 a new wearer of clothes.
10475 -- Henry David Thoreau
10477 What men call social virtue, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue
10478 of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.
10479 -- Henry David Thoreau
10481 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
10482 What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
10483 -- Henry David Thoreau
10485 Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
10486 as when you find a trout in the milk.
10487 -- Henry David Thoreau
10489 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
10490 only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had
10491 to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did
10492 not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
10493 practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep
10494 and suck out all of the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike
10495 as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave
10496 close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and,
10497 if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
10498 it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it
10499 by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
10500 -- Henry David Thoreau, from "Walden; or Life in the Woods"
10502 The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and you will
10503 as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all Men with Riches or Glory, (which yet
10504 some Men place their Happiness in,) as you would to satisfie all Men's
10505 Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters; which though very agreeable and delicious
10506 fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive: And many
10507 People would with Reason prefer the griping of an hungry Belly, to those
10508 Dishes, which are a Feast to others. Hence it was, I think, that the
10509 Philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether Summum bonum (the chief
10510 good) consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation:
10511 And they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to
10512 be found in Apples, Plumbs, or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects
10513 upon it. For as pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves, but
10514 their agreeableness to this or that particulate Palate, wherein there is
10515 great variety: So the greatest Happiness consists, in the having those
10516 things which produce the greatest Pleasure, and the absence of those which
10517 cause any disturbance, any pain, which to different Men are very different
10518 things. If therefore Men in this Life only have hope; if in this Life they
10519 can only enjoy, 'tis not strange, nor unreasonable, they should seek their
10520 Happiness by avoiding all things that disease them here, and by preferring
10521 all that delight them; wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and
10522 difference. For if there be no Prospect beyond the Grave, the inference is
10523 certainly right, Let us eat and drink, let us enjoy what we delight in, for
10524 to morrow we shall die. This, I think, may serve to shew us the Reason,
10525 why, though all Men's desires tend to Happiness, yet they are not moved by
10526 the same Object. Men may chuse different things, and yet all chuse right,
10527 supposing them only like a Company of poor Insects, whereof some are Bees,
10528 delighted with Flowers, and their sweetness; others, Bettles, delighted with
10529 other kinds of Viands; which having enjoyed for a Season, they should cease
10530 to be, and exist no more for ever.
10531 -- John Locke, from "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding."
10533 Businesses will not buy Linux because there is no one to sue.
10536 Even if something new does not require a disruption of the old, there
10537 is no space. People, time and resources are fully stretched -- in many
10538 cases there is actually a cutting-back in resources.
10539 The paradox is that as we advance into the future the need for change
10540 gets greater and greater (to cope with changes in population, pollution,
10541 etc., and to make full use of our new technologies) but the possibility of
10542 change gets less and less because everything is already committed.
10543 A wise general does not commit all his troops but keeps a strategic
10544 reserve which can be used as the need and opportunity arise. Society does
10545 not do this, because we believe that we have all the bases covered and that
10546 progress will come about through evolution, the clash of opinions and the
10547 occasional lone innovator.
10548 In addition to allocating funds to research, most successful
10549 corporations also allocate funds to new business divisions or venture
10550 groups. Like the strategic reserves of a general, these groups are outside
10551 the day-to-day combat and are looking for new opportunities.
10552 Democracy could not easily tolerate this principle of strategic
10553 reserve, for the unallocated resources would be the target of every
10554 department or issue that felt it was under-funded. Emergency funds do
10555 exist, but not space and resources for change.
10556 The same thing applies on the thinking level. A person who knows all
10557 the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by
10558 rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a
10559 person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a
10560 reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.
10561 -- Edward deBono, from "I Am Right, You Are Wrong" (Penguin Books, 1990)
10563 The pleasantest time of day here is at sunset. Then accompanied by
10564 some fifteen girls and little children I walk through the village to the end
10565 of Siufaga, where we stand on an iron bound point and watch the waves splash
10566 us in the face, while the sun goes down, over the sea and at the same time
10567 behind the cocoanut covered hills. Most of the adult population is going
10568 into the sea to bathe, clad in lavalavas with buckets for water borne along
10569 on shoulder poles. All the heads of families are seated in the fatele
10570 (village guesthouse) making kava. At one point a group of women are filling
10571 a small canoe with a solution of native starch (arrowroot). And perhaps,
10572 just as we reach the store, the curfew-angelus will stop us, a wooden bell
10573 will clang mellowly through the village. The children must all scurry to
10574 cover, if we're near the store, it's the store steps, and sit tight until
10575 the bell sounds again. Prayer is over. Sometimes we are all back safely in
10576 room when the bell sounds, and then the Lord's Prayer must be said in
10577 English, while flowers are all taken out of their hair and the siva song
10578 stopped in the middle. But once the bell sounds again, solemnity, never of
10579 a very reliable depth, is sloughed off, the flowers replaced in the girls'
10580 hair, the siva song replaces the hymn, and they begin to dance, by no means
10581 in a puritan fashion. Their supper comes about eight and sometimes I have a
10582 breathing spell, but usually the supper hours don't jibe well enough for
10583 that. They dance for me a great deal, they love it and it is an excellent
10584 index to temperament, as the dance is so individualistic, and the audience
10585 think it is its business to keep up incessant comment.
10586 -- Margaret Mead, from "Coming of Age in Samoa"
10588 There aren't any embarassing questions--only embarassing answers.
10591 Recently one of us was leading a group of thirty Western
10592 businesspeople through Japan to learn about Japanese management techniques.
10593 We took the bullet train from Hiroshima to Osaka, and since the train
10594 stopped for only twenty seconds in Hiroshima, it would have been impossible
10595 to get all the executives and their luggage on the train at the same time.
10596 So we hired a trucking company and crew to transfer the luggage separately.
10597 The crew removed all luggage from each individual's room in Hiroshima and
10598 placed it in his pre-checked room in another chain's hotel in Osaka. Can
10599 you imagine doing that in the United States and ever seeing your luggage
10601 One of the executives, thinking his shoes were too worn, had discarded
10602 them in the wastepaper basket in his Hiroshima hotel room. Imagine his shock
10603 when he entered his room in Osaka and saw his old shoes carefully laid in
10604 the wastepaper basket there. Was the Japanese trucking company politely
10605 saying that these shoes still had life and should yet be thrown away, or was
10606 the company accommodating a crazy foreigner who liked to keep his shoes in
10607 the wastepaper basket? Either way, the company was organized for highly
10608 intelligent service at every level.
10609 -- Stan David and Jim Botkins, from "The Monster Under the Bed: How
10610 Business is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit",
10611 (Simon & Schuster, 1994).
10613 The term 'information' appears to cover too much that seems
10614 distinctive: knowledge, data, information in a narrow sense that some treat
10615 as synonymous with data, news, intelligence, and numerous other colloquial
10616 and specialized denotations and connotations. However, the distinctions
10617 implied by oppositions such as observations/theories, data/knowledge, raw
10618 intelligence/finished intelligence, accounting details/management are
10619 secondary, not fundamental, in characterizing information resources. They
10620 reflect only relative judgments. For instance, one person's knowledge is
10621 often another's raw data. What a vice president for marketing, production,
10622 or finance thinks he knows is just data to the chief executive officer's
10623 staff. What a scientist thinks he knows about the merits of a flu vaccine
10624 or the safety of a nuclear reactor is just data for presidential policy and
10625 politics. Data or knowledge are just types of information content--of
10626 greater or lesser value, of greater or lesser cost.
10627 -- Anthony Oettinger, from "The Information Resources Policy Handbook"
10629 Given the fact that there seems to be a fundamental willingness to
10630 accept the machine as almost human, the issue of what type of relationship
10631 is possible seems to center around what friendship-cues might be
10632 artificially generated. Appearance and voice quality could certainly be
10633 tailored so that the machine would look and sound attractive and friendly.
10634 The software could be written to suggest an interesting and unique
10635 personality, and the conversational style might appear as humorous and
10636 good-natured. The machine would not only impress us with its intelligence
10637 and knowledge of the world, but would also convey the impression that it
10638 was warm and understanding. Its ability to integrate our interests and
10639 attitudes into its own framework and its willingness to be influenced by
10640 our point of view would also enhance our respect for the machine. The fact
10641 that it appeared to take our opinions seriously might be regarded as a
10642 compliment, and it is clear that if we are prepared to accept compliments
10643 from a computer then we are implicitly accepting it as a social agent.
10644 Friendships are not made in a day, and the computer would be more
10645 acceptable as a friend if it simulated the gradual changes that occur when
10646 one person is getting to know another. At an appropriate time it might
10647 also express the endearment that stimulates attachment and intimacy. The
10648 whole process would be accomplished with subtlety to avoid giving an
10649 impression of overfamiliarity or ingratiation, which would be likely to
10650 produce irritation or animosity. After experiencing a wealth of powerful,
10651 well-timed indicators, the user would be likely to accept the computer as
10652 far more than a machine and might well come to regard it as a friend.
10653 -- Neil Frude, from "The Intimate Machine: Close Encounters with
10654 Computers and Robots," 1983.
10656 By this time the stars were moving out of the Hollywood Hotel and
10657 beginning to live in their own private houses with servants, most of whom
10658 were their peers in everything but sex appeal--which pinpoints the reason for
10659 the film capital's mass misbehavior. To place in the limelight a great
10660 number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs, give
10661 them unlimited power and instant wealth, is bound to produce a lively and
10665 The four years passed at college were, for his purposes, wasted.
10666 Harvard College was a good school, but at bottom what the boy
10667 disliked most was any school at all. He did not want to be one in a
10668 hundred -- one percent of an education. He regarded himself as the
10669 only person for whom his education had value, and he wanted the whole
10670 of it. He got barely half of an average.
10671 Long afterwards, when the devious path of life led him back to
10672 teach in his turn what no student naturally cared or needed to know
10673 [medieval history], he diverted some dreary hours of faculty meetings
10674 by looking up his record in the class-lists, and found himself graded
10675 precisely in the middle. In the one branch he most needed --
10676 mathematics -- barring the few first scholars, failure was so nearly
10677 universal that no attempt at grading could have had value, and
10678 whether he stood fortieth or ninetieth must have been an accident or
10679 the personal favor of the professor. Here his education failed
10680 lamentably. At best he could never have been a mathematician; at
10681 worst he would never have cared to be one; but he needed to read
10682 mathematics, like any other universal language, and he never reached
10684 -- Henry Adams, from "The Education of Henry Adams"
10686 The pedagogical method of observation has for its base the liberty of
10687 the child; and liberty is activity.
10688 Discipline must come through liberty. Here is a great principle which
10689 is difficult for followers of common-school methods to understand. How
10690 shall one obtain discipline in a class of free children? Certainly in our
10691 system, we have a concept of discipline very different from that commonly
10692 accepted. If discipline is founded upon liberty, consider an individual
10693 disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute
10694 and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not
10696 We call an individual disciplined when he is master of himself, and
10697 can, therefore, regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to
10698 follow some rule of life. Such a concept of active discipline is not easy
10699 either to comprehend or to apply. But certainly it contains a great
10700 educational principle, very different from the old-time absolute and
10701 undiscussed coercion to immobility.
10702 -- Maria Montessori, inventor of the "Montessori Method"
10704 A company could conceivably have within it a monastery-style unit
10705 that writes software... a research team organized like an improvisational
10706 jazz combo... a compartmentalized spy-network, with need-to-know rules,
10707 operating within the law, to scout for merger or acquisition
10708 possibilities... and a sales force organized as a highly motivated 'tribe'
10709 complete with its own war songs and emotional membership rituals.
10710 ...(T)he units of a flex-firm may draw information, people, and money
10711 from one another and from outside organizations as needed. They may be next
10712 door to one another or continents apart. Their functions may partly
10713 overlap, like information in a hyper-media data base; for other purposes,
10714 the functions may be logically, geographically, or financially divided.
10715 Some may use many central services provided by headquarters; others may
10716 choose to use only a few.
10717 In turn this requires freer, faster flows of information. This will
10718 mean crisscrossing, up, down, and sideways conduits--neural pathways that
10719 bust through the boxes in the table of organization so that people can trade
10720 the ideas, data, formulae, hints, insights, facts, strategies, whispers,
10721 gesture, and smiles that turn out to be essential to efficiency.
10722 -- Alvin Toffler, from "Powershift"
10724 Here in the newspaper business, we have definitely caught Internet Fever.
10725 In the old days, we used to -- get this! -- actually CHARGE MONEY for our
10726 newspapers. Ha! What an old-fashioned, low-tech, non-digital concept!
10727 Nowadays all of the modern newspapers spend millions of dollars operating
10728 Web sites where we give away the entire newspaper for free. Sometimes we
10729 run advertisements in the regular newspaper urging our paying customers to
10730 go to our Web sites instead. 'Stop giving us money!' is the shrewd marketing
10731 thrust of these ads. Why do we do this? Because all the other newspapers
10732 are doing it! This is called 'market penetration.'
10735 A highly competitive person has a hard row to hoe. There is no
10736 satisfaction in winning a competition unless it is a stiff and fair one.
10737 Stiff is easy to define; it is stiff if one's own realistic assessment of
10738 one's abilities make the odds long--the longer the odds, the greater
10739 satisfaction on winning. Fair is harder to define, for if one wins a
10740 contest against long odds, there must be a reason. The odds weren't really
10741 long; they only appeared to be so. Isn't it unfair to appear to be an
10742 underdog when one really isn't? Let's start with some obvious distinctions:
10743 A professional gambler needs to win in order to earn his living. Fairness
10744 is not his concern. He tries to be unfair in various ways: Keeping cards up
10745 his sleeve is one way that the rest of us universally deplore; the morality
10746 of concealing his skill to attract dupes is hardly less questionable.
10747 Fairness means at least an honest deal (no hidden cards) and no intentional
10748 concealment of one's abilities.
10749 -- Herbert A. Simon, from "Models of My Life" (Basic Books, 1991)
10751 The United States is trying to promote democracy around the
10752 world and holds itself up as a model. However, it is obvious that
10753 our democracy has been reduced to charisma and money.
10754 Surely intelligent and conscientious citizens can make wise and
10755 informed decisions? I for one cannot... I do not know anyone who
10756 spends more hours than I do in search of information and wisdom, yet
10757 it avails me little. Many people with power spend much of their time
10758 flying around the world, being wined and dined, but that means they
10759 have little time to do their homework.
10760 Is the idea of democracy based on an informed electorate just a dream?
10762 -- Ronald Hilton, founder of WAIS (World Association of
10763 International Studies).
10765 When there is communication without need for communication,
10766 merely so that someone may earn the social and intellectual prestige
10767 of becoming a priest of communication, the quality and communicative
10768 value of the message drop like a plummet... In the arts, the desire
10769 to find new things to say and new ways of saying them is the source
10770 of all life and interest. Yet every day we meet with examples of
10771 painting where, for instance, the artist has bound himself from the
10772 new canons of the abstract, and has displayed no intention to use these
10773 canons to display an interesting and novel form of beauty, to pursue
10774 the uphill fight against the prevailing tendency toward the commonplace
10776 I speak here with feeling which is more intense as far as concerns
10777 the scientific artist than the conventional artist, because it is in
10778 science that I have first chosen to say something. What sometimes
10779 enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of
10780 great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original,
10781 for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies
10782 rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and
10783 limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and
10784 beauty, wherever it may be seen.
10785 -- Norbert Wiener, from "The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics
10786 and Society" (1950)
10788 Please do not suppose that the only function of puzzles is to entertain.
10789 Puzzles are a way of teaching mathematics. Indeed, they are the best way to
10790 teach it. Fred Hoyle, the famous British astronomer who taught mathematics
10791 at Cambridge University for twenty years states in strong terms his belief
10792 that mathematics should never be 'taught' at all. Students must learn for
10793 themselves. How? By solving puzzles. The functions of the teacher should
10794 be, first, to select in a wise way the material on which the puzzles are
10795 based, second, to make sure the puzzles are well suited in difficulty to the
10796 sophistication of the student, third, to answer questions, and finally, if
10797 the teacher is capable of it, to give an occasional word of inspiration.
10800 A cat's idea of what is comfortable and what is not
10801 is incomprehensible to a human.
10804 In the sciences, hypothesis always precedes law, which is to say, there is
10805 always a lot of tall guessing before a new fact is established. The
10806 guessers are often quite as important as the fact-finders; in truth, it
10807 would not be difficult to argue that they are more important. New facts are
10808 seldom plucked from the clear sky; they have to be approached and smelled
10809 out by a process of trial and error, in which bold and shrewd guessing is an
10810 integral part. The Greeks were adept at such guessing, and the scientists
10811 of the world have been following the leads they opened for more than two
10813 -- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy," 1982
10815 I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.
10818 If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face,
10819 you should go home and examine your conscience.
10822 I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything,
10823 I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.
10826 Those sighs of a dog! They go to the heart so much more
10827 deeply than the sighs of our own kind because they are utterly
10828 unintended, regardless of effect, emerging from one who, heaving
10829 them, knows not that they have escaped him!
10832 (Of dogs) I marvel that such small ribs as these can
10833 cage such vast desire to please.
10836 'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark
10837 Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home;
10838 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark
10839 Our coming, and look brighter when we come.
10842 Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed
10843 Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without
10844 Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This praise,
10845 which would be unmeaning Flattery, if inscribed over human ashes, is
10846 but a just Tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a Dog.
10847 -- Inscription on the monument raised for Lord Byron's dog, Boatswain
10849 Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
10852 A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
10855 Living with a dog is easy--like living with an idealist.
10858 The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool
10859 of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you,
10860 but he will make a fool of himself too.
10861 -- Samuel Butler (d. 1902), Note-Book
10863 The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to his level
10864 of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.
10867 I agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like a conscience.
10870 For the strength of the pack is the wolf,
10871 and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
10874 All of the animals except humans know that the
10875 principal business of life is to enjoy it.
10878 Cowardly dogs bark loudest. -- John Webster
10880 Dogs like to obey. It gives them security. -- James Herriot
10882 A dog's best friend is his illiteracy. -- Ogden Nash
10884 Take a dog for a companion and a stick in your hand. -- English Proverb
10886 A lean dog shames its master. -- Japanese Proverb
10888 The dog was created specially for children.
10889 He is a god of frolic.
10890 -- Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
10892 Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece
10893 of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.
10896 All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers,
10897 is contained in the dog.
10900 The dog has an enviable mind; it remembers the nice things in life
10901 and quickly blots out the nasty.
10902 -- Barbara Woodhouse
10904 If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along
10905 with them as we do with people.
10908 Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
10911 You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.
10912 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
10914 A dog has the soul of a philosopher. -- Plato
10916 The more I see of men, the more I like dogs. -- Madame Anne Maria de Stael
10918 The reason a dog has so many friends is that
10919 he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
10922 We see how he is at once in a world of smells of which
10923 we know nothing, which so occupy and absorb his attention
10924 as to make him practically blind to everything about him
10925 and deaf to all sounds, even his master's voice impatiently
10929 A man may smile and bid you hail
10930 Yet wish you to the devil;
10931 But when a good dog wags his tail,
10932 You know he's on the level.
10933 -- Submitted to www.dog.com by TJ Brown
10935 Old dogs, like old shoes, are comfortable.
10936 They might be a bit out of shape and a little
10937 worn around the edges, but they fit well.
10940 In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to
10941 train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open
10942 oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
10945 I'd be happy to have my biography be the stories of my dogs.
10946 To me, to live without dogs would mean accepting a form of blindness.
10949 Every dog should have a man of his own. There is nothing like a
10950 well-behaved person around the house to spread the blanket for him,
10951 or bring him his supper when he comes home man-tired at night.
10954 Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor
10955 together could have raised money enough
10956 to buy a quarter share in my little dog...
10957 -- Ernest Thompson Seton
10959 I'd rather have an inch of dog than miles of pedigree. -- Dana Burnet
10961 ...in a healthy dog-owner relationship, praise is virtually
10962 an automatic reaction, an attitude toward the dog, a way of
10963 living with the dog. The most common mistake is to consider
10964 praise as simply a reward.
10965 -- The Monks of New Skete
10967 Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of
10968 current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing
10969 all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are
10970 especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
10973 A dog is not "almost human" and I know of no greater insult to the
10974 canine race than to describe it as such. The dog can do many things
10975 which man cannot do, never could do, and never will do.
10978 imagine yourself lying in the tall purple grass with the sharp blades
10979 rubbing up against your flesh like rusty razors while the dark red
10980 moon drops drips of blood into the oozing green lake down the hill.
10981 tattered fish things leap and whirl in the lake while the tired orange
10982 sun flickers on the verge of going out. the clacking and biting
10983 insects that infest the grass crawl in and out of your body as you lie
10984 there trying to relax while large unseen animals rummage in the forest
10985 causing trees to crash down as they pass. dust blows in thick
10986 whirlwinds making the sooty air impossible to breathe as you hack
10987 chunks of meat up from within, but symbiotic parasites rush to repair
10988 the damage while tickling your insides ferociously.
10992 It all comes from here, the stench and the peril. -- Frodo
10994 I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing
10995 clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion,
10996 freedom of the press, protection against standing armies,
10997 restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force
10998 of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of
10999 fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of
11001 -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787
11003 A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against
11004 every government on earth, general or particular; and what no
11005 just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.
11006 -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers, 12:440
11008 It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen...
11009 should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their
11010 governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in
11011 civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom
11012 of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a
11013 standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of
11014 liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four
11016 -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1788
11018 A bill of rights [will] guard liberty against the legislative as
11019 well as the executive branches of the government.
11020 -- Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789
11022 The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings,
11023 alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its
11024 object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil.
11025 -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789
11027 By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate
11028 freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce
11029 against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions
11030 of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters
11031 against doing evil which no honest government should decline.
11032 -- Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1788
11035 You must scratch me there!
11036 Yes, above my tail! Behold,
11040 prickly herbal scent
11041 flips me inside out and back;
11047 Tail of black dog keeps good time.
11048 Pounce! good dog! good dog!
11050 The best exercise for a cat is another cat.
11051 -- Jo and Paul Loeb
11054 In deep sleep hear sound
11055 Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
11056 Will find in morning.
11059 Is not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic?
11060 What is the history of their speculative mind? -- a blank.
11061 What their literature? -- a copy. They have left not a single
11062 discovery in any abstract science; not a single perfect or
11063 well-formed work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfection
11064 of narrow and accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the ideal
11065 forms of self-idolizing art -- the Romans imitated and admired;
11066 the Greeks explained the laws of nature -- the Romans wondered and
11067 despised; the Greeks invented a system of numerals second only to
11068 that now in use -- the Romans counted to the end of their days
11069 with the clumsy apparatus which we still call by their name; the
11070 Greeks made a capital and scientific calendar -- the Romans began
11071 their month when the Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the new
11072 moon. Throughout Latin literature, this is the perpetual puzzle
11073 -- Why are we free and they slaves? we praetors and they barbers?
11074 Why do the stupid people always win, and the clever people always
11079 The rule for today.
11080 Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
11083 'Well, then,' the Cheshire Cat went on, 'you see a dog growls
11084 when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now, I
11085 growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry.
11086 Therefore I'm mad.'
11087 -- Cheshire Cat (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
11091 stalk the birds with care--
11092 twitch my tail and they may scare;
11093 human gets a share.
11098 my flatness is intended,
11099 i have rubber bones.
11104 close to my sensitive tail
11105 may be time to shriek.
11109 fish in pond bigger
11110 than me; goldfish in bowl just
11111 the right size--kerchomp.
11114 Yet gentle will the griffin be,
11115 Most decorous and fat,
11116 And walk up to the Milky Way
11117 And lap it like a cat.
11121 Blur of motion, then--
11122 Silence, me, a paper bag
11127 Returns with gifts of plump birds
11128 Your foot just squashed one.
11130 Every good teacher has his own special art; with some, it is a genius
11131 for a clarity that sometimes is more lucid than the complexities of the
11132 subject justify. Sometimes it is a talent for apothegm or leading
11133 suggestion, a word that evokes a vista or an idea that opens a world. I
11134 cannot now quite remember what Professor Beard's special technique was. He
11135 was clear, he was suggestive, he was witty. But none of these things could
11136 quite account for the hold he had on the smug and the rebels alike, on both
11137 the pre-lawyers and pre-poets. I suspect it was a certain combination of
11138 poetry, philosophy, and honesty in the man himself, a sense he communicated
11139 that politics mattered far beyond the realm commonly called political, and
11140 an insight he conveyed into the life that forms of government furthered or
11141 betrayed. One morning he came into class as usual, stood against the wall,
11142 and half-closing his eyes, said:
11143 "Gentlemen, today we are to discuss the budget system in State
11144 government. I am sure that must seem to you a dull subject. But if you will
11145 tell me, gentlemen, how much per capita a nation spends on its Army, on its
11146 Navy, on education, on public works, I shall be able to tell you, I think,
11147 as much about that nation as if you gave me the works of its poets and
11149 We listened with revised and revived attention to an exposition, full
11150 of figures and detail, of the State budget system. Charles A. Beard showed
11151 us what politics had to do with the life beyond it and which it made
11152 possible. And he taught us, too, the difference between the forms of
11153 government and the living substance of its operations... Nobody who has ever
11154 listened to Beard can disdain the study of politics in favor of the study of
11155 "higher things". He has been too well taught, as tragic world events have
11156 since shown, how government may nourish or destroy "higher things".
11157 -- Irwin Edman, speaking of the historian Charles A. Beard
11159 There is no substitute for a lifetime.
11162 The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life
11163 are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound
11164 historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of
11165 cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to
11166 keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the
11167 technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every
11168 village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important
11169 technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages.
11170 According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the
11171 decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from
11172 the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did
11173 not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough
11174 in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on
11175 horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay
11176 that allowed populations to grow and civilization to flourish among the
11177 forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and
11178 London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
11179 -- Freeman Dyson, from his 1985 Gifford Lectures
11182 Small brave carnivores
11183 Kill pine cones and mosquitoes,
11184 Fear vacuum cleaner
11188 Oh, no! Help! I got outside!
11189 Let me back inside!
11191 If you're a geek at a circus
11192 and the only tool you have is a sledgehammer,
11193 then you'll use it everywhere.
11194 We're Microsoft and
11195 Windows is our sledgehammer.
11198 An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile--
11199 hoping it will eat him last.
11200 -- Winston Churchill
11202 Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
11205 When a friend speaks to me, whatever he says is interesting.
11208 Up to his shoulders
11209 In grasses coarse as silk,
11210 The white cat with the yellow eyes
11211 Sits with his paws together,
11212 Tall as a quart of milk.
11215 Life is a gamble, at terrible odds--if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
11218 What is the most innocent place in any country?
11219 Is it not the insane asylum?
11220 These people drift through life truly innocent,
11221 unable to see into themselves at all.
11224 We live by our genius for hope;
11225 we survive by our talent for dispensing with it.
11228 People change and forget to tell each other.
11231 Professional work of any sort tends to narrow the mind, to limit the point
11232 of view, and to put a hallmark on a man of a most unmistakable kind. On the
11233 one hand are the intense, ardent natures, absorbed in their studies and
11234 quickly losing interest in everything but their profession, while other
11235 faculties and interest 'fust' unused. On the other hand are the bovine
11236 brethren, who think of nothing but the treadmill and the corn. From very
11237 different causes, the one from concentration, the other from apathy, both
11238 are apt to neglect those outside studies that widen the sympathies and help
11239 a man to get the best there is out of life... the medical man, perhaps more
11240 than any other man, needs that higher education of which Plato speaks,
11241 'that education in virtue from youth upwards, which enables a man to pursue
11242 the ideal perfection.' It is not for all, nor can all attain it, but there
11243 is comfort and help in the pursuit, even though the end is never reached.
11246 We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us,
11247 but for ours to amuse them.
11250 Scientific research is solving puzzles. The pleasure to
11251 be got from it is the pleasure of the crossword or jig-saw addict.
11252 First the blank diagram, or the scatter of meaningless pieces; then
11253 an occasional tentative clue or the few pieces of the same colour
11254 that seem to fit together; next a period of frustration, going over
11255 and over the list of clues, or trying piece after piece in the most
11256 unlikely conjunctions; then--ah the sweet joy of the word that
11257 completes a doubtful acrostic, or the section that springs to life
11258 as a tree, or a house or a pot of flowers; finally, the completion
11259 of the pattern, with clue after clue solved in rapid succession, or
11260 the last few pieces tumbling into place. By accepting the challenge,
11261 the tension, the concentration, the frustration, we heighten the
11262 pleasure of the moment or revelation. The more difficult the puzzle,
11263 the greater the tension--and so much greater the delights of solution.
11266 The most certain way to succeed is to always try one more time.
11270 hmmm... box is stinky.
11271 where are those boots that he has?
11272 they smell close enough.
11275 This one is from my dogs to my cats:
11277 I will sniff your butt
11278 I like your litter box gifts
11282 You can drop humans anywhere and they'll thrive.
11283 Only the rat does as well.
11288 in heart may become a wolf
11289 when the catnip blooms
11292 housecat haiku of realization:
11294 birds flicker past me,
11295 safely in their cage of glass.
11296 wait! who's in the cage?
11300 At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud.
11301 I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest
11302 intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos,
11303 creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence,
11304 forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is
11305 preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more
11306 valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs
11307 of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and
11308 in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is
11309 ourselves. I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put
11310 shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we
11311 avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos. And I
11312 think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for
11313 convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and
11314 sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain
11315 individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
11316 -- Kenneth Clark, from "Civilization"
11318 If you want to feel proud of yourself, you need to do things of which
11319 to feel proud. Feelings follow actions.
11322 To learn and from time to time to apply what
11323 one has learned--isn't that pleasure?
11324 -- Confucious, 500 B.C.
11326 top 6 rejected ingredients in ben & jerry's "phish food" flavor:
11328 6. capers and whitefish
11329 5. caramel-covered seaweed nuggets
11331 3. magic mushroom ripple
11334 and the number one rejected ingredient...
11340 top 6 reasons to own a house rabbit:
11342 6. learning to splice electrical wires
11343 5. free compost everywhere in the house
11344 4. having your ankles bitten and scratched during rutting season
11345 3. finding out what night feces are and that special feeling they give
11346 when between your toes
11347 2. having guests ask "what is that incredible stench?"
11349 and the number one reason to own a house rabbit...
11351 1. if all else fails, there's always hasenpfeffer.
11355 My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send
11356 everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
11359 Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
11360 time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
11363 We will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that
11364 we have no sense of humor. A man will admit to being a coward, a liar, a
11365 thief, an adulterer, a poor mechanic, or a bad swimmer, but tell him that
11366 he has a dreadful sense of humor and you might as well have slandered his
11367 mother. Even if he is civilized enough to pretend to make light of your
11368 statement, he will still secretly believe that he has, not only a good
11369 sense of humor, but one superior to most. This is all the more surprising
11370 when you consider that not one person in a million can give you any kind of
11371 intelligent answer as to what humor is or why he or she laughs.
11374 To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write
11375 for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired
11376 people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task
11377 for men who know good writing from bad.
11380 ugh. all thoughts scrambled. now eating them on toast. -- fred t. hamster
11382 I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
11385 Housework can kill you if done right.
11388 All human evil comes from a single cause--
11389 man's inability to sit still in a room.
11392 An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
11393 cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
11396 School curricula reinforce the impression that logical subjects like math
11397 and science require starting with basics and progressively adding more
11398 sophisticated conclusions and applications. But the very nature of logical
11399 laws make it equally feasible to work backward from conclusions, or
11400 observations, to hypotheses. Deduction and induction are entirely
11402 In reality, scientists and mathematicians do not do their crafts in the
11403 linear, progressive way their subjects are usually taught. Practitioners
11404 commonly start with a flash of insight (the stereotypical light bulb lighting),
11405 a hunch, a dream, a guess, an elaborate hypothesis or postulate, and then work
11406 backward, forward, and around it to try to make it fit with established
11407 knowledge. Physicists or engineers commonly try using complex mathematical
11408 gadgets to solve the problems that interest them without knowing or caring how
11409 the math was logically derived. Experimenters tinker in laboratories and make
11410 surprising discoveries that theoreticians then labor to try to explain
11411 logically. Alternatively, theorists like Einstein come up with wild new
11412 theories like relativity that experiments may have to struggle for decades to
11413 find a way to test and prove. Scientific knowledge does not grow incrementally
11414 down a predictable track. Rather it grows volcanolike, sometimes oozing in
11415 patient rivulets, sometimes erupting in fiery ferment, and occasionally
11416 exploding, blowing away the rock of established truth.
11417 Pedantic, linear teaching rarely conveys the true drama and mystery of the
11418 human quest for knowledge. School plods where human imagination naturally
11420 -- Lewis J. Perelman, from "School's Out"
11422 the people who are the most in need of help are often the
11423 same ones who cannot receive it. for example, those who
11424 believe all human minds are isolated and who have built their
11425 lives on that principle can only rarely come to appreciate the
11426 connections between us. their loneliness and self-imposed
11427 isolation seems to be the normal state of affairs to these
11428 people; little do they realize that if they relaxed their
11429 armored ego barrier, then the thoughts and emotions of others
11430 would start to be perceptible. they desperately cling to the
11431 belief system that IS their problem in such a way that they
11432 cannot see the solution, nor can they even believe that the
11433 solution exists. should these people consciously strive to
11434 relax that barrier, it would dissolve quickly. many just
11435 cannot do that and never will. many can however, and can
11436 relax in the invisible web of human mentation that underlies
11437 all of our consciousnesses like a huge, comfortable and active
11441 All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part
11442 of every organism to live beyond its income.
11445 Attempts to mimic the mind of man are as yet in their infancy.
11446 The road, however, is open, and it conjures up thoughts which are
11447 exciting but also in some ways frightening. What if man eventually
11448 were to produce a mechanical creature, with or without organic
11449 parts, equal or superior to himself in all respects, including
11450 intelligence and creativity? Would it replace man, as the superior
11451 organisms of the earth have replaced or subordinated the less well-
11452 adapted in the long history of evolution?
11453 It is a queasy thought: that we represent, for the first time
11454 in the history of life on the earth, a species capable of bringing
11455 about its own possible replacement. Of course, we have it in our
11456 power to prevent such a regrettable denouement by refusing to build
11457 machines that are too intelligent. But it is tempting to build them
11458 nevertheless. What achievement could be grander than the creation
11459 of an object that surpasses the creator? How could we consummate
11460 the victory of intelligence over nature more gloriously than by
11461 passing on our heritage, in triumph, to a greater intelligence--of
11463 -- Isaac Asimov, in "Asimov's Guide to Science"
11465 Home is the place where,
11466 when you have to go there,
11467 they have to take you in.
11470 The closer that journalism has approached the standing of an
11471 authentic profession, oddly enough, the less attractive its
11472 individual practitioners appear to have become in the public
11473 mind. This irony is traceable in large measure to the
11474 distinguished work of the press in its persistent recording
11475 of the futility and manifold injustices of the Vietnam War and
11476 its disclosures in the Watergate scandal. Those protracted
11477 traumas scarred the national psyche, which in turn found
11478 solace by blaming the press for battening on the troubles it
11479 apparently delighted in reporting. Reporters came to be seen
11480 as arrogant in the conduct of their duties, habitually
11481 adversarial in posture, often insensitive, and unapologetic
11482 about substituting their own right to demand the truth for the
11483 public's right not to be stalked ruthlessly like so much grist
11484 for the milling of tomorrow's headlines. This impression has
11485 been deepened by the coarseness of television news, which is
11486 essentially a headline service trading on its emotional graphic
11487 appeal and dealing so superficially with events and so rarely
11488 with the complex issues behind them that its effect is to
11489 divert rather than to inform; TV remains primarily an
11490 entertainment medium that has not challenged the role of
11491 newspapers as the prime recorders of the community's serious
11492 business. But because we see television correspondents
11493 questioning the President or putting it to the police chief,
11494 they become personalities in their own right, far more imposing
11495 than a faceless byline over a printed story.
11496 -- Richard Kluger, from "The Paper: The Life and Death of the New
11497 York Herald Tribune"
11499 The fat cat on the mat may seem to dream
11500 Of nice mice that suffice for him, or cream.
11501 -- J. R. R. Tolkien
11503 Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very
11504 unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the
11505 best lawyer in the world can't get you off.
11508 A man will never become a philosopher by worrying forever
11509 about the writings of other men, without ever raising his own
11510 eyes to nature's works in the attempt to recognize there the
11511 truths already known and to investigate some of the infinite
11512 number that remain to be discovered.
11515 A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
11518 One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight
11519 of the shore for a very long time.
11522 Today in America--the child of European imperialism--a new revolution
11523 is rising. It is the revolution of our time. It is the only revolution
11524 that involves radical, moral, and practical opposition to the spirit of
11525 nationalism. It is the only revolution that, to that opposition, joins
11526 culture, economic and technological power, and a total affirmation of
11527 liberty for all in the place of archaic prohibitions. It therefore
11528 offers the only escape for mankind today; the acceptance of technological
11529 civilization as a means and not as an end, and--since we cannot be saved
11530 either by the destruction of civilization or by its continuation--the
11531 development of the ability to reshape that civilization without
11533 -- Jean-Francois Revel
11535 There is a great man who makes every man feel small.
11536 But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
11537 -- G. K. Chesterton
11539 What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties
11540 are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most
11541 people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
11542 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
11544 Our memories are card indexes--consulted, and then put back in
11545 disorder, by authorities whom we do not control.
11548 More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency
11549 (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single
11550 reason--including blind stupidity.
11553 We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of
11554 the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
11557 The best is the enemy of the good.
11560 The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
11563 A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking big money.
11564 -- Senator Everett M. Dirksen
11566 During the last three decades, neuroscientists throughout the world
11567 have probed the nervous system in fascinating detail and have learned a
11568 great deal about the laws of mental life and about how these laws emerge
11569 from the brain. The pace of progress has been exhilarating, but--at the
11570 same time--the findings make many people uncomfortable. It seems somehow
11571 disconcerting to be told that your life, all your hopes, triumphs and
11572 aspirations simply arise from the activity of neurons in your brain. But
11573 far from being humiliating, this idea is ennobling, I think.
11574 Science--cosmology, evolution and especially the brain sciences--is
11575 telling us that we have no privileged position in the universe and that our
11576 sense of having a private nonmaterial soul "watching the world" is really an
11577 illusion (as has long been emphasized by Eastern mystical traditions like
11578 Hinduism and Zen Buddhism). Once you realize that far from being a
11579 spectator, you are in fact part of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the
11580 cosmos, this realization is very liberating. Ultimately this idea also
11581 allows you to cultivate a certain humility--the essence of all authentic
11582 religious experience.
11583 -- V. S. Ramachandran, in "Phantoms in the Brain"
11585 A celebrity is one who is known to many persons
11586 he is glad he doesn't know.
11589 Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest
11590 source of joy, and with death as his greatest source of anxiety.
11591 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
11593 By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man
11594 has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes
11595 in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
11598 Scientists, who nearly always speak extemporaneously in public
11599 presentations, note that humanists almost always read papers
11600 at professional meetings, and rarely show slides--except for
11601 art historians, who always use two screens simultaneously--even
11602 for the most visual subjects. Why, 'we' ask, do 'they' not
11603 realize that written and spoken English are different languages,
11604 and that very few people can read well in public--a particular
11605 irony since humanists supposedly hold language as their primary
11606 tool of professional competence. But 'they,' on the other hand,
11607 rightly ridicule 'our' tendencies to darken a lecture room even
11608 before we reach the podium and to rely almost entirely upon a
11609 string of pictures thereafter. A stale joke proclaims that if
11610 Galileo had first presented the revolutionary results of Siderius
11611 Nuncius as a modern scientific talk, his opening line could only
11612 have been: 'first slide please.'
11613 -- R. R. Shearer and S. J. Gould, in "Science," 5 Nov 99
11615 Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire,
11616 he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.
11619 Futurology is a fashion. The approach of the end of the current
11620 millennium has stimulated it. But it looks like a fashion in decline. It
11621 seems to have peaked when public interest in the future was enlivened by
11622 debate between scientific perfectibilians and apocalyptic visionaries. The
11623 optimists predicted a world made easy by progress, lives prolonged by
11624 medical wizardry, wealth made universal by the alchemy of economic growth,
11625 society rectified by the egalitarianism of technologically prolonged
11626 leisure. The pessimists foresaw nuclear immolation or population explosion
11627 or a purgative world revolution -- a cosmic struggle reminiscent of the
11628 millennium of Christian prophetic tradition -- which would either save or
11630 No one gets excited by such visions today. Scientific progress has
11631 been, at best, disappointing -- encumbering us with apparently insoluble
11632 social and moral problems, or else, at worst, alarming -- threatening us
11633 with the mastery of artificially intelligent machines or genetically
11634 engineered human mutants. Economic growth has become the bogey of the
11635 ecologically anxious. Meanwhile, world revolution and the nuclear holocaust
11636 have been postponed, and apocalyptic prophecy has resorted to forebodings --
11637 variously unconvincing or uncompelling -- about ecological cataclysms.
11638 Proliferation of nuclear weapons and the discovery that even peaceful
11639 nuclear installations can poison great parts of the world has, in some ways,
11640 made disaster impend more darkly; but lingering extinction and little local
11641 nuclear holocausts seem to lack, in public esteem the glamour of a sudden
11642 and comprehensive armageddon. The future has become depressing rather than
11643 dramatic, and futurology has lost allure.
11644 -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in "Millennium: a History of the Last
11645 Thousand Years", 1995.
11647 We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.
11648 -- Jane Austen, in "Pride and Prejudice"
11652 dances with a beam of light,
11655 Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
11658 Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
11659 supposed to be doing at that moment.
11663 He flies without wings,
11664 Fast as a shadow can go.
11665 Black slash on white snow.
11668 Once quick with rat life,
11669 Now just carnage: tail, head, fur.
11673 Willy stalks field mice,
11674 Wild Bill to small buffalo.
11675 Kills them just for show.
11678 Cats are like haiku:
11679 Subtle, delicate, perfect
11682 Once fat with meat.
11684 Rat food and bat food
11685 Supplement cat food.
11687 The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
11690 I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the
11691 Boston telephone directory than by the first two thousand people on the
11692 faculty of Harvard University.
11693 -- William F. Buckley
11695 Civility will always have its critics. In 1997, when New York's
11696 chief judge proposed rules requiring lawyers on opposing sides to be civil
11697 to each other, the prominent divorce lawyer Raoul Felder wrote a caustic
11698 response in the New York Times. "If lawyers truly care about the causes
11699 they represent, they should, on occasion, get hot under the collar, raise
11700 their voices, become pugnacious," he wrote. Conflict, argued Felder, is
11701 what the legal profession is about. Civility, he concluded, "may not always
11702 be the right reaction in an adversarial courtroom."
11703 This argument reminds me of the commentary by Ed Rollins that it
11704 was his job to diminish the reputation of his client's opponent. Nastiness,
11705 in other words, is not merely the option but the responsibility of the
11706 political profession. The legal profession too: "I have never heard a
11707 client complain that his or her lawyer was rude," Felder tells us. In both
11708 cases, law and politics, rudeness is evidently justified on the ground that
11709 rudeness is what the client is paying for.
11710 As any student of civility would, I find this a fascinating notion:
11711 that there are professions for which incivility is a requirement. I suppose
11712 I disbelieve it; or, rather, if there are such professions, I am skeptical
11713 of their morality, because they fail to convey a message that we are, all of
11714 us, not lone drivers but fellow passengers. It may be that law and politics
11715 seem so dismally rude because their principal ethic is merely one of
11716 victory, an ethic materially enriching and emotionally satisfying, but
11717 morally unimportant. If lawyers are paid to be rude and political
11718 consultants to be nasty, and if their incivility is linked to the fact that
11719 they are also paid to win, we should scarcely be surprised that professional
11720 athletes find it comfortable to brawl with fans, spit on umpires, take bites
11721 out of ears, and, in one unfortunate case nicknamed "Assassin," specialize
11722 in injuring fellow football players. After all, the athletes want to win too.
11723 Some etiquette. Some democracy.
11724 -- Stephen L. Carter, in "Civility", 1998
11726 A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.
11729 A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him.
11730 -- William Lyon Phelps
11732 Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.
11733 -- "Alain" [Emile Chartier]
11735 Newspapers have changed their character during my lifetime. They used
11736 to be the principal carriers of the world's news, but television holds that
11737 position now. Television, however, has serious limitations; it is a visual
11738 medium, and it is dominated by the principle that nothing is news unless you
11739 can take a picture of it. It is here that the newspapers still hold their
11740 own; so much of what goes on in the political world cannot be effectively
11741 photographed; statesmen, in their expensive but uninteresting clothes, make
11742 very poor TV and their prolonged deliberations are dull when we see them on
11743 the box. Politics must be interpreted, and newspapers have become their
11744 untiring interpreters... Intelligence, not perhaps on its highest level
11745 but far beyond the sheer emotionalism of TV, has found its refuge in the
11747 -- Robertson Davies, from "The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading,
11748 Writing, & The World of Books".
11750 To improve communications, work not on the utterer but on the recipient.
11753 Despite the incorporated homicide or suicide called war, despite the
11754 crimes of individuals, the natural conflicts of domestic parties and
11755 national ambitions, I believe, after fifty years of studying history,
11756 that man is physically, mentally, and morally better, on the average,
11757 than at any time in the past; that our poverty, so disgraceful amid our
11758 unprecedented wealth, is not so shameless as the slavery that supported
11759 an enfranchised minority in Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome; that our
11760 marital chaos and moral laxity are no worse than in the England of
11761 Charles II or the France of Louis XV; that more good books are being
11762 published than ever before and more widely read; and that art will soon
11763 rise to a new level of self-discipline and social significance.
11764 I mourn the ugly slums of our cities and the distress of those who
11765 cannot find work for their hands to do; but I see realized around me,
11766 in an unparalleled proportion of our people, such a spread of home
11767 ownership, family income, physical comforts, educational opportunities,
11768 political freedom, and scientific powers as would amaze and gladden our
11769 Founding Fathers if they could return to see what their progeny and
11770 their institutions have done... This time, this moment, is as good as
11771 any that ever was, and is incomparably more wonderful.
11774 I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
11775 Imagination is more important than knowledge.
11776 Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
11779 You do not lead by hitting people over the head.
11780 That's assault, not leadership.
11781 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
11783 When elephants fight, only the grass gets hurt. -- Swahili Saying
11785 Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.
11786 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
11788 The gingham dog and the calico cat
11789 Side by side on the table sat;
11790 'Twas half-past eight and (what do you think!)
11791 Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!
11794 bob1: I was going to just sublime into the roll
11795 and see what I could get....
11796 fred: slime, you mean? you're not going to evaporate, right?
11797 bob1: Whatever, formally declare I shall be in control
11798 and see if anyone listens...
11799 fred: that's the doctrine of the supine?
11800 bob1: By sublime I meant so slowly that you don't notice.
11801 fred: the lime doctor sublimes merging into the supine
11802 mesmerized accomplished cow-orking accomplices slimefully.
11803 bob1: mmm I see. Anyway I must rejoin the family and stuff.
11804 Perhaps I shall be back later. I must get into work early
11805 tomorrow if I want all this to work.
11806 fred: by the time i spline my spleen in the stream
11807 i will have strummed the strumpet's stoking stork.
11808 bob1: Holy f*ck batman.
11810 There is nothing to be learned from history anymore.
11811 We're in science fiction now.
11814 One of the interesting features of communication is that, broadly
11815 speaking, to be perceived, information must reside in more than one context.
11816 We know what something is by contrast with what it is not. Silence makes
11817 musical notes perceivable; conversation is understood as a contrast of
11818 contexts, speaker and hearer; words, breaks and breaths. In turn, in order
11819 to be meaningful, these contexts of information must be relinked through
11820 some sort of judgment of equivalence or comparability. This occurs at all
11821 levels of scale, and we all do it routinely as part of everyday life.
11822 None of this is new in theories of information and communication: we
11823 have long had models of signals and targets, background, noise and filters,
11824 signals, and quality controls. We are moving this insight here to the level
11825 of social interaction. People often cannot see what they take for granted
11826 until they encounter someone who does not take it for granted.
11827 -- Geoffrey C. Bowker & Susan Leigh Star, from "Sorting Things Out:
11828 Classification and Its Consequences," (MIT Press).
11830 If there is technological advance without social advance, there is,
11831 almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
11832 -- Michael Harrington
11834 Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
11837 When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
11840 Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
11843 He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.
11846 A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional, and are
11847 the portals of discovery.
11850 But this 'long run' is a misleading guide to current affairs.
11851 In the long run we are all dead.
11852 -- John Maynard Keynes
11854 Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove
11855 that they are not idiots.
11858 Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human
11859 intelligence long enough to get money from it.
11862 I don't like money actually, but it quiets my nerves.
11866 Black heart on white fur
11867 Green eyes ... last sight for poor rat,
11868 Plaything of a God.
11871 Black face, cold blue eyes
11872 fish pond, golden fish surprise.
11873 Wet paws ... not water!
11875 spelling offers more
11876 room for controversy than
11877 the world's religions
11881 caffeination in its most
11886 sangha are the three jewels
11887 a buddhist cleaves to
11891 charging into the twenty-first
11895 fred barks, lily hides
11896 two dogs of the same breeding
11899 haikus force structure
11900 on an otherwise very
11905 three celtic names held by three
11909 The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is
11910 conversation. I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of
11911 life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose, I
11912 should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and
11913 speech... The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats
11914 not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with
11915 an understanding man, and a rough disputant, he presses hard upon me and
11916 pricks me on both sides; his imaginations raise up mine to more than
11917 ordinary pitch; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up
11918 to something above my self...
11919 -- Michel Montaigne
11923 of meats, kibbles and catnip
11924 will i deign to sniff.
11928 fine fur flies from me
11929 filling all of your clean rooms
11935 to quizzical expression:
11936 "fix outdoors for me!"
11941 bores more cats even than own
11946 Open the door, Man!
11947 I wish to go out ... what's this?
11948 Wet fur? I think not.
11951 Monsoon for felines.
11952 They ground when wet. No static.
11953 Rainy faced disgrace.
11955 Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
11958 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
11961 We are not sure that words can always save lives, but we know that
11962 silence can certainly kill.
11963 -- James Orbinski of "Doctors Without Borders", winners of the 1999 Nobel
11966 The masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own
11967 personal existence, and still less rule society in general.
11968 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
11970 It is precisely because man's vital time is limited, precisely because
11971 he is mortal, that he needs to triumph over distance and delay. For an
11972 immortal being, the motor-car would have no meaning.
11973 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
11975 We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of
11976 creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things,
11977 he is not lord of himself... Hence the strange combination of a
11978 sense of power and a sense of insecurity.
11979 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
11981 The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting
11982 along. Consequently, though his possibilities and his powers be enormous,
11983 he constructs nothing. And it is this type of man who decides in our time...
11984 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
11986 In the schools, which were such a source of pride to the last century, it
11987 has been impossible to do more than instruct the masses in the technique
11988 of modern life; it has been found impossible to educate them.
11989 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
11991 Like cars over the years, computers are getting easier to use, and in
11992 some respects the changes are analogous to the placement of gauges by idiot
11993 lights. And, like drivers who favor gauges, some computer users belittle the
11994 trend toward easy-to-use systems. These users appear to thrive on
11995 complexity. They are often experts who enjoy getting the most out of their
11996 computers; they view computing as an end rather than a means.
11997 Unlike cars, easy-to-use computers aren't called idiot-proof, they're
11998 called user-friendly. As a marketing achievement, this terminology ranks
11999 with 'Palmetto bugs,' which is a term used in Florida-at the instigation of
12000 some genius in the real estate industry, I'm told-for large, flying
12002 -- John Shore, from "The Sachertorte Algorithm: And Other Antidotes
12003 to Computer Anxiety".
12005 Ads manipulate us into being dissatisfied... We are encouraged to feel
12006 anxious or sorry for ourselves. Advertising teaches us to live on the level
12007 of the pleasure principle. This leads to impulse-control problems and to
12008 feelings of entitlement. "I am the center of the universe and I want what I
12009 want now." This thinking creates citizens who are vulnerable to quick fixes.
12010 It leads to citizens filled with self-pity, which is the flip side of
12012 Advertising teaches that people shouldn't have to suffer, that pain
12013 is unnatural and can be cured. They say that effort is bad and convenience
12014 is good and that products solve complex human problems. Over and over people
12015 hear that their needs for love, security and variety can be met with
12016 products. They may reject the message of any particular ad, but over time
12017 many buy the big message -- buying products is important.
12018 -- Mary Pipher, in "The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families"
12020 I have no use for bodyguards, but I have a very special use for two
12021 highly trained certified public accountants.
12024 Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
12027 Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
12028 -- Jean-Paul Sartre
12030 Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful
12031 objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill
12032 gives us modern art.
12035 What is this talk of "release?" We do not make software "releases."
12036 Our software "escapes" leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
12037 assurance people in its wake.
12038 -- MoncriefJM@gvl.esys.com, as seen on the on the PerlTK mailing list
12040 It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a
12041 corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
12042 -- Henry David Thoreau
12046 Cat on the carpet, melting...
12047 Here pussy. Here God!
12051 you don't eat all my buds, cat.
12052 i'll smoke you instead.
12054 The future is made of the same stuff as the present. -- Simone Weil
12056 he's such a tight ass that when he breaks wind all the dogs howl.
12059 See the kitten on the wall,
12060 Sporting with the leaves that fall,
12061 Withered leaves, one, two and three
12062 Falling from the elder tree,
12063 Through the calm and frosty air
12064 Of the morning bright and fair.
12065 -- William Wordsworth
12067 But the Kitten, how she starts,
12068 Crouches, stretches, paws and darts!
12069 -- William Wordsworth
12071 All those who succeed in America -- no matter what their circle of
12072 origin or their sphere of action -- are likely to become involved in the
12073 world of the celebrity... This world has not been built from below, as a
12074 slow and steady linking of local societies and metropolitan 400s. It has
12075 been created from above... With the incorporation of the economy, the
12076 ascendancy of the military establishment, and the centralization of the
12077 enlarged state, there have arisen the national elite, who, in occupying the
12078 command posts of the big hierarchies, have taken the spotlight of publicity
12079 and become subjects of the intensive build-up. At the same time, with the
12080 elaboration of the national means of mass communication, the professional
12081 celebrities of the entertainment world have come fully and continuously into
12082 the national view. As personalities of national glamour, they are at the
12083 focal point of all the means of entertainment and publicity. Both the
12084 metropolitan 400 and the institutional elite must now compete with and
12085 borrow prestige from these professionals in the world of the celebrity.
12086 But what are the celebrities? The celebrities are The Names that
12087 need no further identification. Those who know them so far exceed those of
12088 whom they know as to require no exact computation. Wherever the celebrities
12089 go, they are recognized, and moreover, recognized with some excitement and
12090 awe. Whatever they do has publicity value. More or less continuously, over a
12091 period of time, they are the material for the media of communication and
12092 entertainment. And, when that time ends -- as it must -- and the celebrity
12093 still lives -- as he may -- from time to time it may be asked, "Remember
12094 him?" That is what celebrity means.
12095 -- C. Wright Mills, from "The Power Elite," 1956
12097 I'm not really very good at what I do, but I'm very
12098 popular, because I return my pages.
12099 -- Unidentified computer support technician
12101 Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to
12102 recognize a mistake when you make it again.
12103 -- Franklin P. Jones
12105 Nobody roots for Goliath. -- Wilt Chamberlain
12109 By a bat. Rabid, frothing...
12112 I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up
12113 and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold
12114 these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
12116 -- Martin Luther King Jr.
12118 We generally think of music as a product of art rather than commerce
12119 or technology. It depends, in fact, on all three. Together, these great
12120 dynamic systems match individual creativity and individual desire. They
12121 thus generate change, variety and an endless array of critics--all
12122 determined that music, like the rest of society, should conform to
12124 That would be a terrible deal. By tolerating music that pleases
12125 others but not ourselves, we preserve a system that has delivered a
12126 historical wonder... We can listen to perfectly performed music to suit
12127 any mood or taste at any time, music that moves us in ways particular to our
12128 individual senses and our individual souls.
12129 -- Virginia Postrel
12131 There are three rules for writing the novel.
12132 Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
12133 -- W. Somerset Maugham
12135 His lack of education is more than compensated for by his
12136 keenly developed moral bankruptcy.
12139 How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world,
12140 given my waist and shirt size?
12143 I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting
12144 the urge to conquer Poland.
12145 -- Woody Allen (Manhattan Murder Mystery)
12148 become unified as one
12152 urgh, mutual friends have we few
12153 of whom hooktown still has purview.
12154 lest we examine too far
12155 i wonder regarding your car--
12156 could it survive a furious country drive?
12157 for to hamster freehold must you arrive.
12158 many entertainments have we here...
12159 movies, a rabbit and beer.
12160 perhaps what you were chasing,
12161 twain's fuzz is constantly abasing.
12162 to extend no further this diatribe,
12163 why don't you drop over, or "arribe"?
12166 If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would
12167 have painted on the Sistine floor.
12170 It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble,
12171 it's what we know that ain't so.
12174 I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
12175 is trying to please everyone.
12178 Today, when man seems to have reached the beginning of a new,
12179 richer, happier human era, his existence and that of the generations to
12180 follow is more threatened than ever. How is this possible?
12181 Man had won his freedom from clerical and secular authorities, he
12182 stood alone with his reason and his conscience as his only judges, but he
12183 was afraid of the newly won freedom; he had achieved 'freedom from' --
12184 without yet having achieved 'freedom to' -- to be himself, to be productive,
12185 to be fully awake. Thus he tried to escape from freedom. His very
12186 achievement, the mastery over nature, opened up the avenue for his escape.
12187 In building the new industrial machine, men became so absorbed in
12188 the new task that it became the paramount goal of his life. His energies,
12189 which once were devoted to the search for God and salvation, were now
12190 directed toward the domination of nature and ever-increasing material
12191 comfort. He ceased to use production as a means for a better life, but
12192 hypostatized it instead to an end in itself, an end to which life was
12193 subordinated. In the process of an ever-increasing size of social
12194 agglomerations, man himself became a part of the machine, rather than its
12195 master. He experienced himself as a commodity, as an investment; his aim
12196 became to be a success, that is, to sell himself as profitably as possible
12197 on the market. His value as a person lies in his salability, not in his
12198 human qualities of love, reason or in his artistic capacities. Happiness
12199 becomes identical with consumption of newer and better commodities, the
12200 drinking in of music, screen plays, fun, sex, liquor and cigarettes. Not
12201 having a sense of self except the one which conformity with the majority can
12202 give, he is insecure, anxious, depending on approval. He is alienated from
12203 himself, worships the product of his own hands, the leaders of his own
12204 making, as if they were above him, rather than made by him. He is in a
12205 sense back where he was before the great human evolution began in the second
12207 -- Erich Fromm, "The Sane Society"
12209 If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity,
12210 and let my efforts be known by their results.
12213 The fox knows many things -- the hedgehog knows one big thing.
12216 I've learned not to put things in my mouth that are bad for me.
12217 -- Monica Lewinsky on CNN's Larry King Live discussing her
12218 miraculous Jenny Craig weight-loss.
12220 Both the assembling and the distribution of knowledge in the world
12221 at present are extremely ineffective, and thinkers of the forward-
12222 looking type whose ideas we are now considering, are beginning to
12223 realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our racial
12224 intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world
12225 organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of
12226 knowledge, than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative
12227 and resistant university system, local, national, and traditional in
12228 texture, which already exists.
12229 -- H. G. Wells (1937)
12231 a haiku for object bus overload...
12233 those data bursts have
12234 overturned my info cart--
12235 stranded on the net.
12239 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex,
12240 and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot
12241 of courage--to move in the opposite direction.
12242 -- E. F. Schumacher
12244 It is amazing how much one can learn from somebody
12245 who is not generally thought of as successful.
12248 Half the world is composed of people who have
12249 something to say and can't, and the other have
12250 nothing to say and keep on saying it.
12253 Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature...
12254 Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.
12257 His tongue is by turns a sponge, a brush, a comb.
12258 He cleans himself, he smoothes himself,
12259 he knows what is proper.
12262 To turn $100 into $110 is work.
12263 To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.
12266 A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
12267 -- Charles F. Kettering
12269 The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery
12270 and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.
12271 -- Edith Hamilton (1867-1963)
12273 fish flavored flappers
12274 squirm happily under tongue,
12275 cloak orgasmic clit.
12277 There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying
12278 to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
12279 -- Alfred North Whitehead
12281 Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman
12282 giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
12285 The cat has complete emotional honesty --
12286 an attribute not often found in humans.
12287 -- Ernest Hemingway
12289 no morning coffee...
12290 gray matter is not present,
12291 dial tone in my head.
12295 Synonym for 'penis' used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the denizens
12296 thereof. They say: "We think maybe it's from Middle English but we're all
12297 too damned lazy to check the OED." [I'm not. It isn't. --ESR]
12298 This term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s underground
12299 comics, and to have been recently sighted in the Beavis and Butthead
12300 cartoons. Speakers of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati languages have
12301 confirmed that `choad' is in fact an Indian vernacular word equivalent
12302 to `f*ck'; it is therefore likely to have entered English slang via the
12305 The race may not be to the swift nor the victory
12306 to the strong, but that's how you bet.
12309 Basic research is when I'm doing what I don't know I'm doing.
12310 -- Wernher von Braun
12312 For decades, people have warned that pervasive databanks and
12313 surveillance technology are leading inevitably to the death of privacy and
12314 democracy. But these days, many people who hear the word 'privacy' think
12315 about those kooks living off in the woods with their shotguns: these folks
12316 get their mail at post office boxes registered under assumed names, grow
12317 their own food, use cash to buy what they can't grow for themselves, and
12318 constantly worry about being attacked by the federal government-or by space
12319 aliens. If you are not one of these people, you may well ask, "Why should I
12320 worry about my privacy? I have nothing to hide."
12321 The problem with this word 'privacy' is that it falls short of
12322 conveying the really big picture. Privacy isn't just about hiding things.
12323 It's about self-possession, autonomy, and integrity. As we move into the
12324 computerized world of the twenty-first century, privacy will be one of our
12325 most important civil rights. But this right of privacy isn't the right of
12326 people to close their doors and pull down their window shades -- perhaps
12327 because they want to engage in some sort of illicit or illegal activity.
12328 It's the right of people to control what details about their lives stay
12329 inside their own houses and what leaks to the outside...
12330 Today, more than ever before, we are witnessing the daily erosion of
12331 personal privacy and freedom. We're victims of a war on privacy that's being
12332 waged by government eavesdroppers, business marketers, and nosy neighbors...
12333 We know our privacy is under attack. The problem is that we don't know how
12335 -- Simson Garfinkel, in "Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in
12338 A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married
12339 immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the
12340 triumph of hope over experience.
12341 -- James Boswell's "Life of Johnson"
12343 One evening while dozing in my armchair, I was roused
12344 by the sound of the harpsichord. My cat had started
12345 his musical stroll... I had a sheet of paper to hand,
12346 and transcribed his composition.
12347 -- Domenico Scarlatti
12349 Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it
12350 everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying
12351 the wrong remedies.
12354 A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.
12357 Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to
12358 any club that will accept me as a member.
12361 Let's find out what everyone is doing,
12362 and then stop everyone from doing it.
12365 I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any
12366 new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method
12367 it can be for creating the illusion of progress while
12368 producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
12369 -- Petronius Arbiter, quoted in Robert Townsend's
12370 "Up the Organization"
12372 With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in
12373 the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
12374 finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care
12375 for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and
12376 his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and
12377 a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
12380 As we approach a new century and a changing international economic
12381 climate, we think that scientific and technological education should be our
12382 highest priority, and yet these fields, at least the way they are practiced
12383 today, only tangentially affect the heart and soul, where morality and
12384 values are rooted, while music goes right to the heart.
12385 Studying music, one learns about talent, thought, work, expression,
12386 beauty, technique, collaboration, aesthetic judgment, inspiration, taste,
12387 and a host of other elements that shape life in all its aspects. As we
12388 learn to control our fingers, lips, and breath in making music, subliminally
12389 music is shaping us, making us people of sensitivity and judgment.
12390 -- Thomas Moore, in "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life"
12392 How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would
12393 spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
12396 A bad attitude is the worst thing that can happen to
12397 a group of people. It's infectious.
12398 -- Roger Allan Raby
12400 All that is gold does not glitter; not all who wander are lost.
12401 -- J. R. R. Tolkien
12403 What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
12404 -- Dean William R. Inge (ed: what a psycho...)
12406 True genius doesn't fulfill expectations, it shatters them.
12409 Let me listen to me and not to them.
12412 If like truth, the lie had but one face, we would be on better terms.
12413 For we would accept as certain the opposite of what the liar would say.
12414 But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.
12417 The truth is multi-faceted; no one person can see all of it and no single
12418 viewpoint can capture all of it. This is why any attempt to record the
12419 nature of reality in one majestic work of science or religion or philosophy
12420 is doomed to fail; that grand catalog is a necessarily-flawed perspective
12421 upon the shimmering mind-blower that is the full totality of truth.
12422 Still, we must try to get our minds around it during our whole lives.
12425 I am a great believer, if you have a meeting, in knowing
12426 where you want to come out before you start the meeting.
12427 Excuse me if that doesn't sound very democratic.
12428 -- Nelson Rockefeller
12430 Lawyers have, as Jonathan Swift observed, "a peculiar cant and
12431 jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand". They take care
12432 to ensure that all legal business, including the drafting of legislation, is
12433 conducted in this language "so that it will take thirty years to decide
12434 whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me
12435 or to a stranger three hundred miles off". This language, condemned by
12436 Jeremy Bentham as "literary garbage", "lawyers' cant", and "flash language",
12437 serves various purposes, none of them in the public interest. It unites
12438 lawyers, distinguishing them from laymen. It makes the law mysterious and
12439 incomprehensible to those laymen, thus ensuring a steady supply of work for
12440 lawyers who are needed to interpret the language they have invented. The
12441 language of the law fosters the illusion that legal problems are remediable
12442 only by the application of the medicine of the specialist. Only a lawyer,
12443 can resolve the complexities of the problem: "Better see a lawyer; don't
12444 trust Whatsisname" (as the memorable Law Society advertisement warned
12445 consumers). Legal language also enshrouds the law, hiding it from the
12446 public it exists to serve. The idiom of the lawyer leads to public ignorance
12447 of the content of the law (which paradoxically refuses to recognize that
12448 ignorance of the law should be a defence), to uninformed criticism and to
12449 unmerited praise. It provokes the indifference of too many laymen towards
12450 the law and the contempt of so many litigants for a legal system they do not
12452 -- David Pannick, barrister and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
12454 It usually takes me more than three weeks
12455 to prepare a good impromptu speech.
12458 Hollywood films, in general, either want to tell us a truth we
12459 already know or a falsehood we want to believe in.
12462 The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
12465 Men of Athens, fellow citizens, this is not a trial of Socrates, but
12466 of ideas, and of Athens. You are not prosecuting me for any unlawful or
12467 impious act against our city or its altars. No evidence of any such sort
12468 has been brought against me. You are not prosecuting me for anything I did,
12469 but for what I have said and taught. You are threatening me with death
12470 because you do not like my views and my teaching. This is a prosecution of
12471 ideas and that is something new in our city's history. In this sense,
12472 Athens is in the dock, not Socrates. Each of you, as my judges, is a
12474 Let me be frank. I do not believe in your so-called freedom of
12475 speech, but you do. I believe the opinions of ordinary men are only beliefs
12476 without substance, pale shadows of reality, not to be taken seriously, and
12477 only likely to lead a city astray. I think it absurd to encourage the free
12478 utterance of unfounded or irrational opinions, or to base civic policy on a
12479 count of heads, like cabbages. Hence I do not believe in democracy. But
12480 you do. This is your test, not mine. How can you boast of your free speech
12481 if you suppress mine?
12482 The test of truly free speech is not whether what is said or taught
12483 conforms to any rule or ruler, few or many. Even under the worst dictator,
12484 it is not forbidden to agree with him. It is the freedom to disagree that
12485 is freedom of speech. This has been the Athenian rule until now, the pride
12486 of our city, the glory on which your orators dwell. Will you turn your back
12487 on it now? Ideas are not as fragile as men. They cannot be made to drink
12488 hemlock. My ideas--and my example--will survive me. But the good name of
12489 Athens will wear a stain forever, if you violate its traditions by
12490 convicting me. The shame will be yours, not mine.
12491 -- I. F. Stone, suggesting a defense for Socrates
12493 I do not seek. I find.
12496 The one thing that is certain is that anyone who uses the phrase
12497 "outside the box" is as deeply inside the box as a person can be.
12500 I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel
12501 when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
12504 Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous
12505 nothings in idle moments, when the wearied brain is unable to perform the
12506 serious labors of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way.
12507 The writing of solid, instructive stuff, fortified by facts and figures, is
12508 easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the
12509 folklore of Central China, or a statistical inquiry into the declining
12510 population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own
12511 mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be
12512 achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between. Personally, I would sooner
12513 have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
12516 It's easier to find a travel companion than to get rid of one.
12519 God must love the rich or he wouldn't have divided
12520 so much among so few of them.
12523 I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous.
12524 They are more often themselves. They have had no need to create a
12525 figure to protect themselves from the world or to impress it. Their
12526 idiosyncrasies have had more chance to develop in the limited circle
12527 of their activity, and since they have never been in the public eye
12528 it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal.
12529 They display their oddities because it has never struck them that
12530 they are odd. And after all it is with the common run of men that
12531 we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates are
12532 from our point of view very unsatisfactory. To write about them is
12533 a venture that has often tempted writers, but the failure that has
12534 attended their efforts shows that such beings are too exceptional to
12535 form a proper ground for a work of art. They cannot be made real.
12536 The ordinary is the writer's richer field. Its unexpectedness, its
12537 singularity, its infinite variety afford unending material. The
12538 great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is
12539 a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never
12540 come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you. For my
12541 part I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a
12542 veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.
12543 -- W. Somerset Maugham, from "The Summing Up"
12545 Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts
12546 when you have forgotten your aim.
12547 -- George Santayana
12549 The importance of people as creators and carriers of knowledge is forcing
12550 organizations to realize that knowledge lies less in its databases than in
12551 its people. It's been said, for example, that if NASA wanted to go to the
12552 moon again, it would have to start from scratch, having lost not the data,
12553 but the human expertise that took it there last time. Similarly, Tom
12554 Davenport and Larry Prusake argue that when Ford wanted to build on the
12555 success of the Taurus, the company found that the essence of that success
12556 had been lost with the loss of the people that created it. Their knowledge
12557 was not stored in information technologies. It left when they left.
12558 -- John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, in "The Social Life of Information"
12560 Either we live by accident and die by accident,
12561 or we live by plan and die by plan.
12564 Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.
12565 -- William Butler Yeats
12567 ...the act of producing a letter, even one which is never mailed,
12568 necessitates a form of creative concentration which can improve our
12569 lives. Copies of our own letters are useful for our records and
12570 memories. If their recipients think them worth saving, they can have
12571 value and effect far beyond that of the spoken word. In friendship,
12572 the letter is not only a message but a gift, a physical symbol of
12573 esteem and affection. In business or politics, the letter can not
12574 only express the concerns of the moment but remain as a document of
12575 such concerns, available for prolonged scrutiny by more than one
12576 reader. Moreover, while speakers and listeners in a debate are
12577 vulnerable to emotion and subject to fallacy, the well-written letter
12578 remains calm and crisp and is subject to nothing except superior reason.
12579 It can convince the open-minded, goad the weak-hearted, give our
12580 opponents an exact index of the level and intensity of our commitment,
12581 and be quoted by those who agree with us. But perhaps most importantly,
12582 our letters are the proof and body of our concern for life in its detail
12583 and our conviction that this concern should be shared with others.
12584 -- Robert Grudin, from "Time and the Art of Living"
12586 Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a
12587 person's car is the only place where he can be alone and think.
12588 -- Marshall McLuhan
12590 You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch
12591 on to the affirmative, and don't mess with Mister In-Between.
12594 Once, as promised, bots start interacting with one another,
12595 understanding bot behavior may become impossible. Anyone who has
12596 had to call a help line with a problem about the way an operating
12597 system from one vendor and program from another are working together--
12598 or failing to work--knows how hard it is to get anyone to take
12599 responsibility for software interactions. Support staff rapidly
12600 renounce all knowledge of (and usually interest in) problems that
12601 arise from interactions because there are just too many possibilities.
12602 So it's easy to imagine sophisticated programmers, let alone ordinary
12603 users, being unable to unravel how even a small group of bots reached
12604 a particular state autonomously. The challenge will be unfathomable
12605 if, as one research group has it, we can "anticipate a scenario in
12606 which billions of intelligent agents will roam the virtual world,
12607 handling all levels of simple to complex negotiations and transactions.
12608 If human agents are confused with digital ones, if human action is
12609 taken as mere information processing, and if the social complexities of
12610 negotiation, delegation, and representation are reduced to "when x, do y,"
12611 bots will end up with autonomy without accountability. Their owners, by
12612 contrast, may have accountability without control.
12613 -- John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, in "The Social Life of Information"
12615 Life does not consist mainly--or even largely--of facts and
12616 happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that
12617 is forever blowing through one's head.
12620 Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?
12621 And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
12622 -- Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
12624 Every other country scorns American materialism while striving in
12625 every big and little way to match it. Envy obviously has something to do
12626 with it, but there is a true basis for this debate, and it is whether
12627 America is in its ascendance or its decline.
12628 I myself think I recognize here several of the symptoms that Edward
12629 Gibbons maintained were signs of the decline of Rome, and which arose not
12630 from external enemies but from inside the country itself. A mounting love
12631 of show and luxury. A widening gap between the very rich and the very poor.
12632 An obsession with sex. Freakishness in the arts masquerading as
12633 originality, and enthusiasm pretending to creativeness...
12634 There is, too, the general desire to live off the state, whether it
12635 is a junkie on welfare or an airline subsidized by the government: in a
12636 word, the notion that Washington -- Big Daddy -- will provide. And, most
12637 disturbing of all, a developing moral numbness to vulgarity, violence, and
12638 the assault on the simplest human decencies.
12639 Yet the original institutions of this country still have great
12640 vitality: the Republic can be kept, but only if we care to keep it. Much of
12641 the turmoil in America springs from the energy of people who are trying to
12642 apply those institutions to forgotten minorities who have awakened after a
12644 As I see it, in this country -- a land of the most persistent
12645 idealism and the blandest cynicism -- the race is on between its decadence
12646 and its vitality. There are the woes, which we share with the world, that
12647 you can see from your window: overpopulation; the pollution of the
12648 atmosphere, the cities and the rivers; the destruction of nature. I find it
12649 impossible to believe that a nation that produced such dogged and ingenious
12650 humans as Jefferson and Eli Whitney, John Deere and Ford, Kettering and
12651 Oppenheimer and Edison and Franklin, is going to sit back and let the worst
12652 happen. There is now a possibility, at least, that nuclear energy can help
12653 us to cure incurable diseases, to preserve our food indefinitely, and
12654 through breeder reactors, which renew more power in the act of spending it,
12655 can actually clean the cities and, let us pray, the oceans. And that would
12656 take us over a historical watershed that none of us has ever conceived.
12659 There are some enterprises in which a careful
12660 disorderliness is the true method.
12663 The dollar bills the customer gets from the tellers in four banks
12664 are the same. What is different are the tellers.
12667 I grew up in the last days of the British Empire. My childhood fell
12668 in that era when the words 'imperialism' and 'the West' had not yet acquired
12669 the connotations they have today -- they had not yet become, that is, mere
12670 synonyms for 'racism,' 'oppression,' and 'exploitation'.
12671 Or, at any rate, they had not yet become so among the intellectual,
12672 professional, and governing classes of Egypt. In Cairo it was entirely
12673 ordinary, among those classes, to grow up speaking English or French or
12674 both, and quite ordinary to attend an English or French school. It was taken
12675 for granted among the people who raised us that there was unquestionably
12676 much to admire in and learn from the civilization of Europe and the great
12677 strides that Europe had made in human advancement. No matter that the
12678 European powers were politically oppressive and indeed blatantly unjust; nor
12679 did it seem to matter that the very generation which raised us were
12680 themselves locked in struggle with the British for Egypt's political
12681 independence. There seemed to be no contradiction for them between pursuing
12682 independence from the European powers and deeply admiring European
12683 institutions, particularly democracy, and Europe's tremendous scientific
12685 -- Leila Ahmed, from "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--
12688 the only possible mental bases for racism must ultimately be ignorance
12689 or stupidity or both. it's only a little-minded weak person that has to
12690 feel superior to another person just because of their skin color or
12691 nationality. but i try not to in turn feel superior to racists; i find
12692 only sadness for them instead. by imagining them trapped inside such an
12693 awful and constraining mental prison, my compassion is evoked for these
12696 Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.
12697 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12699 One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat
12700 in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. His response was
12701 a question: "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know," Alice
12702 answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
12705 It's not true that life is one damn thing after another--
12706 it's one damn thing over and over.
12707 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
12709 Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach
12710 disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep
12711 the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go
12712 very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The
12713 social life ain't restful. Avoid running at all times. Don't
12714 look back. Something may be gaining on you.
12715 -- Leroy "Satchel" Paige, from his autobiography,
12716 "How To Stay Young."
12718 Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different.
12719 They all may become different. They all may collapse together.
12720 -- George Santayana
12727 Begins to live that day.
12730 Thinking about it the other day, I realized that some of my unhappiest moments
12731 have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do
12732 things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had
12733 people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings
12734 rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good and have been
12735 required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished
12736 it... In my worst moments I have thought that organizations were places
12737 designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists....
12740 The best organizations to be in, it seems, are the busiest ones as long
12741 as they are busy for someone else. The worst are those that are obsessed
12742 with their own innards... The healthiest are those which exist for others,
12743 not for themselves. Show me a business or a school or a church that is
12744 preoccupied with its customers or clients, determined to do its best for them
12745 and not just to survive for the sake of surviving, and I'll bet you that they
12746 don't have time for too many committees, for forms, for politicking or for
12747 nitpicking about mistakes. Those are the organizations which are fun to be
12748 in, which give you room to be yourself, to express yourself, to grow.
12751 The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
12754 Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything
12755 that should have been obvious at the time.
12756 -- John D. MacDonald
12758 If work was a good thing the rich would have it all
12759 and not let you do it.
12762 Any law that takes hold of a man's daily life cannot prevail
12763 in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are
12764 actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative
12765 are the laws which protect life.
12766 -- Henry Ward Beecher
12768 The graveyard is full of indispensable men.
12769 -- Charles de Gaulle
12771 I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary
12772 priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
12773 "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know."
12774 "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"
12777 The day came when Grandmother couldn't keep all her stuff in the two
12778 tiny rooms to which she was finally reduced. So she packed everything
12779 she didn't need into enormous shopping bags and took off for the bank
12780 in the center of the city where she kept her account, by then down to
12781 a few pennies. Her husband had started the bank and had been its
12782 chairman until he died, and she was still treated with the consideration
12783 due his widow. But when she appeared with her shopping bags and asked
12784 to have the contents put on her account, the manager balked. "We can't
12785 put things on an account," he said, "only money."
12786 "That's mean and ungrateful of you," said Grandmother, "you only do
12787 this to me because I am a stupid old woman."
12788 And she promptly closed her account and drew out the balance. Then
12789 she went down the street to the nearest branch of the same bank, reopened
12790 her account there, and never said a word about her shopping bags.
12791 "Grandmother," we'd say, "if you thought the bank was unfriendly why
12792 did you reopen your account at another branch?"
12793 "It's a good bank," she said; "after all, my late husband founded it."
12794 "Then why not demand that the manager at the new branch take your
12796 "I never banked there before. He didn't owe me anything."
12797 -- Peter Drucker, "Adventures of a Bystander"
12799 Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
12802 Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
12805 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture--
12806 it's a really stupid thing to want to do.
12807 -- Elvis Costello, in an interview by Timothy White entitled
12808 "A Man out of Time Beats the Clock." Musician magazine
12809 No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52.
12811 The pressures for upscale consumption, and the work schedules
12812 that go along with it, created millions of exhausted, stressed-
12813 out people who started wondering if the cycle of work and spend
12814 was really worth it. And some concluded that it wasn't. So
12815 they started downshifting, reducing their hours of work and, in
12816 the process, earning and spending less money. Downshifters are
12817 opting out of excessive consumerism, choosing to have more
12818 leisure and balance in their schedules, a slower pace of life,
12819 more time with their kids, more meaningful work, and daily lives
12820 that line up squarely with their deepest values. These are not
12821 just fast-track yuppies leaving $200,000 jobs in Manhattan to
12822 settle in Montana, although there are plenty of those.
12823 Downshifters can be found at all income levels, from the
12824 comfortable suburbanites whose homes are paid for, to those who
12825 are counting every penny, resigned to the fact that they'll never
12826 own a home. Their jobs were leaving them drained, depressed, or
12827 wondering what life is all about. Now they may not have as much
12828 money, but they are spending every day answering that all-
12829 important question.
12832 The right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and
12833 the right most valued by civilized men.
12834 -- Louis D. Brandeis
12836 The need to reach better mutual understanding through dialogue
12837 is strong in all sectors of society, but in none more than the
12838 business community. The growth of technology, the increase in
12839 the number of knowledge workers, and the blurring of boundaries
12840 of all kinds are transforming relationships at all levels of
12841 business. The traditional top-down style of leadership in a
12842 fortress-type company semi-isolated from others is increasingly
12843 out of vogue. It is being replaced by what I have come to
12844 think of as "relational leadership," where the defining task of
12845 leaders is developing webs of relationships with others rather
12846 than handing down visions, strategies, and plans as if they
12847 were commandments from the mountaintop.
12848 -- Daniel Yankelovich, "The Magic of Dialogue"
12850 Life is one long process of getting tired.
12853 Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can
12854 recalled and perhaps remedied.
12857 Fortunately, many teachers intuitively know that the best way to
12858 achieve their goals is to enlist students' interest on their side.
12859 They do this by being sensitive to students' goals and desires, and
12860 they are thus able to articulate the pedagogical goals as meaningful
12861 challenges. They empower students to take control of their learning;
12862 they provide clear feedback to the students' efforts without
12863 threatening their egos and without making them self-conscious. They
12864 help students concentrate and get immersed in the symbolic world of
12865 the subject matter. As a result, good teachers still turn out
12866 children who enjoy learning, and who will continue to face the world
12867 with curiosity and interest.
12868 It is to be hoped that with time the realization that children
12869 are not miniature computing machines will take root in educational
12870 circles, and more attention will be paid to motivational issues.
12871 Unless this comes to pass, the current problems we are having with
12872 education are not likely to go away.
12873 -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from "Creativity: Flow and Psychology
12874 of Discovery and Invention"
12876 The more human beings proceed by plan the more effectively they may
12877 be hit by accident.
12878 -- Friedrich Duerrenmatt
12880 We never see what's under our feet;
12881 we're too busy trying to see
12882 what's in the stars.
12885 Paradoxes have played a dramatic role in intellectual history,
12886 often foreshadowing revolutionary developments in science,
12887 mathematics, and logic. Whenever, in any discipline, we discover
12888 a problem that cannot be solved within the conceptual framework
12889 that supposedly should apply, we experience shock. The shock may
12890 compel us to discard the old framework and adopt a new one. It
12891 is to this process of intellectual molting that we owe the birth
12892 of many of the major ideas in mathematics and science. Zeno's
12893 paradox of Achilles and the tortoise gave birth to the idea of
12894 convergent infinite series. 'Antinomies' (internal contradictions
12895 in mathematical logic) eventually blossomed into Godel's theorem.
12896 The paradoxical result of the Michelson-Morley experiment on the
12897 speed of light set the stage for the theory of relativity. The
12898 discovery of wave-particle duality of light forced a reexamination
12899 of deterministic causality, the very foundation of scientific
12900 philosophy, and led to quantum mechanics.
12903 Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the
12904 greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
12905 -- Charles Caleb Colton
12907 More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.
12908 One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.
12909 The other, to total extinction.
12910 Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
12913 Some books are undeservedly forgotten;
12914 none are undeservedly remembered.
12917 Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce
12918 life early and the human race come to an end.
12921 Why is autobiography the most popular form of nonfiction
12922 for modern readers? Why are so many people moved to write their
12923 life stories today? And what is it about the genre that makes
12924 it appeal to readers not just in the Western world, but also in
12925 non-Western cultures, like those of Japan and India or the many
12926 cultures of Africa?...
12927 What makes the reading of autobiography so appealing is the
12928 chance it offers to see how this man or that woman whose public
12929 self interests us has negotiated the problem of self-awareness
12930 and has broken the internalized code a culture supplies about
12931 how life should be experienced. Most of us, unless faced with
12932 emotional illness, don't give our inner life scripts a fraction
12933 of the attention we give to the plots of movies or TV specials
12934 about some person of prominence. Yet the need to examine our
12935 inherited scripts is just beneath the surface of consciousness,
12936 so that while we think we are reading a gripping story, what
12937 really grips us is the inner reflection on our own lives the
12938 autobiographer sets in motion.
12941 Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
12942 Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
12945 The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working
12946 the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop
12947 until you get into the office.
12950 We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any
12951 in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the
12952 difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know
12953 anything and can't read.
12956 If you start to think about your physical or moral condition,
12957 you usually find that you are sick.
12958 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
12960 A modest man is usually admired--if people ever hear of him.
12961 -- Edgar Watson Howe
12963 Modern housekeeping, despite its bad press, is among the most
12964 thoroughly pleasant, significant, and least alienated forms of work
12965 that many of us will encounter even if we are blessed with work
12966 outside the home that we like. Once, it was so physically onerous
12967 and arduous that it not infrequently contributed to a woman's total
12968 physical breakdown. Today, laundry, cleaning, and other household
12969 chores are by and large physically light or moderate work that doctors
12970 often recommend to people for their health, as evidence shows that
12971 housework is good for weight control and healthy hearts.
12972 Seen from the outside, housework can look like a Sisyphean task
12973 that gives you no sense of reward or completion. Yet housekeeping
12974 actually offers more opportunities for savoring achievement than
12975 almost any other work I can think of. Each of its regular routines
12976 brings satisfaction when it is completed. These routines echo the
12977 rhythm of life, and the housekeeping rhythm is the rhythm of the body.
12978 You get satisfaction not only from the sense of order, cleanliness,
12979 freshness, peace and plenty restored, but from the knowledge that you
12980 yourself and those you care about are going to enjoy these benefits.
12981 -- Cheryl Mendelson
12983 I'll tell you what it's like to be No. 1. I compare it to climbing
12984 Mount Everest. It's very difficult. Lives are lost along the way.
12985 You struggle and struggle and finally you get up there. And guess
12986 what there is once you get up there? Snow and ice.
12989 Never ask a person what to do, always tell him or her.
12990 If it's the wrong thing to do, or if there is a better way,
12991 they'll come back and tell you. But if you don't tell them
12992 what to do, they won't do anything but make a study.
12993 -- Eugenia Schwartzwald
12995 War, it seems to me, after a lifetime of reading about the subject,
12996 mingling with men of war, visiting the sites of war and observing its
12997 effects, may well be ceasing to commend itself to human beings as a
12998 desirable or productive, let alone rational, means of reconciling their
12999 discontents. This is not mere idealism. Mankind does have the capacity,
13000 over time, to correlate the costs and benefits of large and universal
13002 Throughout much of the time for which we have a record of human
13003 behaviour, mankind can clearly be seen to have judged that war's benefits
13004 outweighed its costs, or appeared to do so when a putative balance was
13005 struck. Now the computation works in the opposite direction. Costs
13006 clearly exceed benefits. Some of these costs are material. The
13007 superinflationary expense of weapon procurement distorts the budgets even
13008 of the richest states, while poor states deny themselves the chance of
13009 economic emancipation when they seek to make themselves militarily
13011 The human costs of actually going to war are even higher. Rich
13012 states, as between themselves, recognize that they are not to be borne.
13013 Poor states which fall into war with rich states are overwhelmed and
13014 humiliated. Poor states which fight each other, or are drawn into civil
13015 war, destroy their own well being, and even the structures which make
13016 recovery from the experience of war possible. War truly has become a
13017 scourge, as was disease throughout most of human history. The scourge
13018 of disease has, almost within living memory, been very largely defeated
13019 and, though it is true that disease had no friends as war has had friends,
13020 war now demands a friendship which can only be paid in false coin.
13021 A world political economy which makes no room for war demands, it
13022 must be recognized, a new culture of human relations. As most cultures of
13023 which we have knowledge were transfused by the warrior spirit, such a
13024 cultural transformation demands a break with the past for which there are
13025 no precedents. There is no precedent, however, for the menace with which
13026 future war now confronts the world.
13027 -- John Keegan, "A History of Warfare"
13029 Creditors are a superstitious sect,
13030 great observers of set days and times.
13031 -- Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanack"
13033 Despite the abundant evidence that compassion is a basic
13034 human trait, the view has long prevailed that human beings are
13035 either heartless or brutal toward most of their fellows. Every
13036 compendium of familiar quotations has an abundance of statements
13037 like "The greatest enemy to man is man" (Robert Burton) but
13038 almost none like "Precious is man to man" (Thomas Carlyle).
13039 Altruism research attests that kindness is as integral to human
13040 nature as cruelty, yet in the news and in the historical record
13041 cruel acts vastly outnumber kind ones.
13042 Why are we keenly aware of the despicable in us but largely
13043 insensible of the admirable? Not, I suggest, because the
13044 despicable is common and the admirable rare but the very reverse.
13045 Prosocial behavior of all sorts, including altruism, is so normal
13046 and expected that we scarcely notice it but are struck by its
13047 absence or opposite. We see nothing unusual in a passerby's
13048 helping a fallen elderly person to his feet but are surprised and
13049 disturbed if the passerby ignores him. We expect people to be
13050 kind and helpful to a stranger in distress; we are startled and
13051 troubled when they look away and hurry past. Cruelty is
13052 attention-getting, kindness unremarkable, and so we agree with
13053 Seneca that "man delights to ruin man" and with William James that
13054 "of all the beasts of prey... [man is] the only one that preys
13055 systematically on its own species".
13056 -- Morton Hunt, "The Compassionate Beast"
13058 Life is all memory, except for the one present moment
13059 that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going.
13060 -- Tennessee Williams
13062 There are serious reasons members of my generation are feeling a high
13063 level of anxiety and unhappiness these days, but it is interesting to look
13064 at how we "know" this: the polls. I used to like polls because I like vox
13065 pop, and polls seemed a good way to get a broad sampling. But now I think
13066 the vox has popped--the voice has cracked from too many command performances.
13067 Polls are contributing to a strange new volatility in public opinion...
13068 The dramatic rises and drops are fueled in part by mass media and their
13069 famous steady drumbeat of what's not working, from an increase in reported
13070 child abuse to a fall in savings. When this tendency is not prompted by
13071 ideology it is legitimate: good news isn't news. But the volatility is also
13072 driven by the polls themselves. People think they have to have an answer
13073 when they are questioned by pollsters, and they think the answer has to be
13074 "intelligent" and "not naive". This has the effect of hardening opinions
13075 that haven't even been formed yet. Poll questions do not invite subtlety or
13076 response. This dispels ambiguity, when a lot of thoughts and opinions are
13078 And we are polled too often. We are constantly having our temperature
13079 taken, like a hypochondriac who is looking for the reassurance no man can
13080 have, i.e., that he will not die... Nations that use polls as daily
13081 temperature readings inevitably give inauthentic readings, and wind up not
13082 reassured but demoralized.
13085 The chief object of education is
13086 not to learn things but to unlearn things.
13087 -- G. K. Chesterton
13089 When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
13092 He will kill mice and he will be kind to babies...
13093 but when the moon gets up and the night comes, he is
13094 the Cat that Walks by Himself.
13097 Everyone is a prisoner of his own prejudices.
13098 No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them.
13099 -- Edward R. Murrow
13101 I am the least difficult of men.
13102 All I want is boundless love.
13105 If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
13106 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
13108 Let's face it, life is mainly wasted time.
13111 Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!
13114 Time spent with cats is never wasted.
13117 Most of us find ourselves at one time or another in a toy shop,
13118 looking for a gift for a child. Those of us who have not been in such
13119 stores since our youth can easily be bewildered, especially if we were
13120 born before the 1960s. Our favorite toys or games--fire engines,
13121 Tinkertoys, or baby dolls--have disappeared or are hidden in row after
13122 row of heroic fighters, fashion dolls, and exotic stuffed animals. The
13123 more practical of us enter the store with a list of items desired by
13124 the child--this season's action figure, the newest Barbie, or the
13125 latest video game. Veteran toy shoppers may enjoy the inevitable
13126 transformations as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles give way to Mighty
13127 Morphin Power Rangers and Locket Surprise Barbie to Tropic Splash
13128 Barbie. But equally we may be appalled to think about the dozens of
13129 Ninja Turtles that an older boy just had to have a year earlier but
13130 that were then shunned by a younger brother who just had to have Power
13131 Rangers. Why don't kids pass down their toys as we remember giving our
13132 building blocks and dollhouses to our younger brothers and sisters? It
13133 is easy to wonder whether each year's must-have toys are really for
13134 children's play or whether their ever-changing forms represent other
13136 There have been disturbing changes in the making of playthings in
13137 the last few decades. Since the late 1960s many old toy companies,
13138 venerated for manufacturing toys passed from one generation to the
13139 next, have disappeared...
13140 A tradition of manufacturing boys' construction and science sets
13141 promised parents that their children would be preparing to join the
13142 adult world of engineering, industry, and science... The old kitchen
13143 play sets, dollhouses, and baby dolls that were to teach girls the arts
13144 of housekeeping and childcare are also less in evidence today. Toys
13145 that seem to prepare children for adult life have become harder to
13147 The ever-expanding toy industry reflects a general American
13148 commitment to unrestrained markets and to constant change, a commitment
13149 at least a century old. Americans have long admired the new and have
13150 enriched those who produce it. For decades American parents have
13151 enjoyed sharing the world of consumption with their offspring. At
13152 first they did so knowing that they ultimately mediated between toys
13153 and their children. When the floodgates were opened and torrents of
13154 toys were presented directly to kids, parents found themselves merely
13155 providers of funds to buy toys.
13156 -- Gary Cross, "Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American
13159 Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must
13160 do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
13163 If you assign people duties without granting
13164 them any rights, you must pay them well.
13165 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13167 It is far easier to write ten passable effective sonnets,
13168 good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic,
13169 than one effective advertisement that will take in a few
13170 thousand of the uncritical buying public.
13173 tail end of the day
13174 work escapes my fat fingers
13175 like greasy wieners
13178 Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent.
13179 Its sale is proof of utility and utility is success.
13180 -- Thomas Alva Edison
13182 Our lives are suspended like our planet in gimbals of duality,
13183 half sunlight and half shadow. If we plead with nature, it is
13184 in vain; she is wonderfully indifferent to our fate, and it is
13185 her custom to try everything and to be ruthless with incompetence.
13186 Ninety-nine percent of all the species that have lived on Earth
13187 have died away, and no stars will wink out in tribute if we in
13188 our folly soon join them.
13191 It is characteristic of the present time always to be conscious
13192 of the medium. It is almost bound to end in madness, like a man
13193 who whenever he looked at the sun and the stars was conscious of
13194 the world going round.
13197 The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.
13200 There are two means of refuge from the
13201 miseries of life: music and cats.
13202 -- Albert Schweitzer
13204 Open source should be about giving away things voluntarily.
13205 When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer
13206 giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth
13207 often confuse giving with taking.
13210 Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical
13211 pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power
13212 chooses to prohibit.
13215 People are more violently opposed to fur than
13216 leather because it's safer to harass rich women
13217 than motorcycle gangs.
13220 A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't
13221 change the subject.
13222 -- Winston Churchill
13224 Do not criticize your government when out of the
13225 country. Never cease to do so when at home.
13226 -- Winston Churchill
13228 Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil.
13229 -- Winston Churchill
13231 Golf is a game whose sole aim is to hit a very small
13232 ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons
13233 singularly ill designed for that purpose.
13234 -- Winston Churchill
13236 If it is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised.
13237 -- Winston Churchill
13239 In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
13240 -- Winston Churchill
13242 Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free
13243 to say anything they like, but if anyone says anything
13244 back, that is an outrage.
13245 -- Winston Churchill
13247 I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is
13248 prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another
13250 -- Winston Churchill
13252 If you destroy a free market you create a black market.
13253 -- Winston Churchill
13255 If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy
13256 all respect for the law.
13257 -- Winston Churchill
13259 Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at
13261 -- Winston Churchill
13263 It is a socialist ideal that making profits is a vice.
13264 I consider the real vice is making losses.
13265 -- Winston Churchill
13267 If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
13268 -- Benjamin Franklin
13270 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
13271 -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
13273 The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.
13276 Expertise, it may be argued, sacrifices the insight of common sense
13277 to intensity of experience. It breeds an inability to accept new views from
13278 the very depth of its preoccupation with its won conclusions. It too often
13279 fails to see round its subject. It sees its results out of perspective by
13280 making them the centre of relevance to which all other results must be
13281 related. Too often, also, it lacks humility; and this breeds in its
13282 possessors a failure in proportion which makes them fail to see the obvious
13283 which is before their very noses. It has, also, a certain caste-spirit about
13284 it, so that experts tend to neglect all evidence which does not come from
13285 those who belong to their own ranks.
13286 Above all, perhaps, and this most urgently when human problems are
13287 concerned, the expert fails to see that every judgment he makes not purely
13288 factual in nature brings with it a scheme of values which has no special
13289 validity about it. He tends to confuse the importance of his facts with the
13290 importance of what he proposes to do about them.
13291 -- Harold J. Laski, "The Limitations of the Expert"
13293 If women are to do the same work as men,
13294 we must teach them the same things.
13297 Dogs may fawn on all and some
13299 You, a friend of loftier mind,
13300 Answer friends alone in kind;
13301 Just your foot upon my hand
13302 Softly bids it understand.
13303 -- Algernon Charles Swinburne
13305 The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
13308 The machine does not isolate man from the great problems
13309 of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
13310 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
13312 Today in USA Today, experts were quoted as saying that the breakup of
13313 Microsoft would result in shoddy products and missed deadlines...
13315 And Microsoft is worrying about being able to do business as usual.
13317 The justice department has released its recommendations on
13318 names for the two parts of Microsoft, post split:
13320 MICROS~1 and MICROS~2
13322 I think we should partition Microsoft into an OS company
13323 (called "C:") and an apps company ("D:"). Then we should
13324 blow away both partitions....
13327 Microsoft has argued in court that the US government's plan
13328 to break up the company is "defective in numerous respects,
13329 making the document vague and ambiguous."
13331 In which respect it's much like Microsoft's documentation.
13333 Immediately after the announcement by Judge Penfield of splitting
13334 the company in two, Microsoft sued Micro.Com Specialists, LLC, and
13335 Software Research, Inc. (owners of www.soft.com) for infringement
13336 of copyrights and cyber-squatting.
13338 your brain will enlarge as necessary. just don't get angry or
13339 confused or scared or sad, if possible... you'll be amazed at
13340 what that blob of cells is capable of.
13343 If you like laws and sausage, you should
13344 never watch either being made.
13345 -- Otto von Bismarck
13347 The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself
13348 would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
13349 -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
13351 A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only
13352 advise his clients to plant vines.
13353 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
13355 He taught me housekeeping; when I divorce I keep the house.
13356 -- Zsa Zsa Gabor, speaking of her ex-husband
13358 There is really no such thing as bad weather,
13359 only different kinds of good weather.
13362 She's not a babe. She's a sophisticated real-time computer system.
13363 -- Spokesman for Ananova, a virtual news anchor
13365 The man who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news.
13368 I am easily satisfied with the very best.
13369 -- Winston Churchill
13371 Uncertainty and expectations are the joys of life.
13372 Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and
13373 possessing of a wish, discovers the folly of the chase.
13374 -- William Congreve
13376 Sleep is simply not dispensable, regardless of the attempts in
13377 today's society to treat it as if it were simply unproductive 'downtime'.
13378 The desire to get more sleep is not a sign of laziness, nor does it
13379 represent a lack of ambition. The need for sleep is real...
13380 When we try to sleep less than the 8-hour minimum, things start to
13381 deteriorate. First of all, the effects of less than 8 hours of sleep a
13382 night seem to accumulate as a sleep debt. If you lose 2 hours today and 2
13383 hours tomorrow, on the third day your efficiency is as low as if you had
13384 lost 4 hours in one night. This is the way our sleep debt builds up.
13385 Eventually, if the sleep debt becomes large enough, we become slow, clumsy,
13386 stupid, and, possibly, dead. This is not an exaggeration. Remember, the
13387 national death rate by accidents jumps 6 percent as a result of simply
13388 losing 1 hour of sleep as we shift to daylight savings time in the spring...
13389 Perhaps someday society will act to do something about sleepiness.
13390 It may even come to pass that someday the person who drives or goes to work
13391 while sleepy will be viewed as being as reprehensible, dangerous, or even
13392 criminally negligent as the person who drives or goes to work while drunk.
13393 If so, perhaps the rest of us can all sleep a little bit more soundly.
13396 You haven't lived until you've lived with a cat.
13399 When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do--lose.
13400 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
13402 It is because the body is a machine that education is possible.
13403 Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an
13404 artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
13405 -- Thomas H. Huxley
13407 If someone asks you, "Where do you live?" you are likely to answer
13408 with the name of a neighborhood, or a nearby geographic landmark. But if you
13409 give the question a sharper focus and ask yourself "And do I really live
13410 there?" then the answer becomes more vexing. Most of us can't claim to
13411 really live in the neighborhoods where we sleep. Few of us have the time to
13412 take part in the life of the community, and in many cases there is no
13413 community life to take part in. To varying degrees many of us can say of
13414 our neighborhoods what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: "There is no _there_
13416 Bodenstandigkeit is German philosopher Martin Heidegger's term for
13417 the sense of being rooted in a place. It is this connection to a place that
13418 grounds us in Being, Heidegger claimed, and even if you don't buy into the
13419 existential mumbo-jumbo, it's not hard to understand the underlying insight:
13420 People who have no rootedness to a place are tumbleweeds, blown about on the
13421 currents of the zeitgeist. You have to be somebody, from somewhere, to know
13425 You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
13428 When you confer spiritual authority on another person, you
13429 must realize that you are allowing them to pick your pocket
13430 and sell you your own watch.
13433 What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a
13434 better answer than that which the experience of the past has already
13435 discovered--which consists, I believe, in gymnastic for the body and
13436 music for the mind.
13439 The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football.
13440 A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
13441 -- Joe Theisman, NFL quarterback
13443 Sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making
13444 someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good
13448 I was determined to know beans.
13449 -- Henry David Thoreau
13451 Today, the notion of a star-spangled melting pot seems quaint,
13452 of another age. Increasingly, America is a fractured landscape,
13453 its people partitioned into dozens of cultural enclaves, its
13454 ideals reflected through differing prisms of experience. And
13455 this fracturing is likely to continue as the self-concept of
13456 America shifts from a majority white-minority black nation to
13457 a pluralistic society of many ethnic and racial groups. At the
13458 close of what's been called the American Century, during which
13459 the nation emerged as the dominant world power in commerce and
13460 politics, old myths are dying hard and new ones are just being
13461 forged. In this clustered world, the national identity is
13462 changing, and most of us don't even know it. Forget the melting
13463 pot. America today would be better characterized as a salad bar.
13464 -- Michael J. Weiss
13466 Personally, I'm always ready to learn,
13467 although I do not always like being taught.
13468 -- Winston Churchill
13470 The Constitution only gives people the right to
13471 pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
13474 Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when
13475 you fall down an open manhole and die.
13478 As a general rule, the most successful man in
13479 life is the man who has the best information.
13480 -- Benjamin Disraeli
13482 It is one of the blessings of old friends that
13483 you can afford to be stupid with them.
13484 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
13486 A child of five would understand this.
13487 Send someone to fetch a child of five.
13490 Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
13493 I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns
13494 on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
13497 I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
13500 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.
13501 But this wasn't it.
13504 Those are my principles, and if you don't like
13505 them... well, I have others.
13508 When I picked up your book I was so convulsed with laughter
13509 that I had to set it down, but one day I intend to read it.
13512 Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance.
13513 There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance,
13514 your wife is bound to interfere.
13517 God has made the cat to give man the
13518 pleasure of caressing the tiger.
13521 We are not without accomplishment. We have
13522 managed to distribute poverty equally.
13523 -- Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese Foreign
13525 Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be
13526 always cast. In the pool where you least expect
13527 it, will be a fish.
13530 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
13531 because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
13532 which he hears, however measured or far away.
13533 -- Henry David Thoreau
13535 The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can
13536 be true and untrue at the same time.
13537 -- Arthur Schopenhauer
13539 God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
13542 People often applaud an imitation and then sneer at the real thing.
13545 A thought which does not result
13546 in an action is nothing much,
13547 and an action which does not proceed
13548 from a thought is nothing at all.
13549 -- Georges Bernanos
13553 Security holes are only software bugs when
13554 one of the software's requirements is security.
13558 do outlook, internet explorer and, indeed, windows
13559 itself have 'bugs'? because that would indicate
13560 that microsoft has a requirement of security...
13561 it seems more likely that any security problems are just
13562 a by-product of the microsoft swiss cheese development
13563 methodology(tm)... if it doesn't stink and have a lot
13564 of holes, then it's not from microsoft.
13567 The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work
13568 supremely well, without attending to appearance.
13571 Now and then there is a person born who is so unlucky that he runs
13572 into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else.
13575 Daydreaming does not enjoy tremendous prestige in our culture,
13576 which tends to regard it as unproductive thought. Writers
13577 perhaps appreciate its importance better than most, since a
13578 fair amount of what they call work consists of little more
13579 than daydreaming edited. Yet anyone who reads for pleasure
13580 should prize it too, for what is reading a good book but a
13581 daydream at second hand? Unlike any other form of thought,
13582 daydreaming is its own reward. For regardless of the result
13583 (if any), the very process of daydreaming is pleasurable.
13584 And, I would guess, is probably a psychological necessity.
13585 For isn't it in our daydreams that we acquire some sense of
13586 what we are about? Where we try on futures and practice our
13587 voices before committing ourselves to words or deeds?
13588 Daydreaming is where we go to cultivate the self, or, more
13589 likely, selves, out of the view and earshot of other people.
13590 Without its daydreams, the self is apt to shrink down to the
13591 size and shape of the estimation of others.
13594 Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe,
13595 a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride,
13596 and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently
13597 regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are
13598 entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and
13599 vagaries of the crowd.
13600 -- Dame Edith Sitwell
13602 There are times when I think that the ideal library is
13603 composed solely of reference books. They are like
13604 understanding friends--always ready to change the subject
13605 when you have had enough of this or that.
13608 Mothers, fathers, aren't supposed to change, any more than
13609 they are supposed to leave, or die. They must not do that.
13612 The greatest obstacle to discovery is not
13613 ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge.
13614 -- Daniel J. Boorstin
13616 Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing.
13617 Nobody listens--and then everybody disagrees.
13620 All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.
13621 -- Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong
13623 Creative minds have always been known
13624 to survive any kind of bad training.
13627 Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
13628 -- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower
13630 I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry.
13631 That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.
13632 -- David Bissonette
13634 I married the first man I ever kissed.
13635 When I tell my children that they just about throw up.
13638 The trouble with some women is they get all excited
13639 about nothing--and then they marry him.
13642 Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people
13643 who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm.
13644 But the harm does not interest them.
13647 When you're finished changing, you're finished.
13648 -- Benjamin Franklin
13650 It is time we start searching for the fountain of age, time that
13651 we stop denying our growing older and look at the actuality of our
13652 own experience, and that of other women and men who have gone
13653 beyond denial to a new place in their sixties, seventies, eighties.
13654 It is time to look at age on its own terms, and put names on its
13655 values and strengths as they are actually experienced, breaking
13656 through the definition of age solely as deterioration or decline
13657 from youth. Only then will we see that the problem is not age
13658 itself, to be denied or warded off as long as possible, that the
13659 problem is not those increasing numbers of people living beyond
13660 sixty-five, to be segregated from the useful, valuable, pleasurable
13661 activities of society so that the rest of us can keep our illusion
13662 of staying forever young. Nor is the basic political problem the
13663 burden on society of those forced into deterioration, second
13664 childhood, even senility. The problem is not how we can stay young
13665 forever, personally--or avoid facing society's problems politically
13666 by shifting them onto age. The problem is, first of all, how to
13667 break through the cocoon of our illusory youth and risk a new stage
13668 in life, where there are not prescribed role models to follow, no
13669 guidepost, no rigid rules or visible rewards, to step out into the
13670 true existential unknown of these new years of life now open to us,
13671 and to find our own terms for living it.
13674 When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third
13675 of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and
13676 two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
13679 Blessed are they who have nothing to say
13680 and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
13681 -- James Russell Lowell
13683 Personal computers are less able to sense human presence
13684 than are modern toilets or outdoor floodlights that have simple
13685 motion sensors. Your inexpensive auto-focus camera has more
13686 intelligence about what is in front of it than any terminal or
13688 When you lift your hands from your computer keyboard, it
13689 does not know whether the pause is reflective, a nature break,
13690 or an interruption for lunch. It cannot tell the difference
13691 between talking to you alone or in front of six other people.
13692 It does not know if you are in your night-or party clothes or
13693 no clothes at all. For all it knows, you could have your back
13694 to it while it was showing you something important, or you
13695 could be out of earshot altogether while it was speaking to you.
13696 We think today solely from the perspective of what would
13697 make it easier for a person to use a computer. It may be time
13698 to ask what will make it easier for computers to deal with
13699 humans. For example, how can you possibly hold a conversation
13700 with people if you don't even know they are there? You can't
13701 see them, and you don't know how many there are. Are they
13702 smiling? Are they even paying attention? We talk longingly
13703 about human-computer interactions and conversational systems,
13704 and yet we are fully prepared to leave one participant in this
13705 dialogue totally in the dark. It is time to make computers see
13707 -- Nicholas Negroponte
13709 The energy produced by the breaking down of the
13710 atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
13711 expects a source of power from the transformation
13712 of these atoms is talking moonshine.
13713 -- Ernest Rutherford
13715 Finance is the art of passing currency from
13716 hand to hand until it finally disappears.
13717 -- Robert W. Sarnoff
13719 The scientific community speaks about its work in a cool
13720 and disinterested manner. To present an exciting profile
13721 would be unprofessional. Any excess of emotion would suggest
13722 a lack of neutrality and therefore a tendency to read what
13723 they want in the facts rather than reporting what they see.
13724 Scientific objectivity must therefore appear to be boring.
13725 Scientists are well aware that their work is neither
13726 boring nor objective. If it were, very few discoveries would
13728 Social science, being falsely empirical, is triply
13729 obsessed by the obligation to present itself as the objective
13730 interpretation of observed reality. Since the more or less
13731 hard edges of scientific inquiry are not involved, social
13732 scientists are free to be more categorical about truth,
13733 reality and what they call facts. They therefore seek to be
13734 more boring than scientists.
13735 -- John Ralston Saul
13737 Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
13738 -- William M. Thackeray
13740 A genius is someone who can do anything except make a living.
13743 If you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him,
13744 you may say with confidence that he is a good man.
13745 -- Fyodor Dostoevski
13747 Fortune befriends the bold.
13750 Success in almost any field depends more on energy
13751 and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains
13752 why we have so many stupid leaders.
13755 Socialism is Bolshevism with a shave.
13758 I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
13761 Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day.
13762 Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
13764 It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic,
13765 and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.
13768 Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best
13769 strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You
13770 can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse.
13771 You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can
13772 declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness
13773 several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things,
13774 you're still going to have to dismount.
13777 You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV.
13778 But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like
13779 Windows users don't have any power; I think they are happy with
13780 Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought.
13783 Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see
13784 and listen to what they don't want to hear.
13787 Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting
13788 pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to
13789 babble and backtrack nervously.
13792 Florence Nightingale, on her kitten's reaction to an older cat:
13794 "The little one stands her ground, and when the old enemy comes near
13795 enough kisses his nose and makes the peace. That is the lesson of
13796 life: to kiss one's enemy's nose always standing one's ground."
13798 In the game known as Broken Telephone (or Chinese Whispers) a child
13799 whispers a phrase into the ear of a second child, who whispers it into
13800 the ear of a third child, and so one. Distortions accumulate, and when
13801 the last child announces the phrase, it is comically different from the
13802 original. The game works because each child does not merely degrade the
13803 phrase, which would culminate in a mumble, but reanalyzes it, making a
13804 best guess about the words the preceding child had in mind.
13805 All languages change through the centuries. We do not speak like
13806 Shakespeare (1564-1616), who did not speak like Chaucer (1343-1400), who
13807 did not speak like the author of Beowulf (around 750-800). As the
13808 changes take place, people feel the ground eroding under their feet and
13809 in every era have predicted the imminent demise of the language. Yet
13810 the twelve hundred years of changes since Beowulf have not left us
13811 grunting like Tarzan, and that is because language change is a game of
13813 A generation of speakers uses their lexicon and grammar to produce
13814 sentences. The younger generation listens to the sentences and tries to
13815 infer the lexicon and grammar, the remarkable feat we call language
13816 acquisition. The transmission of a lexicon and grammar in language
13817 acquisition is fairly high in fidelity -- you probably can communicate
13818 well with your parents and your children -- but it is never perfect.
13819 Words rise and fall in popularity, as the needs of daily life change, and
13820 also as the hip try to sound different from the dweebs and graybeards.
13821 Speakers swallow or warp some sounds to save effort, and enunciate or
13822 shift others to make themselves understood. Immigrants or conquerors
13823 with regional or foreign accents may swamp the locals and change the pool
13824 of speech available to children.
13825 Children, for their part, do not mimic sentences like parrots but try
13826 to make sense of them in terms of underlying words and rules. They may
13827 hear a mumbled consonant as no consonant at all, or a drawn-out or
13828 mispronounced vowel as a different vowel. They may fail to discern the
13829 rationale for a rule and simply memorize its outputs as a list. Or they
13830 may latch on to some habitual way of ordering words and hypothesize a new
13831 rule to make sense of it. The language of their generation will have
13832 changed, though it need not have deteriorated. Then the process is
13833 repeated with their children. Each change may be small, but as changes
13834 accumulate over centuries they reshape the language just as erosion and
13835 sedimentation imperceptibly sculpt the earth.
13838 Ideas won't keep: something must be done about them.
13839 -- Alfred North Whitehead
13841 Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual
13842 mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.
13843 -- Alfred North Whitehead
13845 Ninety-Ninety Rule n.
13846 "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the
13847 development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the
13848 other 90% of the development time." Attributed to Tom Cargill of
13849 Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985
13850 "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" column in "Communications of
13852 It was there called the "Rule of Credibility", a name which
13853 seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include
13854 the law attributed to the early British computer scientist Douglas
13855 Hartree: "The time from now until the completion of the project
13856 tends to become constant."
13858 Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
13861 No matter how bad things get
13862 you got to go on living,
13863 even if it kills you.
13866 A man's palate can, in time, become accustomed to anything.
13867 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
13869 Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it,
13870 people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of
13871 money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones
13872 at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty
13873 in getting a hearing.
13876 I praise loudly, I blame softly.
13877 -- Catherine II of Russia
13879 Deny yourself! You must deny yourself!
13880 That is the song that never ends.
13883 There are few more doleful sounds than the
13884 laughter of a man without humour.
13887 Children are the first to lose their innocence,
13888 artists the second: idiots never.
13891 What is the good of being an island,
13892 if you are not a volcanic island?
13895 Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you
13896 have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.
13899 Most human beings have to spend their lives in utter vulnerability.
13900 All are murderable and torturable, and survive only through the restraint
13901 shown by more powerful neighbors. All are born unequal, in terms of
13902 capacity or strength. All are born to the inherent frailty of the human
13903 condition, naked and helpless, vulnerable all through life to the will of
13904 others, limited by ignorance, limited by physical weakness, limited by
13905 fear, limited by the phobias that fear engenders.
13906 For nearly three thousand years now, the political and social genius
13907 of what we can permissibly call 'Western man' has struggled with these
13908 brute facts of our unsatisfactory existence. Ever since the Hebrews
13909 discovered personal moral responsibility and the Greeks discovered the
13910 autonomy of the citizen, the effort has been made--with setbacks and
13911 defeats, with dark ages and interregnums and any number of irrelevant
13912 adventures on the side-to create a social order in which weak, fallible,
13913 obstinate, silly, magnificent man can maintain his dignity and exercise his
13914 free and responsible choice.
13917 Let us work without theorizing. It's the only way to
13918 make life endurable.
13921 At many human faults a cat
13922 Will never take offense:
13923 Two things though they cannot stand:
13924 The wretched Door, the horrid Fence.
13927 I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
13930 [Chess is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence
13931 as you can find outside an advertising agency.
13932 -- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) U.S. crime-fiction writer
13934 Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are
13935 doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
13936 -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1960) Irish playwright, critic
13938 Every moment in life is precious; that's why I play chess.
13939 -- Joseph Siroker, coffee house chess player and guru
13941 I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody
13942 to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
13945 A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can
13946 prove that you don't need it.
13949 Giving money and power to government is like
13950 giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
13953 The very moral person usually has quite good manners because good
13954 manners are usually some sort of basic consideration.
13955 -- Louis Auchincloss
13957 It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose,
13958 a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
13961 On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr.
13962 Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
13963 come out?" I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of
13964 ideas that could provoke such a question.
13967 Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
13970 The man who can drive himself further once the
13971 effort gets painful is the man who will win.
13974 You grow up on the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
13977 I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is
13978 because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
13981 When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
13984 With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half,
13985 and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
13986 -- Otto Von Bismarck
13988 Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
13991 I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character
13992 we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.
13995 There are no small parts, only small actors.
13998 Charm is a way of getting the answer 'yes'
13999 without having asked any clear question.
14002 Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it
14003 ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the
14004 wisdom we've learned and create something.
14007 Life at university, with its intellectual and inconclusive discussions
14008 at a postgraduate level is on the whole a bad training for the real world.
14009 Only men of very strong character surmount this handicap.
14012 The First Daily Sin is imitation. How can the network evening
14013 news programs be so similar? We're in a commercial, highly competitive
14014 struggle for viewers, and yet our solution for standing out in the
14015 marketplace is--do just what the competition is doing. CBS research shows
14016 that half the viewers of any given evening news broadcast--on CBS, NBC, or
14017 ABC--only watch that particular program one night a week. The implication
14018 is obvious: To these viewers, it doesn't make much of a difference which
14019 one they watch--or whether they watch at all.
14020 The Second Daily Sin is predictability. How often are you surprised
14021 by something you see on the news?
14022 The Third Daily Sin is artificiality. If you stop and really
14023 listen to how a typical television reporter tells a story, you'll hear how
14024 artificial it sounds. Even words--'pontiff' comes quickly to mind--that you
14025 never hear in real life. Nobody talks that way--except for us.
14026 The Fourth Daily Sin is laziness. The people I work with put in
14027 long hours and are very devoted to their jobs. They're certainly not lazy
14028 in the conventional sense. But I think we've all become lazy in our
14029 thinking, in our reluctance to dig out original stories and come up with
14030 new ways to tell them.
14031 The Fifth Daily Sin is oversimplification. Our audience is smarter
14032 and more thoughtful than a lot of us think. The people out there in America
14033 know that life is not as simple as what they see on the news: a world of
14034 heroes and villains, winners and losers, exploiters and victims. Yet that's
14035 what we show them, night after night.
14036 The Sixth Daily Sin is hype. Can you remember the last 'story
14037 you'll never forget?' How about the one before that? I can't. Over the
14038 years we've exaggerated so much that we've eroded our own ability to convey
14039 what's truly significant.
14040 The Seventh Daily Sin is cynicism. I think we're cynical about the
14041 audience and cynical about our ability to make a difference in peoples'
14042 lives. Journalists today are held in low esteem, but that doesn't have to
14043 be. Our viewers and listeners are also hungry for honest information, for
14044 help in coping with a bewildering world. We have an enormous opportunity to
14045 win our good name back--and insure our own survival in the bargain.
14046 -- Andrew Heyward, President of CBS News
14048 Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
14049 -- Benjamin Disraeli
14051 Dr. Laura eats the Bible, live
14052 ------------------------------
14053 Laura Schlessinger is a radio personality who dispenses advice to
14054 people who call in to her radio show. Paramount Television Group is
14055 currently producing a "Dr. Laura" television show. She has become a
14056 convert to Judaism, and now she is Ba'al T'shuvah.
14057 Recently, she made some statements about homosexuals, based on
14058 biblical edicts. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura that
14059 was posted on the internet.
14064 Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law.
14065 I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that
14066 knowledge with as many people as I can.
14067 When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example,
14068 I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an
14069 abomination. End of debate.
14070 Now I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the
14071 specific laws and how to best follow them.
14072 a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates
14073 a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbours.
14074 They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
14075 b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in
14076 Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair
14078 c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in
14079 her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev.15:19-24). The problem is, how
14080 do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
14081 d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and
14082 female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend
14083 of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can
14084 you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
14085 e) I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus
14086 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated
14087 to kill him myself?
14088 f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
14089 Abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality.
14090 I don't agree. Can you settle this?
14091 g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I
14092 have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses.
14093 Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
14094 h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair
14095 around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.
14096 19:27. How should they die?
14097 i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes
14098 me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
14099 j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two
14100 different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments
14101 made of two different kinds of thread (cotton / polyester blend). He
14102 also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we
14103 go to the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them?
14104 (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family
14105 affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
14106 I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident
14107 you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is
14108 eternal and unchanging.
14109 Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,
14112 Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect
14113 when taken in too large quantities.
14116 It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
14119 It is theory that decides what can be observed.
14122 It would be too pat, perhaps, to say that modern people, men and
14123 women, expect the unexpected. But they certainly expect, or are inured
14124 to, constant change... Unquestionably, people sense constant movement,
14125 change, alteration, and 'progress'. Even clothes are supposed to change
14126 from year to year: there is this year's fashion, and last year's fashion,
14127 and the fashions of the year before.
14128 Then there is the idea of 'news,' that is, of something novel
14129 happening every day, something worth reporting. Millions of people wake up
14130 in the morning and watch the news on television; they may also listen to
14131 radio news throughout the day and later catch the evening television news.
14132 It would be unthinkable to read in the newspapers or to hear on television
14133 that 'nothing much happened today.' There is always news, always something
14134 going on, always change. Some days bring major headlines; other days are
14135 quieter. But there is never no news: the message we get every day is that
14136 things are never exactly the same.
14137 -- Lawrence M. Friedman, from "The Horizontal Society"
14139 Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices
14140 call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.
14143 I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier
14144 to answer questions. I can't answer your question.
14145 -- Presidential candidate GW Bush, in response to a question about
14146 whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the
14147 first debate. Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000
14149 Notice the difference between what happens when a man
14150 says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what
14151 happens when he says, "I am a failure."
14154 If you always do what interests you,
14155 at least one person is pleased.
14156 -- Katharine Hepburn
14158 I cannot imagine a pleasant retired life of peace
14159 and meditation without a cat in the house.
14160 -- Paul Von Hindenberg
14162 Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of
14163 are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the
14164 past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping.
14167 It is cheering to see that the rats are
14168 still around--the ship is not sinking.
14171 Always keep faith in the mind of clear light and be safe!
14174 Until now, in the Western world, leisure was the exclusive
14175 possession of a privileged class, which took upon itself the task of
14176 playing on behalf of the whole overworked society. For all the injustices
14177 which this entailed, it can be argued that this inequality in the
14178 distribution of leisure gave the minority that enjoyed it a certain
14179 responsibility for the quality of its amusements.
14180 Today our machines have turned leisure into an almost universal
14181 and obligatory state, one which many of us are finding enervating and even
14182 painful. To live free of the burden of grinding toil is the oldest of
14183 man's dreams. Yet no sooner has he rid himself of the accursed necessity
14184 of earning his living by the sweat of his brow, then he is confronted by a
14185 huge and alarming vacuum which -- if he is not to go mad -- must be quickly
14186 and entirely filled. With this new and abundant leisure come certain
14187 inescapable demands not to squander unimaginatively the resources that
14188 industrialization has opened for us. Many of us-consciously seldom, but
14189 unconsciously often-find this challenge so disturbing that we flee back to
14190 artificially strenuous work or even to war in order to escape the
14191 perplexities of choice presented to abundant leisure.
14192 This is a problem which you, as members of the Mass Audience, will
14193 be sharing with hundreds of millions of your fellow citizens the world over.
14196 If you want to write, keep cats.
14199 It is because the body is a machine that education is possible.
14200 Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial
14201 organization upon the natural organization of the body.
14202 -- Thomas H. Huxley
14204 If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
14207 Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of
14208 a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
14211 The surest way to forfeit the esteem of a cat is to
14212 treat him as an inferior being.
14215 When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.
14218 Don't tell me how hard you work.
14219 Tell me how much you get done.
14222 The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.
14223 -- James Russell Lowell
14225 Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
14228 A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has
14229 cheated some woman out of a divorce.
14232 Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
14234 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.
14235 They gave him love and he invented marriage.
14237 When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane,
14238 most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear
14239 that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition
14240 continuously until death do them part.
14241 -- George Bernard Shaw
14243 Marriage is nature's way of keeping people from fighting with strangers.
14245 If you're upset and wonder what your wife does with
14246 all the grocery money, stand sideways and look at yourself.
14248 I don't worry about terrorism;
14249 I was married for two years.
14252 Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding,
14253 economical and a good cook. Unfortunately, the law allows
14256 Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or
14257 manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they
14258 will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
14259 -- John Stuart Mill
14261 Most of America's millionaires are first-generation rich. How is
14262 it possible for people from modest backgrounds to become millionaires in
14263 one generation? Why is it that so many people with similar socioeconomic
14264 backgrounds never accumulate even modest amounts of wealth?
14265 Most people who become millionaires have confidence in their own
14266 abilities. They do not spend time worrying about whether or not their
14267 parents were wealthy. They do not believe that one must be born wealthy.
14268 Conversely, people of modest backgrounds who believe that only the wealthy
14269 produce millionaires are predetermined to remain non-affluent. Have you
14270 always thought that most millionaires are born with silver spoons in their
14271 mouths? If so, consider the following facts that our research uncovered
14272 about American millionaires:
14273 * Only 19 percent receive any income or wealth of any kind from a
14274 trust fund or an estate.
14275 * Fewer than 20 percent inherited 10 percent or more of their wealth.
14276 * More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance.
14277 * Fewer than 25 percent ever received "an act of kindness" of $10,000
14278 or more from their parents, grandparents, or other relatives.
14279 * Ninety-one percent never received, as a gift, as much as $1 of the
14280 ownership of a family business.
14281 * Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents
14282 or other relatives.
14283 * Fewer than 10 percent believe they will ever receive an inheritance
14285 America continues to hold great prospects for those who wish to
14286 accumulate wealth in one generation. In fact, America has always been a
14287 land of opportunity for those who believe in the fluid nature of our
14288 nation's social system and economy.
14289 -- from the book "The Millionaire Next Door"
14291 In Rome, Athens, and Sparta, honor alone was the reward for the
14292 greatest of services. A wreath of oak-leaves or laurel, a statue or public
14293 congratulations was an immense reward for winning a battle or capturing a town.
14294 In these cities, a man who had accomplished some great feat was
14295 sufficiently rewarded by the accomplishment itself. He could not meet any
14296 of his fellow-citizens without feeling the pleasure of having done
14297 something for them; he could calculate the extent of his services by the
14298 number of his countrymen. Everybody is capable of doing good to one man,
14299 but it is god-like to contribute to the happiness of an entire society."
14302 I'll let you in on a secret. George Bush is not going to
14303 be the next president of the United States. Get over it,
14304 folks. It's not going to happen.
14305 -- Michael Moore, 9/21/2000, quoted by Eun-Kyung Kim (AP)
14307 As I considered the premise put forth in the meeting room: that
14308 the shortest road to wisdom and peace with the world is the one that turns
14309 inward, away from direct sensory contact with other creatures. I will not
14310 assert that meditation, psychotherapy, and philosophical introspection are
14311 unproductive, but I simply can't accept that inward is the only or best way
14312 for everyone to turn. The more disciplined practitioners of contemplative
14313 traditions can turn inward and still get beyond the self, but many others
14314 simply become swamped by self-indulgence. There are far too many people
14315 living in our society who forget daily that other creatures--five kingdoms'
14316 worth of them--are cohabiting the planet with us.
14317 Over half a century ago, Robinson Jeffers suggested that it may be
14318 just as valid to turn outward: "The whole human race spends too much
14319 emotion on itself. The happiest and freest man is the scientist
14320 investigating nature or the artist admiring it, the person who is
14321 interested in things that are not human. Or if he is interested in human
14322 beings, let him regard them objectively as a small part of the great music."
14323 -- Gary Paul Nabhan
14325 SWM 33, black belt kama sutra, seeking wonder woman. bring me your
14326 inhibitions and i will shatter them, you sweet thing. no violence.
14327 no caustics. sin is the word of restriction, so come pet my crowley.
14328 aleister can cook; aunt jemima treatment for all.
14330 Chance favors only the prepared mind.
14333 I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
14334 I lift my eyes and all is born again.
14337 Books do furnish a room.
14340 For the benefit of the two or three other people in this society
14341 who don't know what 'Cats' is about, here's the answer: It's about a bunch
14342 of cats. The cats jump around in a postnuclear junkyard for some two and a
14343 half hours, bumping and grinding to that curiously Mesozoic pop music for
14344 which Andrew Lloyd Webber is famous--the kind of full-tilt truckin' that
14345 sounds like the theme from 'The Mod Squad.' There's an Elvis impersonator
14346 cat, and a cat that looks like Cyndi Lauper, and a cat that looks like
14347 Phyllis Diller. All the other cast members look like Jon Bon Jovi with two
14348 weeks of facial growth.
14349 Sure, 'Cats' is allegedly based upon the works of T. S. Eliot, but
14350 from what I could tell, the show had about as much to do with the author of
14351 'The Waste Land' as those old Steve Reeves movies had to do with Euripides.
14352 'Cats' is what 'Grease' would look like if all the cast members dressed up
14353 like KISS. To give you an idea of how bad 'Cats' is, think of a musical
14354 where you're actually glad to hear 'Memory' reprised a third time because
14355 all the other songs are so awful. Think of a musical where the songs are so
14356 bad that 'Memory' starts to sound like 'Ol' Man River' by comparison.
14357 That's how bad 'Cats' is.
14360 Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else--and failing.
14361 -- Raymond Radiguet
14363 green sandwich glowing bright, thou droppest mushrooms
14364 on my tights, i slackly drool and whine and moan, for i
14365 will soon give you a better, more acidic home.
14367 By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become
14368 happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
14371 The life of the creative man is lead, directed, and controlled by
14372 boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
14375 The new generation of software must be designed from day one to be pirated.
14376 -- CinemaElectric CEO Jim Robinson
14378 thought is the only antidote to stupidity,
14379 but stupid people don't realize they need it.
14382 i don't have to speak
14383 in haiku at all times since
14387 What is more interesting in this world than our fellow human
14388 beings and other living creatures? Why do we know so few of what must be
14389 out there? What kind of philistines are we? Yet we can make a more
14390 practical point than this. We need to interact with other species whether
14391 we want to or not. They are our food and our environment: homes, scenery,
14392 soil, even the oxygen in the air is provided by courtesy of plants and
14393 photosynthesizing bacteria. We need actively to exploit our fellow
14394 creatures to survive. This is not an option: we have to exploit them unless
14395 we prefer to die. Therefore purely for selfish reasons (as well as for
14396 reasons that we may hope are less selfish) we also need to conserve them.
14397 Besides, even if we learnt to do without our fellow creatures--perhaps
14398 found some inexhaustible supply of food on some distant planet--they would
14399 not necessarily ignore us. We are flesh, too, for all our conceit, and many
14400 are more than happy to feed upon us. To contain, exploit, or conserve our
14401 fellow creatures we need to keep tabs on them.
14404 Nature's technology occurs on the surface of the same planet as
14405 that of human culture, so it endures the same physical and chemical
14406 limitations and must use the same materials. But nature copes and invents
14407 in a way fundamentally different from what we do. At the very least, the
14408 rate at which she alters herself is glacial by our cultural standard.
14409 The very shapes of the two technologies differ dramatically. Just
14410 look around you. Right angles are everywhere: the edges of this page, desk
14411 corners, street corners, floor corners, shelves, doors, boxes, bricks, and
14412 on and on. Then look at field, park, or forest. Where are the right angles?
14413 Absent? No, but rare, which raises questions. Why so few right angles in
14414 nature? Why do civilizations find them so serviceable?
14415 Natural and human technologies differ extensively and pervasively.
14416 We build dry and stiff structures; nature mostly makes hers wet and
14417 flexible. We build of metals; nature never does. Our hinges mainly slide;
14418 hers mostly bend. We do wonders with wheels and rotary motion; nature makes
14419 fully competent boats, aircraft, and terrestrial vehicles that lack them
14420 entirely. Our engines expand or spin; hers contract or slide. We fabricate
14421 large devices directly; nature's large things are cunning proliferations of
14423 -- Steven Vogel's, from "Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds
14424 of Nature and People"
14426 If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
14429 I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
14430 world's shortest speech. He said I will be so brief I have already
14431 finished, and he sat down.
14432 -- Edward O. Wilson
14434 yahoo throws a shoe;
14435 trouble in digital zone
14436 e-log drops out chute
14439 Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot.
14440 His bite is incurable.
14443 A great sailor can sail even with a torn canvas. -- Seneca
14445 What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
14446 In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
14449 Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution
14450 introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what
14451 we can learn from her... 'doing it nature's way' has the potential to
14452 change the way we grow food, make materials, harness energy, heal
14453 ourselves, store information, and conduct business.
14454 In a biomimetic world, we would manufacture the way animals and
14455 plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradable
14456 fibers, ceramics, plastics, and chemicals. Our farms, modeled on prairies,
14457 would be self-fertilizing and pest-resistant. To find new drugs or crops,
14458 we would consult animals and insects that have used plants for millions of
14459 years to keep themselves healthy and nourished. Even computing would take
14460 its cue from nature, with software that "evolves" solutions, and hardware
14461 that uses the lock-and-key paradigm to compute by touch.
14462 In each case, nature would provide the models: solar cells copied
14463 from leaves, steely fibers woven spider-style, shatterproof ceramics drawn
14464 from mother-of-pearl, cancer cures compliments of chimpanzees, perennial
14465 grains inspired by tallgrass, computers that signal like cells, and a
14466 closed-loop economy that takes its lessons from redwoods, coral reefs, and
14467 oak-hickory forests.
14468 The biomimics are discovering what works in the natural world, and
14469 more important, what lasts. After 3.8 billion years of research and
14470 development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to
14471 survival. The more our world looks and functions like this natural world,
14472 the more likely we are to be accepted on this home that is ours, but not
14474 -- Janine M. Benyus
14476 It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep,
14477 than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.
14481 my eye, i must cry out at
14482 your nail gouge like lye.
14485 What one knows is, in youth, of little moment;
14486 they know enough who know how to learn.
14489 One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
14492 A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation
14493 with the bricks that others throw at him or her.
14496 Nobody who is not prepared to spoil cats will get
14497 from them the reward they are able to give.
14498 -- Compton MacKenzie
14500 The other night when I went into a restaurant in Santa Monica,
14501 there was one president--Clinton. When I ordered a pizza there
14502 was another one--Gore. When I paid the bill there was a third
14503 president--Bush, and when I walked out onto Ocean Boulevard there
14504 was no president because Bill is now the husband of a senator from
14506 Today I am witnessing the spectacle of a hyper-technological
14507 America which is sitting on the ruins of its electoral system
14508 waiting for absentee ballots in the mail.
14509 -- Bepe Severgnini, columnist for Milan's Corriere della Sera
14511 do you think it would hurt very much to swallow a whole egg, in shell?
14512 would it be better to boil it first so it's hard or to leave it runny?
14513 i'm wondering which way would be most likely to keep the shell from
14514 breaking before it exits the body...
14516 I will do everything in my power to restrict abortions.
14517 -- George W. Bush, Dallas Morning News, October 22, 1994
14519 I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where?
14520 You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of
14522 -- George W. Bush, whose state ranks 2nd in total number of children
14523 living in poverty, to Austin American Statesman, 12/18/99
14525 "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."
14526 -- Bush mocking what Karla Faye Tucker said on Larry King when asked,
14527 "What would you say to Governor Bush?" prior to her execution by
14528 lethal injection as reported by Talk magazine, September 1999
14530 An atmosphere of adolescence, a lack of gravitas--a carelessness, even a
14531 recklessness, perhaps born of things having gone a bit too easily so far.
14532 -- George Will, August 11, 1999, referring to Talk magazine's
14533 interview with Bush
14535 Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on
14536 public policy or philosophy or something.
14537 -- GW Bush was asked to name something he isn't
14538 good at by Talk magazine, September 1999 issue
14540 Bush should not advertise any allergy to serious things. A critical
14541 mass of lightness in a candidate causes the public mind to snap closed,
14542 with the judgement, "Not ready for prime time."
14543 -- George Will, August 11, 1999
14545 Bush is taking a political party on his ride. He and it will care if
14546 on Nov. 7, 2000, people think of Gore or Bradley as an unexciting but
14547 serious professor and of him as an amiable fraternity boy, but a boy.
14548 -- George Will, August 11, 1999
14550 What I'm against is quotas. I'm against hard quotas, quotas that
14551 basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate,
14552 quotas, I think, vulcanize society.
14553 -- George W. Bush (Austin American-Statesman 3/23/99)
14555 Son, I love your strategy: Don't let them get to know you.
14558 If George is elected President, it would destroy my faith
14559 in the office because he is such an ordinary guy.
14560 -- David Rosen, Midland geologist & former neighbor of GW Bush
14562 He's this week's pet rock.
14563 -- unknown, regarding GW Bush
14565 There ought to be limits to freedom. We're aware of the site,
14566 and this guy is just a garbage man.
14567 -- GW Bush, commenting on the website www.gwbush.com
14569 The Bush network is the only genuine network in the
14570 Republican Party. It is the Establishment.
14571 -- Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard
14573 "I will look at each piece of legislation when
14574 it makes it to my desk," and "I will review that
14575 when it makes it to my desk."
14576 -- GW Bush, refusing to comment on anything
14577 before it's absolutely unavoidable
14579 Reporters noticed four Latino men sitting at the Plaza, looking bored,
14580 wearing matching shirts from Buena Vista Farms. Buena Vista, it turns
14581 out, is a horse ranch run by Gerald Parsky, Bush's California chairman.
14582 The four men said they were brought to the event and were being paid
14583 their regular wages for attending.
14584 -- Salon Magazine reporting on a Bush fundraiser in California
14586 Asked how he would define "compassionate conservatism," Bush replied:
14587 "Making sure every child can read, making sure that we encourage
14588 faith-based organizations... when it comes to helping neighbors in
14589 need, making sure that our neighborhoods are safe, making sure that
14590 the state of Texas recognizes that people from all walks of life have
14591 got a shot at the Texas dream but, most importantly, making sure that
14592 government is not the answer to people's problems."
14593 This may be the only time a candidate promised not to solve any problems
14594 (with the possible exception of Utah Phillips, who ran on the "Sloth &
14595 Indolence" platform.)
14596 -- from georgebush2000.com
14598 I'd demand a recount.
14599 -- William F. Buckley, in the early '60s, in response to a
14600 reporter's question asking him what he would do if he
14601 were to win in his race for the office of Mayor of New York
14603 Half of the American people have never read a newspaper.
14604 Half never voted for President.
14605 One hopes it is the same half.
14608 Start every day off with a smile and get it over with. -- W. C. Fields
14610 Every man wishes to be wise,
14611 and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
14614 Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.
14617 When issues of public policy are discussed in the outward form
14618 of an argument, often the conclusions reached are predetermined by
14619 the assumptions and definitions inherent in a particular vision of
14620 social processes. Different visions, of course, have different
14621 assumptions, so it is not uncommon for people who follow different
14622 visions to find themselves in opposition to one another across a
14623 vast spectrum of unrelated issues, in such disparate fields as law,
14624 foreign policy, the environment, racial policy, military defense,
14625 education, and many others. To a remarkable extent, however,
14626 empirical evidence is neither sought beforehand nor consulted after
14627 a policy has been instituted. Facts may be marshaled for a position
14628 already taken, but that is very different from systematically
14629 testing opposing theories by evidence. Momentous questions are
14630 dealt with essentially as conflicts of vision.
14631 -- Thomas Sowell, from "The Vision of the Anointed"
14633 An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the
14634 blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
14635 -- George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah," 1921
14637 If a person is obviously mentally disabled, such as having Down's
14638 syndrome or Alzheimer's, decent people respond with sympathy and
14639 understanding; and so why, if people merely have low IQs, are they
14640 treated with ridicule and contempt?
14643 Always go to other people's funerals,
14644 otherwise they won't come to yours.
14647 Animals are such agreeable friends--
14648 they ask no questions,
14649 they pass no criticisms.
14652 All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.
14657 Willy flies without wings,
14658 Fast as a shadow can go.
14659 Black slash on white snow.
14661 Black face, cold blue eyes
14662 fish pond, golden fish surprise.
14663 Wet paws ... cold water!
14665 Black heart on white fur
14666 Green eyes ... last sight for poor mouse,
14667 Punctured by Willy.
14669 Willy stalks field mice.
14670 Wild Bill to small buffalo.
14671 Kills them just for show.
14673 Cat slays Two in Dawn
14674 Homicide. Gruesome Remains
14675 Left On Welcome Mat.
14680 Pete's eyes spit light;
14681 Blue diamond icicles,
14684 Sharp nose, fast heart, mouse
14685 Scrounges by the sewer. Pete
14686 Pounces, sharp claws out.
14688 Once quick with mouse life,
14689 Now just carnage: tail, fur, skull.
14693 Or goldfish or cardinal
14694 who loves our Petey.
14696 They hate Pete there,
14697 Crouched on the mossy rocks,
14698 Prospecting for gold.
14703 Louis wants to play.
14704 Its asthma, Lou! My asthma
14705 Tears us apart, m'boy.
14707 Louis -- scared by deer --
14708 spent all July and August
14711 We don't let Louis out.
14712 He is too dumb even for inside.
14713 Eyes blue oceans of space.
14715 Hot air fluffs Louis.
14716 Willy warms the newspapers.
14717 Pete? Purrs in her arms.
14720 dharma farm glistens
14721 like an earthy gem; yaks romp
14722 on verdant old hills.
14725 Noir comme le diable, [ Black as the devil,
14726 chaud comme l'enfer, [ hot as hell,
14727 pur comme un ange, [ pure as an angel,
14728 doux comme l'amour. [ sweet as love.
14729 -- Talleyrand, 18th century French diplomat, describing his concept
14730 of a good cup of coffee
14732 Coffee has two virtues. It is wet and it is warm. -- Dutch proverb
14734 Coffee is the common man's gold, and like gold, it brings
14735 to every person the feeling of luxury and nobility.
14736 -- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir, In Praise of Coffee, 1587
14738 Another head--and a black alpaca jacket and a
14739 serviette this time--to tell us coffee is ready.
14740 Not before it is time, too.
14741 -- D. H. Lawrence, from "Sea and Sardinia"
14743 Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco,
14744 and he will endure any privation,
14745 suffer any hardship, but let him be without
14746 these two necessaries of the woods, and he
14747 becomes irresolute and murmuring.
14748 -- U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849
14750 Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think.
14751 It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening.
14752 Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a
14753 location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time,
14754 but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be
14755 yourself, and have a second cup.
14758 Last comes the beverage of the Orient shore,
14759 Mocha, far off, the fragrant berries bore.
14760 Taste the dark fluid with a dainty lip,
14761 Digestion waits on pleasure as you sip.
14764 A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost as black as ink
14765 and very good in illness, especially of the stomach. This they
14766 drink in the morning early in the open places before everybody,
14767 without any fear or regard, out of clay or China cups, as hot as
14768 they can, sipping it a little at a time.
14769 -- German physician and botanist Leonhard Rauwolf in 1582
14771 The little campfires, rapidly increasing to hundreds in number,
14772 would shoot up along the hills and plains, and as if by magic,
14773 acres of territory would be illuminous with them. Soon they
14774 would be surrounded by the soldiers, who made it an inevitable
14775 rule to cook their coffee first.
14776 -- John D. Bilings, a Union veteran, in his book, Hardtack and Coffee
14778 Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass
14779 all four essential food groups:
14780 alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
14783 Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me.
14784 Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and
14785 a pain that is not without very great pleasure.
14786 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
14788 I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.
14789 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
14791 The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity
14792 as sugar or coffee. And I pay more for that ability than for
14793 any other under the sun.
14794 -- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
14796 If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee;
14797 it is the intelligent beverage.
14800 Wine is for aging, not coffee.
14801 -- Ken Hutchinson, Starsky and Hutch
14803 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
14806 After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee" one's mind
14807 weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich
14808 beverage of home, with it's clotted layer of yellow cream on top of
14809 it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.
14810 -- Mark Twain, in "A Tramp Abroad"
14812 The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the
14813 cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot
14814 be expected to reproduce.
14815 -- Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.
14817 It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means
14818 it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make
14819 it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you
14820 ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be
14821 strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.
14822 -- Malcolm X, 196, Message to the Grass Roots
14824 Make my coffee like I like my men: hot, black, and strong.
14825 -- Willona Wood, Good Times
14827 Never drink black coffee at lunch;
14828 it will keep you awake in the afternoon.
14829 -- Jilly Cooper, 1970, "How to Survive from Nine to Five"
14831 Resolve to free yourselves from the slavery
14832 of the tea and coffee and other slop-kettle.
14833 -- William Cobbett, 1829, "Advise to Young Men"
14835 Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid,
14836 strichnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time.
14837 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Society and Solitude: Old Age"
14839 Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body
14840 what the Word of the Lord is to the soul.
14841 -- Isak Dinesen, 1934
14843 Coffee: we can get it anywhere, and get as loaded
14844 as we like on it, until such teeth-chattering,
14845 eye-bulging, nonsense-gibbering time as we may be
14846 classified unable to operate heavy machinery.
14847 -- Joan Frank, 1991
14849 Many people are like instant coffee:
14850 the minute they get in hot water they dissolve.
14851 -- Anonymous, from Toronto Globe and Mail; July 10, 1993
14853 The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of illusion
14854 and given more promise to hope.
14857 The powers of a man's mind are directly proportional
14858 to the quantity of coffee he drank.
14859 -- Sir James MacKintosh, 18th century philosopher
14861 If it wasn't for coffee, I'd have no discernible personality at all.
14862 -- David Letterman Esquire Interview Fall '94
14864 Ah! How sweet coffee tastes!
14865 Lovelier than a thousand kisses,
14866 sweeter far than muscatel wine!
14867 -- From J. S. Bach's "Coffee Cantata," 1732
14869 You make good coffee... You're a slob,
14870 but you make good coffee.
14871 -- Cher, in "Moonstruck"
14873 See how special you are? I serve you coffee in the parlor.
14874 -- Anthony Quinn to Sophia Loren in "The Black Orchid"
14876 The first cup is for the guest,
14877 the second for enjoyment,
14878 the third for the sword.
14879 -- Arabic proverb about coffee
14881 The vacuum pot is truly the CD player of coffeemakers;
14882 all you taste is the coffee.
14883 -- Corby Kummer, food expert
14885 People are kind of like zombies in Hong Kong nowadays.
14886 You don't see that glow anymore. In terms of colour
14887 Hong Kong looks a bit grey. To counter that, I think
14888 we should give out free espresso samples to give people
14889 more caffeine; triple espresso with Irish cream syrup,
14890 iced! People just need to get a bit more wired.
14891 -- David Wu, Actor and Channel V VJ, quoted in Post Magazine 29 August 99
14893 a small fish is this
14894 with so many other big
14895 tasks still to complete
14897 For myself I am an optimist--it does not seem
14898 to be much use being anything else.
14899 -- Winston Churchill
14901 One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one
14902 is constantly making exciting discoveries.
14905 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
14908 There are two means of refuge from the
14909 miseries of life: music and cats.
14910 -- Albert Schweitzer
14912 Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator,
14913 but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
14916 A clever man commits no minor blunders.
14917 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
14919 my fingers have slipped;
14920 keyboard greasy from pizza
14924 One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that,
14925 in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers
14926 and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are
14927 not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
14930 Fine things books, but perhaps the moment has come to stop taking them
14931 so seriously. Who was it that said people who are always reading never
14932 discover anything? I'm not sure if that is true, but I do know that
14933 reading and thinking are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes
14934 reading supplies the most cunning of all means of avoiding thought. It
14935 would be good once in awhile to try thinking without the stimulus of
14936 books, to become not an out of-the-box -- never, please, that -- but at
14937 least an out-of-the-book thinker. Books may furnish a room, but there
14938 surely are other things quite as suitable for furnishing a mind. Time,
14939 I think, for me to attempt to find out what these might be.
14942 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
14943 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
14945 You can observe a lot by just watching. -- Yogi Berra
14947 No wonder Al Gore thinks he is president--this is a most confusing time.
14948 The leading rap singer is white, the world's best golfer is black, and
14949 Bill Clinton just got back from Vietnam.
14950 -- Paul Harvey, Early December 2000
14952 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
14953 discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but "That's funny...".
14956 Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
14957 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
14959 Dr. Seuss takes a look at election recounts:
14960 I cannot count them in a box.
14961 I cannot count them with a fox.
14962 I cannot count them by computer.
14963 I will not with a Roto-Rooter.
14964 I cannot count them card-by-card.
14965 I will not 'cause it's way too hard.
14966 I cannot count them on my fingers.
14967 I will not while suspicion lingers.
14968 I'll leave the country in a jam--
14969 I won't count ballots, Sam-I-Am.
14971 For some years, we have been surprised and distressed by the
14972 intellectual trends in certain precincts of American academia.
14973 Vast sectors of the humanities and the social sciences seem to
14974 have adopted a philosophy that we shall call, for want of a better
14975 term, "postmodernism": an intellectual current characterized by
14976 the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition
14977 of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from
14978 any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism
14979 that regards science as nothing more than a 'narration,' a 'myth'
14980 or a social construction among many others.
14981 To respond to this phenomenon, one of us (Sokal) decided to try
14982 an unorthodox (and admittedly uncontrolled), experiment: submit to
14983 a fashionable American cultural-studies journal, "Social Text," a
14984 parody of the type of work that has proliferated in recent years,
14985 to see whether they would publish it. The article, entitled
14986 "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics
14987 of Quantum Gravity", is chock-full of absurdities and blatant
14988 non-sequiturs. In addition, it asserts an extreme form of cognitive
14989 relativism: after mocking the old-fashioned "dogma" that "there
14990 exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any
14991 individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole", it
14992 proclaims categorically that "physical `reality', no less than
14993 social `reality', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct".
14994 By a series of stunning leaps of logic, it arrives at the conclusion
14995 that "the [Pi] of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be
14996 constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable
14997 historicity; and the putative observer becomes fatally de-centered,
14998 disconnected from any epistemic link to a space-time point that can
14999 no longer be defined by geometry alone". The rest is in the same vein.
15000 And yet, the article was accepted and published. Worse, it was
15001 published in a special issue of 'Social Text' devoted to rebutting the
15002 criticisms leveled against postmodernism and social constructivism by
15003 several distinguished scientists. For the editors of 'Social Text,'
15004 it was hard to imagine a more radical way of shooting themselves in
15006 -- Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern
15007 Intellectuals' Abuse of Science."
15009 May you live all the days of your life.
15012 We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication
15013 below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its
15014 faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
15015 'I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa
15016 Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me
15017 the truth, is there a Santa Claus?' -- Virginia O'Hanlon
15018 Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by
15019 the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see.
15020 They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little
15021 minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are
15022 little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in
15023 his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured
15024 by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
15025 Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
15026 He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and
15027 you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
15028 Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would
15029 be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike
15030 faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We
15031 should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light
15032 with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
15033 Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies.
15034 You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on
15035 Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus
15036 coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no
15037 sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are
15038 those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies
15039 dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not
15040 there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and
15041 unseeable in the world.
15042 You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside,
15043 but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man,
15044 nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could
15045 tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain
15046 and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?
15047 Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
15048 No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand
15049 years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will
15050 continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
15051 Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!
15052 -- The editorial "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus," first printed
15053 in the New York Sun in 1897.
15055 Most Internet appliances that I've seen are simply dumbed-down
15056 PCs, and some analysts call any damn thing that can access the
15057 Internet--other than a PC--an Internet appliance, even if it's
15058 your cell phone or a wireless PDA. That leads to some huge
15059 market projections, which are pretty much meaningless as a
15060 single figure. I think the idea of Internet appliances as a
15061 unique market is a pipe dream, with a lot of people sucking
15063 -- Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a market
15066 Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
15069 Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
15072 She played with her cat, and it was a wonder to watch the white hand
15073 and the white paw frolic in the shade of night.
15076 Just because something doesn't do what you planned
15077 it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
15078 -- Thomas Alva Edison
15080 Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.
15084 drools on oval office desk
15085 while country expires
15086 -- about the dubya years
15088 brave new president
15089 laughs as he pulls death switch for
15091 -- about the dubya years
15093 they call me a shrub
15094 but i shrug and ask daddy
15095 for black ops killing
15096 -- about the dubya years
15099 moron ever known on earth:
15100 gee dubya bee, dude.
15101 -- about the dubya years
15104 means "we do it my way" and
15106 -- about the dubya years
15108 smiling lies, dumb looks,
15109 idea-free, insults all,
15111 -- about the dubya years
15113 my feeling is that humans are both divine and full of sh*t.
15114 most people are drowning in their own mental diarrhea.
15116 solution? a sewer pipe for the mind, perhaps. or at least to
15117 realize that the contagion is part of us and has to be purified
15118 from within. there is no external enemy to kill or persecute;
15119 all evil deeds and words and thoughts are our own property.
15120 no one else can take them away for you; you must "dispose of
15121 properly". clean these damaged mental constituents using your
15122 will to heal your consciousness.
15124 If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will
15125 change a past or future event, then you are residing on another
15126 planet with a different reality system.
15129 Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns;
15130 he should be drawn and quoted.
15133 A day without rebooting is like a day without Microsoft. -- fred t. hamster
15135 I've met many thinkers and many cats,
15136 but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
15139 People living and working in a business system cannot change it.
15140 Their perspectives are foreshortened, their information gathering and
15141 measurement systems reinforce the past, and their incentives encourage
15142 continuity. Archimedes proclaimed, 'Give me where to stand, and I will move
15143 the earth.' But where should those who might change a business system be
15145 The answer is that every organization needs two business systems.
15146 Borrowing a term from linguistics, we shall call them the 'surface system'
15147 and the 'deep system.' The surface system is comprised of the organized
15148 tasks of the business processes, with their attendant jobs, structures,
15149 systems, and values. But this surface system is in periodic need of major
15150 change. Accomplishing that change is the job of the deep system.
15151 The deep system creates no customer value; it makes no products and
15152 delivers no services. It doesn't process orders, develop new products, or
15153 create value for customers. Rather it monitors, governs, adjusts, and
15154 reforms the surface system that does create customer value. A company's
15155 deep system bears the responsibility for detecting external changes,
15156 determining what those changes mean, and intervening to modify or transform
15157 the surface system accordingly. The deep system, working beneath the
15158 surface, embodies the capacity to change.
15159 The deep system continually hurls challenges: Is this still the
15160 right way or the best way to do things? If not, what is? The deep system
15161 ensures that the appropriate internal change--moderate or radical--takes
15162 place, shaping and reshaping the organization to take account of, and
15163 whenever possible take advantage of, ongoing external change.
15166 There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
15167 conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the
15168 introduction of a new order of things.
15169 -- Nicolas Machiavelli
15171 Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy
15172 about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely.
15175 I am opposed to millionaires, but it would
15176 be dangerous to offer me the position.
15179 Never eat more than you can lift. -- the muppet Miss Piggy
15182 politics are poison, but
15183 it has to be said...
15185 dubya bush will lead
15186 to lower expectations
15190 Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile
15191 becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles
15192 whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world,
15193 you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community
15194 of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
15195 Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any
15196 meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again
15197 you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It's quite
15199 You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no
15200 special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants;
15201 you exist in tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of
15202 exasperation, 'far removed from the seats of strife,' as the early
15203 explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required
15204 of you is a willingness to trudge.
15205 There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going
15206 anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same
15207 place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will
15208 be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in
15209 the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every
15210 glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your
15211 route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it
15212 would hardly matter.
15213 -- Bill Bryson, "A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the
15214 Appalachian Trail."
15216 You can't cheat an honest man. -- W. C. Fields
15218 Most conversations are simply monologues
15219 delivered in the presence of a witness.
15222 There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down
15223 at a typewriter and open a vein.
15226 Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence
15227 should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary
15228 sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no
15229 unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
15230 -- William Strunk Jr.
15232 The small and elite group of scientists who create most of the
15233 flavor in most of the food now consumed in the United States are
15234 called 'flavorists.' They draw on a number of disciplines in their
15235 work: biology, psychology, physiology, and organic chemistry. A
15236 flavorist is a chemist with a trained nose and a poetic sensibility.
15237 Flavors are created by blending scores of different chemicals in
15238 tiny amounts--a process governed by scientific principles but
15239 demanding a fair amount of art. In an age when delicate aromas and
15240 microwave ovens do not easily co-exist, the job of the flavorist is
15241 to conjure illusions about processed food and, in the words of one
15242 flavor company's literature, to ensure 'consumer likeability.' The
15243 flavorists with whom I spoke were discreet, in keeping with the
15244 dictates of their trade. They were also charming, cosmopolitan, and
15245 ironic. They not only enjoyed fine wine but could identify the
15246 chemicals that give each grape its unique aroma. One flavorist
15247 compared his work to composing music. A well-made flavor compound
15248 will have a 'top note' that is often followed by a 'dry-down' and a
15249 'leveling-off,' with different chemicals responsible for each stage.
15250 The taste of a food can be radically altered by minute changes in the
15251 flavoring combination. 'A little odor goes a long way,' one
15253 In order to give a processed food a taste that consumers will
15254 find appealing, a flavorist must always consider the food's
15255 'mouthfeel'--the unique combination of textures and chemical
15256 interactions that affect how the flavor is perceived. Mouthfeel can
15257 be adjusted through the use of various fats, gums, starches,
15258 emulsifiers, and stabilizers. The aroma chemicals in a food can be
15259 precisely analyzed, but the elements that make up mouthfeel are much
15260 harder to measure. How does one quantify a pretzel's hardness, a
15261 french fry's crispness? Food technologists are now conducting basic
15262 research in rheology, the branch of physics that examines the flow and
15263 deformation of materials. A number of companies sell sophisticated
15264 devices that attempt to measure mouthfeel. The TA.XT2i Texture
15265 Analyzer, produced by the Texture Technologies Corporation, of
15266 Scarsdale, New York, performs calculations based on data derived from
15267 as many as 250 separate probes. It is essentially a mechanical mouth.
15268 It gauges the most-important rheological properties of a food--bounce,
15269 creep, breaking point, density, crunchiness, chewiness, gumminess,
15270 lumpiness, rubberiness, springiness, slipperiness, smoothness,
15271 softness, wetness, juiciness, spreadability, springback, and tackiness.
15272 -- Eric Schlosser, from "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good",
15273 Atlantic Monthly, 2001.
15275 We haven't failed. We now know a thousand things that
15276 won't work, so we are much closer to finding what will.
15279 If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that
15280 only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them
15281 would know the them song from 'The Beverly Hillbillies'.
15284 The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is
15285 non-interference with their own particular ways of being
15286 happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by
15287 violence with ours.
15290 My dad was the town drunk. Usually that's not so bad, but New York City?
15293 Ninety percent of the politicians give the other
15294 ten percent a bad name.
15297 You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy.
15300 We must abandon the prevalent belief in the
15301 superior wisdom of the ignorant.
15304 If the primary effect of the media in the late twentieth century was
15305 to turn nearly everything that passed across their screens into
15306 entertainment, the secondary and ultimately more significant effect was
15307 to force nearly everything to turn itself into entertainment in order to
15308 attract media attention. Daniel Boorstin had coined the term 'pseudo-
15309 event' to describe events that had been concocted by public relations
15310 practitioners to get attention from the press. Movie premieres,
15311 publishing parties, press conferences, balloon crossings, sponsored
15312 sporting contests, award ceremonies, demonstrations and hunger strikes,
15313 to name just a few examples, all were synthetic, manufactured pseudo-
15314 events that wouldn't have existed if someone hadn't been seeking
15315 publicity and if the media hadn't been seeking something to fill their
15316 pages and airwaves, preferably something entertaining.
15317 But the idea of pseudo-events almost seemed quaint by the late
15318 twentieth century. Most people realized that the object of virtually
15319 everyone in public life of any sort was to attract the media and that
15320 everyone from the top movie stars to the parents of septuplets now had
15321 to have a press agent to promote them. What most people were also coming
15322 to realize, if only by virtue of how much the media had grown, was that
15323 pseudo-events had proliferated to such an extent that one could hardly
15324 call them events anymore because there were no longer any seams between
15325 them and the rest of life, no way of separating the pseudo from the
15326 so-called authentic. Almost everything in life had appropriated the
15327 techniques of public relations to gain access to the media, so that it
15328 wasn't the pseudo-event one was talking about anymore when one cited the
15329 cleverness of PR men and women: it was pseudo-life.
15330 Yet not even pseudo-life did full justice to the modern condition.
15331 That's because the media were not just passively recording the public
15332 performances and manipulations of others, even when life was nothing but
15333 manipulations. Having invited these performances in the first place,
15334 the media justified covering them because they were receiving media
15335 attention, which is every bit as convoluted as it sounds. The result
15336 was to make of modern society one giant Heisenberg effect, in which the
15337 media were not really reporting what people did; they were reporting
15338 what people did to get media attention. In other words, as life was
15339 increasingly being lived for the media, so the media were increasingly
15340 covering themselves and their impact on life.
15341 -- Neal Gabler, in "Life, the Movie"
15343 So little time, so little to do.
15346 Consistency requires you to be as ignorant
15347 today as you were a year ago.
15348 -- Bernard Berenson
15350 Who becomes a CPO? Stephanie Perrin, the chief privacy officer of
15351 Montreal-based Zero-Knowledge Systems, explains: "Obviously, we're
15352 not going to just pick somebody from the legal department," because
15353 privacy is more than a matter of just following the law. "You have
15354 to have a fundamental commitment to--dare I say it?--morality.
15355 Privacy is not just good business. We are framing the information
15356 age, and it is important to take that job seriously. We really do
15357 look at privacy as a human right, and not just a luxury item for
15358 spoiled North Americans. We're talking about the global information
15361 The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
15364 He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
15367 No easy problems ever come to the president of the United States.
15368 If they are easy to solve, someone else has solved them.
15369 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
15371 Your presence in the class is disruptive and affects the other students!
15372 -- A teacher's complaint to the teenage Albert Einstein
15374 When you're in a world of experts and so-called professionals, the
15375 common sense of the people is marginalized.
15376 I'll give you an example. We're talking about building a building
15377 not too far from where I live, in this warehouse district. It's an old,
15378 totally undistinguished warehouse in what has been designated a historic
15379 district. So we're working up the Environmental Impact Report, and you hire
15380 a consultant. The consultant is this young lady who says, 'The developer
15381 wants to tear this whole warehouse down and build an eight-story building,
15382 and that would have a negative impact on the historic warehouse district.'
15383 I say, 'Wait a minute. Why? It's an eight-story building. What's
15384 different? Why do you say it's negative? Why isn't it positive? It will
15385 bring more people -- there are not enough people down here.'
15386 'No,' she said, 'in my professional judgment...' And that is given
15387 weight by the courts. Her opinion could have more sway than the city
15388 council, the manager, the mayor, and all the people of Oakland put together.
15389 That's amazing. That's what I call 'expertise versus common sense.'
15390 What do they call those guys in Russia: the nomenklatura? The class of
15391 folks who run things. I think that's an important issue: reclaiming the
15392 power of ordinary people to control their lives. Every time we turn around,
15393 we've got some kind of a state or federal rule or regulation.
15394 'In my professional judgment...' That whole academic discipline was
15395 probably created less than 25 years ago, and that lore -- I call it lore;
15396 these are like stories you tell around the campfire -- is then raised to
15397 the level of legal significance with greater authority than the vote of the
15398 people and the elected representatives. The people have lost their
15399 democratic right to make a decision over the shape of their lives, and you
15400 can find that happening on a lot of issues more controversial than historic
15404 Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.
15407 Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
15410 Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps
15411 the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of
15412 arts and of sciences.
15415 You make men love their government and their country by giving them the
15416 kind of government and the kind of country that inspire respect and love;
15417 a country that is free and unafraid, that lets the discontented talk in
15418 order to learn the causes of their discontent and end those causes, that
15419 refuses to impel men to spy on their neighbors, that protects its citizens
15420 vigorously from harmful acts while it leaves the remedies for objectionable
15421 ideas to counterargument and time.
15422 -- Zechariah Chafee, Jr.
15424 Kites rise highest against the wind--not with it.
15425 -- Winston Churchill
15427 Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every
15428 man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.
15429 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
15431 A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with
15432 pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
15435 Technology is often defined as the creation of tools to gain control
15436 over the environment. However, this definition is not entirely sufficient.
15437 Humans are not alone in their use or even creation of tools. Orangutans in
15438 Sumatra's Suaq Balimbing swamp make tools out of long sticks to break open
15439 termite nests. Crows fashion tools from sticks and leaves. The leaf-cutter
15440 ant mixes dry leaves with its saliva to create a paste. Crocodiles use tree
15441 roots to anchor dead prey.
15442 What is uniquely human is the application of knowledge--recorded
15443 knowledge--to the fashioning of tools. The knowledge base represents the
15444 genetic code for the evolving technology. And as technology has evolved,
15445 the means for recording this knowledge base has also evolved, from the oral
15446 traditions of antiquity to the written design logs of nineteenth-century
15447 craftsmen to the computer-assisted design databases of the 1990s.
15448 Technology also implies a transcendence of the materials used to
15449 comprise it. When the elements of an invention are assembled in just the
15450 right way, they produce an enchanting effect that goes beyond the mere
15451 parts. When Alexander Graham Bell accidentally wire-connected two moving
15452 drums and solenoids (metal cores wrapped in wire) in 1875, the result
15453 transcended the materials he was working with. For the first time, a human
15454 voice was transported, magically it seemed, to a remote location. Most
15455 assemblages are just that: random assemblies. But when materials--and in
15456 the case of modern technology, information--are assembled in just the
15457 right way, transcendence occurs. The assembled object becomes far greater
15458 than the sum of its parts.
15461 All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
15464 The foresight of the astronomer who predicts with complete precision
15465 the state of the solar system many years in advance is absolutely the
15466 same in kind as that of the savage who predicts the next sunrise.
15467 The only difference lies in the extent of their knowledge.
15470 Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens
15471 the conscience like individual responsibility.
15472 -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
15474 The bug, that perverse and elusive malfunctioning of hardware and
15475 later of software, was born in the nineteenth century. It was already
15476 accepted shop slang as early as 1878, when Thomas Edison described his
15477 style of invention in a letter to a European representative: 'The first
15478 step is an intuition and it comes with a burst, then difficulties arise--
15479 this thing gives out and then that--"Bugs"--as such little faults and
15480 difficulties are called--show themselves, and months of intense watching,
15481 study and labor are requisite before commercial success--or failure--is
15482 certainly reached.'
15483 Edison implies that this use of 'bug' had not begun in his laboratory
15484 but was already standard jargon. The expression seems to have originated
15485 as telegrapher's slang. Western Union and other telegraph companies, with
15486 their associated branch offices, formed America's first high-technology
15487 system. About the time of Edison's letter, Western Union had over twelve
15488 thousand stations, and it was their condition that probably helped inspire
15489 the metaphor. City offices were filthy, and clerks exchanged verse about
15490 the gymnastics of insects cavorting in the cloakrooms. When, in 1945, a
15491 moth in a relay crashed the Mark II electromechanical calculator that the
15492 Navy was running at Harvard--it can still be seen taped in the original
15493 logbook--the bug metaphor had already been around for at least seventy-
15495 -- Edward Tenner, from "Why Things Bite Back"
15497 Look back, and smile on perils past.
15498 -- Sir Walter Scott
15500 I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
15506 -- William Butler Yeats' auto-epitath
15508 The bug, that perverse and elusive malfunctioning of hardware and
15509 later of software, was born in the nineteenth century. It was already
15510 accepted shop slang as early as 1878, when Thomas Edison described his
15511 style of invention in a letter to a European representative: 'The first
15512 step is an intuition and it comes with a burst, then difficulties arise--
15513 this thing gives out and then that--"Bugs"--as such little faults and
15514 difficulties are called--show themselves, and months of intense watching,
15515 study and labor are requisite before commercial success--or failure--is
15516 certainly reached.'
15517 Edison implies that this use of 'bug' had not begun in his
15518 laboratory but was already standard jargon. The expression seems to have
15519 originated as telegrapher's slang. Western Union and other telegraph
15520 companies, with their associated branch offices, formed America's first
15521 high-technology system. About the time of Edison's letter, Western Union
15522 had over twelve thousand stations, and it was their condition that probably
15523 helped inspire the metaphor. City offices were filthy, and clerks exchanged
15524 verse about the gymnastics of insects cavorting in the cloakrooms. When, in
15525 1945, a moth in a relay crashed the Mark II electromechanical calculator
15526 that the Navy was running at Harvard--it can still be seen taped in the
15527 original logbook--the bug metaphor had already been around for at least
15528 seventy-five years.
15529 -- Edward Tenner, "Why Things Bite Back"
15531 But the true threats to stability and peace are these nations that are not
15532 very transparent, that hide behind the--that don't let people in to take a
15533 look and see what they're up to. They're very kind of authoritarian regimes.
15534 The true threat is whether or not one of these people decide, peak of anger,
15535 try to hold us hostage, ourselves; the Israelis, for example, to whom we'll
15536 defend, offer our defenses; the South Koreans.
15537 -- George W. Bush, Media roundtable, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2001
15539 The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others.
15542 It wasn't until late in life that I discovered
15543 how easy it is to say "I don't know".
15544 -- W. Somerset Maugham
15546 It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a
15547 pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
15550 He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
15551 -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
15553 Failure is not an option.
15556 The year 1950 was the last full cry of urban America, at least on
15557 the surface. It was the year many of the cities visited in this book
15558 reached their historic peaks in population. Everybody was working, in folk
15559 memory, and in fact. Armies clad in overalls poured out of plants at
15560 quitting time or watched as the next shift filed in. Houses cost a couple
15561 of thousand bucks, or in high-cost cities some fifteen thousand. The
15562 mortgage was often less than a hundred a month. The teeming ethnic ghettos
15563 of the early century had given way to a more comfortable life, with
15564 religion and ethnicity, race and class still used as organizing principles
15565 for the neighborhood. The rough edges of the immigrant 'greenhorns' were
15566 worn smooth, and a confident younger generation now entered a fuller,
15567 richer American life. Grandma and Grandpa had their accents and old ways
15568 intact, and still mumbled sayings in the language your parents used when
15569 they didn't want you to understand. You could still find Il Progresso,
15570 Freiheit, Norske Tidende, and Polish Daily Zgoda on the newsstands, but the
15571 neighborhoods themselves were no longer alien places. It was the ghetto,
15572 yes, but made benign by assimilation.
15573 It was this world that the first surge tide into the suburbs left
15574 behind. They were people for whom the city had done its work, making
15575 Americans out of families from Dublin to Donetsk. America had given the
15576 urban young educations, and expectations. For many, those expectations had
15577 been nurtured through world war and economic depression. Something better
15578 was needed for the baby boomers.
15579 Today we look back on it all in hurt and wonder. How did this
15580 happen? Where did that good life go? When an accidental detour or a missed
15581 expressway exit brings us into contact with the world we left behind, we
15582 can still place all the blame firmly and squarely elsewhere. The shuttered
15583 factories and collapsing row houses, the vacant storefronts and rutted
15584 streets are regarded with the same awe reserved for the scenes of natural
15585 disasters. We look out on a world that somehow, in the American collective
15586 memory, destroyed itself.
15587 -- Ray Suarez, PBS journalist
15589 The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our
15590 enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
15591 -- G. K. Chesterton
15593 Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
15596 If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
15597 -- Tallulah Bankhead
15599 Kids don't watch when they are stimulated and look away when
15600 they are bored. They watch when they understand and look away
15601 when they are confused.
15602 -- Malcolm Gladwell
15604 We especially need imagination in science. It is not all
15605 mathematics, nor all logic, it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
15608 The masons have a "temple of living stones".
15609 Well, I have a temple of stoned living.
15610 Except that the temple is my parents' basement.
15612 Pain is just another form of information.
15615 The traditional image of Asian countries--and the one I held before
15616 we moved there--was of overwhelmingly poor societies: city dwellers
15617 starving in the streets and farmers slaving to raise barely enough rice
15618 to feed a family, while a tiny clique of well-connected magnates lived
15619 behind barbed-wire fences in ornate mansions. Today, those scenes can
15620 still be found in parts of East Asia. But for the most part, the Asian
15621 countries are building a huge middle class, in which most people have
15622 about as much as everybody else.
15623 Japan has been the model; when Japan became a rich country, it did
15624 so in ways that spread the wealth broadly and evenly. In opinion polls
15625 today, more than 90 percent of the Japanese people describe themselves
15626 as 'middle class.' In the other 'high-performing Asian economies' the
15627 economic boom has also been broadly distributed...
15628 You can legitimately question whether equal distribution of a
15629 nation's wealth is a sign of social success. The American dream, in
15630 economic terms, at least, has generally been the dream of enormous
15631 success--not of making as much money as everybody else but rather of
15632 getting really rich. And that dream has been one of the key reasons
15633 for the dynamism and resiliency of the United States over the decades.
15634 On the other hand, the egalitarian distribution of wealth, and the
15635 resulting sense that everybody is getting a relatively fair shake, is
15636 surely one of the reasons that Asian countries have civil and stable
15638 -- T. R. Reid, "Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East
15639 Teaches Us About Living in the West"
15641 Who will underrate the influence of loose popular
15642 literature in debauching the popular mind?
15645 There are so many ways of earning a living and most of them are failures.
15648 Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.
15651 Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
15654 Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.
15655 Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
15658 This idea of breaking the world into pieces and then explaining
15659 the pieces in terms of smaller pieces is called reductionism. It
15660 would be perfectly justified to consider Murray Gell-Mann, the father
15661 of the quark, to be the century's arch-reductionist. But very early
15662 on, long before mushy notions of holism became trendy, Gell-Mann
15663 appreciated an important truth: While you can reduce downward, that
15664 doesn't automatically mean you can explain upward. People can be
15665 divided into cells, cells into molecules, molecules into atoms, atoms
15666 into electrons and nuclei, nuclei into subatomic particles, and those
15667 into still tinier things called quarks. But, true as that may be,
15668 there is nothing written in the laws of subatomic physics that can be
15669 used to explain higher-level phenomena like human behavior. There is
15670 no way that one can start with quarks and predict that cellular life
15671 would emerge and evolve over the eons to produce physicists. Reducing
15672 downward is vastly easier than explaining upward--a truth that bears
15674 -- George Johnson, "Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the
15675 Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics"
15677 Perhaps no mightier conflict of mind occurs ever again in a lifetime
15678 than that first decision to unseat one's own tooth.
15681 The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the
15682 old ones that ramify, for those brought up as most of us have
15683 been, into every corner of our minds.
15684 -- John Maynard Keynes
15686 In the centuries preceding the introduction of the printing press,
15687 those who held power reinforced it by uses of language that mystified the
15688 powerless and kept them subservient. Even more so in today's world, power
15689 is inextricably tied to the use of language, and today's priesthood of
15690 professionals in many fields employs jargon-fueled mystification. That is a
15691 political use of language that deliberately excludes the 'powerless' lay
15692 audience from participation. The doctor whose technical terms confuse, no
15693 less than the politician whose equivocations obfuscate, the lawyer whose
15694 terms intimidate, and the accountant whose explanations obscure, is taking
15695 advantage of audiences through what are called 'gatekeeper' uses of
15696 language. They include euphemisms, jargon and other devices designed to
15697 prevent rather than augment the free flow of knowledge.
15698 Lawyers have been particularly egregious in this practice.
15699 Gatekeeper language also frequently masks what physicians do especially in
15700 circumstances that can be fraught with emotion. A relative of a cancer
15701 patient, seeking straight and hard informational answers to questions --
15702 how bad is the situation, how much time does she have left, is there any
15703 hope -- was informed by her doctor that his relative's cancer was
15704 'treatable' and her prognosis was 'guarded...'
15705 The philosopher Jrgen Habermas provides an insight into the
15706 political nature of gatekeeper uses of language through his identification
15707 of the 'scientization of the public sphere,' a process now occurring in
15708 many societies. In this trend, elites effectively disqualify members of the
15709 public from being able to participate in policy discussions by insisting
15710 that only specialists can really understand what is going on. When
15711 politicians come to believe that only they can understand what is going on
15712 in the high councils of government, and that their job is to translate it
15713 for us and to protect themselves in the process, the language they aim at
15714 the electorate takes on more and more aspects of purposeful deceit.
15715 -- Tom Shachtman, "The Inarticulate Society"
15717 If you think you are too small to make a difference,
15718 try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.
15721 It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations,
15722 if you live near him.
15723 -- J. R. R. Tolkien
15725 Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers
15726 is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
15729 Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
15730 -- John S. MacDonald
15732 authority does not exist.
15733 we are all equally feeble when compared
15734 with the profundity of the universe.
15737 Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
15738 -- Heywood Hale Broun
15740 Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information
15741 about life to last him the rest of his days.
15742 -- Flannery O'Connor
15744 Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food:
15745 frequently there must be a beverage.
15748 We live with strangers. Those we love most, with whom we share
15749 a shelter, a table, a bed, remain mysterious. Wherever lives overlap
15750 and flow together, there are depths of unknowing. Parents and children,
15751 partners, siblings, and friends repeatedly surprise us, revealing the
15752 need to learn where we are most at home. We even surprise ourselves
15753 in our own becoming, moving through the cycles of our lives. There is
15754 strangeness hidden in the familiar.
15755 At the same time there is familiarity hidden in the strange. We can
15756 look with curiosity and respect at the faces of men and women we have
15757 never met. Learning to recognize these strangers with whom we share an
15758 increasingly crowded and interdependent world, we can imagine ourselves
15759 joined in a single family, perhaps by a marriage between adventurous
15761 Strangers marry strangers, whether they have been playmates for
15762 years or never meet before the wedding day. They continue to surprise
15763 each other through the evolutions of love and the growth of affection.
15764 Lovers, gay and straight, begin in strangeness and often, for the zest
15765 of it, find ways to increase their differences.
15766 Children arrive like aliens from outer space, their needs and
15767 feelings inaccessible, sharing no common language, yet for all their
15768 strangeness we greet them with love. Traditionally, the strangeness of
15769 infants has been understood as temporary, the strangeness of incomplete
15770 beings who are expected to become predictable and comprehensible. This
15771 expectation has eased the transition from generation to generation, the
15772 passing on of knowledge and responsibility, on which every human society
15773 depends. Yet the gap between parent and child, like the gap between
15774 partners, is not left behind with the passage of time. Today, in a
15775 world of rapid change, it is increasing, shifting into new rhythms still
15777 -- Mary Catherine Bateson, in "Full Circles, Overlapping Lives:
15778 Culture and Generation in Transition"
15780 Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
15783 At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future,
15784 tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
15785 -- Maurice Maeterlink
15787 Before you run in double harness, look well to the other horse.
15790 There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.
15793 The overly sure belief that one knows the truth,
15794 but that this truth doesn't need to be tested or verified,
15795 is the root of all human errors.
15798 Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.
15799 -- Henry David Thoreau
15801 How many cares one loses
15803 not to be something
15807 In other words, can you forgive the people who have pissed
15808 you off in the past? If not, it seems like you're trapped
15809 in their piss. Or yours. Or something.
15811 If someone says 'can't', that shows you what to do.
15814 Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
15817 If a thing can not go on forever, it will come to an end.
15820 Nothing ever gets anywhere.
15821 The earth keeps turning round and round and gets nowhere.
15822 The moment is the only thing that counts.
15825 Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow;
15826 don't walk behind me, I may not lead;
15827 walk beside me, and just be my friend.
15830 Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest
15831 blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
15834 The following is a poem made up entirely of quotations from George
15835 W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged, for aesthetic reasons only,
15836 by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.
15838 MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
15841 I think we all agree, the past is over.
15842 This is still a dangerous world.
15843 It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
15844 and potential mental losses.
15846 Rarely is the question asked
15847 Is our children learning?
15848 Will the highways of the internet
15850 How many hands have I shaked?
15852 They misunderestimate me.
15853 I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
15855 I know that the human being
15856 and the fish can coexist.
15858 Families is where our nation finds hope,
15859 where our wings take dream.
15861 Put food on your family!
15862 Knock down the tollbooth!
15865 Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!
15870 When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard", I am always
15871 tempted to ask: "Compared to what?"
15874 What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough
15875 to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over
15876 the rim of every cup.
15879 Hard is the herte that loveth nought in May.
15880 -- Geoffrey Chaucer
15882 Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
15883 -- G. K. Chesterton
15885 {{ your mental acuity sharpens, your self image improves, your breath
15886 becomes minty fresh, the problems in your life all seem simpler and you
15887 feel you can deal with them each separately and conquer them one by one,
15888 your hair grows back in all the right places and stops growing in your
15889 ears and other inappropriate places, when i snap my fingers, you will
15890 feel wholly refreshed and renewed... }}
15896 If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem.
15897 If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
15900 The Hutterites (who came out of the same tradition as the Amish
15901 and the Mennonites) have a strict policy that every time a colony
15902 approaches 150, they split it in two and start a new one. "Keeping
15903 things under 150 just seems to be the best and most efficient way to
15904 manage a group of people," Bill Gross, one of the leaders of a
15905 Hutterite colony outside Spokane told me. "When things get larger
15906 than that, people become strangers to one another."
15907 The Hutterites, obviously, didn't get this idea from contemporary
15908 evolutionary psychology. They've been following the 150 rule for
15909 centuries... At 150, the Hutterites believe, something happens--
15910 something indefinable but very real--that somehow changes the nature
15911 of community overnight. "In smaller groups people are a lot closer.
15912 They're knit together, which is very important if you want to be
15913 effective and successful at community life," Gross said. "If you
15914 get too large, you don't have enough work in common. You don't have
15915 enough things in common, and then you start to become strangers and
15916 that close-knit fellowship starts to get lost."
15917 Gross spoke from experience. He had been in Hutterite colonies
15918 that had come near to that magic number and seen first-hand how
15919 things had changed. "What happens when you get that big is that the
15920 group starts, just on its own, to form a sort of clan." He made a
15921 gesture with his hands, as if to demonstrate division. "You get two
15922 or three groups within the larger group. That is something you
15923 really try to prevent, and when it happens it is a good time to
15925 -- Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point"
15927 If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open
15928 minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really
15929 desire the things they failed to obtain.
15932 Middle age is when you're sitting at home on Saturday night
15933 and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.
15936 The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
15939 I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result
15940 is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the
15941 power is a value. Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist
15942 temple. In the temple a man said, "I am going to tell you something
15943 that you will never forget." And then he said, "To every man is
15944 given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates
15946 And so it is with science. In a way it is a key to the gates of
15947 heaven, and the same key opens the gates of hell, and we do not have
15948 any instructions as to which is which gate. Shall we throw away the
15949 key and never have a way to enter the gates of heaven? Or shall we
15950 struggle with the problem of which is the best way to use the key?
15951 That is, of course, a very serious question, but I think that we
15952 cannot deny the value of the key to the gates of heaven.
15953 All the major problems of the relations between society and
15954 science lie in this same area. When the scientist is told that he
15955 must be more responsible for his effects on society, it is the
15956 applications of science that are referred to. If you work to develop
15957 nuclear energy you must realize also that it can be used harmfully.
15958 Therefore, you would expect that, in a discussion of this kind by a
15959 scientist, this would be the most important topic. But I will not
15960 talk about it further. I think that to say these are scientific
15961 problems is an exaggeration. They are far more humanitarian problems.
15962 The fact that how to work the power is clear, but how to control it is
15963 not, is something not so scientific and is not something that the
15964 scientist knows so much about.
15965 -- Richard P. Feynman, "The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen
15968 If once a man indulges himself in Murder, very soon he comes to think
15969 little of Robbing, and from Robbing he comes next to Drinking and
15970 Sabbath-breaking, and from that to Incivility and Procrastination.
15971 -- Thomas De Quincey
15973 These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper,
15974 but minds alive on the shelves.
15977 Let us not look back in anger,
15978 nor forward in fear,
15979 but around in awareness.
15982 Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with
15983 the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for
15984 the right purpose, and in the right way--that is not easy.
15987 A nation in which grown men say things like "I am not a happy camper"
15988 at momentous junctures is manifestly not the Shining City on the Hill
15989 that our forefathers dreamed about.
15992 Among the devices that we use to impose order upon a complicated
15993 (but by no means unstructured) world, classification--or the division
15994 of items into categories based on perceived similarities--must rank
15995 as the most general and most pervasive of all. And no strategy of
15996 classification cuts deeper--while providing such an even balance of
15997 benefits and difficulties--than our propensity for division by two,
15999 Some basic attributes of surrounding nature do exist as complem-
16000 entary pairings--two large lights in the sky representing day and
16001 night; two sexes that must couple their opposing parts to produce a
16002 continuity of generations--so we might argue that dichotomization
16003 amounts to little more than good observation of the external world.
16004 But far more often than not, dichotomization leads to misleading or
16005 even dangerous oversimplification. People and beliefs are not either
16006 good or evil (with the second category ripe for burning); and
16007 organisms are not either plant or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate,
16008 human or beast. We seem so driven to division by two, even in
16009 clearly inappropriate circumstances, that I must agree with several
16010 schools of thought (most notably Claude Levi-Strauss and the French
16011 structuralists) in viewing dichotomization more as an inherent
16012 mechanism of the brain's operation than as a valid perception of
16014 -- Stephen Jay Gould
16016 Crude classifications and false generalizations
16017 are the curse of the organized life.
16020 Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine,
16021 shall fall by pestilence, so why bother shaving?
16024 Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human
16025 enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice
16026 than they are compelled to do by their situation.
16029 It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
16032 The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
16033 is for good men to do nothing.
16036 If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of
16037 Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
16040 It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.
16041 -- Diogenes Laertes
16043 The human race has reached a critical time in its social evolution
16044 when it has no choice but to make peace with its biological origins and
16045 to learn how to live once again as a member and partner of the natural
16046 community rather than as its dominator and destroyer. In other words,
16047 we must rediscover how to live as our savage ancestors once lived--in
16048 nature, rather apart from it, much less above it. We must, that is,
16049 invent the civilized analogue of the hunter-gatherer way of life, the
16050 only sustainable mode of human existence the planet has ever known.
16051 Suggesting that we live in a much simpler and more natural way does not
16052 imply a return to the Stone Age or anything like it: we have many
16053 possibilities open to us that were not available to our forebears, for
16054 we have been enormously enriched and enlightened by the long experience
16055 of civilization (or at least so one hopes). Nevertheless, how such a
16056 profound transformation of civilization toward a more experienced and
16057 wiser savagery can be achieved is obviously an immensely difficult
16058 question, because it will clearly entail radical changes in every aspect
16059 of our way of life.
16060 Just how radical is suggested by one of the most poignant and
16061 pointed critiques of modern civilization ever uttered. Breaking into
16062 a filmed interview on the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, an
16063 anonymous Kayapo Indian woman shouted, "We don't want your dams. Your
16064 mothers did not hold you enough. You are all orphans." It is perhaps
16065 too simple to say that the good society is one in which your mother--
16066 and by extension your father, your community, and indeed your entire way
16067 of life--holds you enough, so that you grow up feeling that the world is
16068 a good place and that life is intrinsically satisfying just as it is and
16069 that there is thus no need to make it more satisfying by accumulating
16070 endless wealth and power at others' expense. But this at least points
16071 in the right direction: to become more experienced and wiser savages, to
16072 meet the real political challenge of the twenty-first century, we shall
16073 have to create cultures so rich and nurturing that we would have no need
16074 to pursue happiness; we could simply enjoy it.
16075 -- William Ophuls, in "Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of
16076 the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium."
16078 The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
16081 In Washington, it's dog eat dog.
16082 In academia, it's exactly the opposite.
16085 I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.
16086 -- James A. Garfield
16088 There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget
16089 something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance,
16090 therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
16091 -- Arthur Conan Doyle
16093 The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
16096 I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired
16097 at nine o'clock every morning.
16100 It is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty
16101 billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially
16102 when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
16105 It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
16106 -- W. Edwards Deming
16108 A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done
16109 by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.
16112 Those who desire to give up Freedom
16113 in order to gain Security, will not have,
16114 nor do they deserve, either one.
16115 -- Thomas Jefferson
16117 There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery.
16118 You can't do any business from there.
16119 -- Colonel (Harlan) Sanders
16121 To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
16124 There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion.
16125 There are only intersecting monologues.
16128 You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.
16131 Memory's malfunctions can be divided into seven fundamental transgressions
16132 or 'sins.' Just like the ancient seven deadly sins, the memory sins occur
16133 frequently in everyday life and can have serious consequences for all of us.
16134 Transience, absent-mindedness, and blocking are sins of omission: we fail to
16135 bring to mind a desired fact, event, or idea. Transience refers to a weakening
16136 or loss of memory over time. It's probably not difficult for you to remember
16137 now what you have been doing for the past several hours. But if I ask you
16138 about the same activities six weeks, six months, or six years from now, chances
16139 are you'll remember less and less.
16140 Absent-mindedness involves a breakdown at the interface between attention
16141 and memory. Absent-minded memory errors--misplacing keys or eyeglasses, or
16142 forgetting a lunch appointment--typically occur because we are preoccupied with
16143 distracting issues or concerns, and don't focus attention on what we need to
16145 The third sin, blocking, entails a thwarted search for information that we
16146 may be desperately trying to retrieve. We've all failed to produce a name to
16147 accompany a familiar face. This frustrating experience happens even though we
16148 are attending carefully to the task at hand, and even though the desired name
16149 has not faded from our minds--as we become acutely aware when we unexpectedly
16150 retrieve the blocked name hours or days later.
16151 In contrast to these three sins of omission, the next four sins of
16152 misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence are all sins of
16153 commission: some form of memory is present, but it is either incorrect or
16154 unwanted. The sin of misattribution involves assigning a memory to the wrong
16155 source: mistaking fantasy for reality, or incorrectly remembering that a friend
16156 told you a bit of trivia that you actually read about in a newspaper.
16157 Misattribution is far more common than most people realize, and has potentially
16158 profound implications in legal settings. The related sin of suggestibility
16159 refers to memories that are implanted as a result of leading questions,
16160 comments, or suggestions when a person is trying to call up a past experience.
16161 The sin of bias reflects the powerful influences of our current knowledge
16162 and beliefs on how we remember our pasts. We often edit or entirely rewrite
16163 our previous experiences--unknowingly and unconsciously--in light of what we
16164 now know or believe. The result can be a skewed rendering of a specific
16165 incident, or even of an extended period in our lives, which says more about how
16166 we feel now than about what happened then.
16167 The seventh sin -- persistence -- entails repeated recall of disturbing
16168 information or events that we would prefer to banish from our minds altogether:
16169 remembering what we cannot forget, even though we wish that we could. Recall
16170 the last time that you suddenly awoke at 3:00 a.m., unable to keep out of your
16171 mind a painful blunder on the job or a disappointing result on an important
16172 exam. In more extreme cases of serious depression or traumatic experience,
16173 persistence can be disabling and even life-threatening.
16174 -- Daniel Schacter, "The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets
16177 When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were
16178 failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.
16179 -- George Bernard Shaw
16181 People demand freedom of speech as a compensation
16182 for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
16183 -- Soeren Kierkegaard
16185 Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
16186 Live the life you have imagined.
16187 -- Henry David Thoreau
16189 Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness
16190 on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
16191 -- G. K. Chesterton
16193 Being willing to accept that the past--
16194 even the priceless, irreplaceable past--
16195 will be largely lost is a sign of mental health.
16198 We are what we repeatedly do.
16199 Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
16202 Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. -- Voltaire
16204 It requires wisdom to understand wisdom:
16205 the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
16208 What difference does it make how much you have?
16209 What you do not have amounts to much more.
16212 We now all live in a society marked by increasing, not decreasing,
16213 interconnection and mutual reliance. Each of our lives is affected by
16214 more people than ever before. We generally need the cooperation of
16215 more people than ever to accomplish even those goals we set for
16216 ourselves. This insight needs no elaborate demonstration; one is
16217 reminded of it with every smoggy breath we take, and every time we step
16218 on an airplane and ponder how our life depends on the competent,
16219 attentive behavior of dozens of strangers, from the pilot to the air
16220 traffic controller to the ground mechanic who was supposed to inspect
16221 the extent of the metal fatigue on the wings. Technology increases the
16222 links that tie people together, voluntarily or not, and the complexity
16223 of our economic system and the organizations we work for multiplies
16225 To exercise control over what happens to you as an individual, you
16226 must be involved with others in a process that decides what happens to
16227 you and your fellow citizens collectively. We can no longer separate
16228 the quality of personal life from the quality of social life. To
16229 preserve private space, we must also preserve the commons.
16230 That is one reason why even in a society so seduced by and attached
16231 to autonomy, many people are now getting fed up with what can only be
16232 called acts of vandalism against the public space. Threatening,
16233 disrespectful, wanton, and manifestly selfish acts--from the warfare of
16234 crack dealers and gangs to the shameless greed of the S&L thieves and
16235 the destruction of our very environment by the industrial polluters--
16236 are poisonous to everyone, not just those directly harmed. Of course,
16237 we pay for such things as taxpayers and as consumers, but that is not
16238 the most important cost. All of us are morally impoverished by these
16239 assaults on the quality and integrity of our common life.
16240 -- Willard Gaylin and Bruce Jennings, "The Perversion of Autonomy:
16241 The Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society"
16243 Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common
16244 belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
16245 -- W. Somerset Maugham
16247 Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
16250 The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved--
16251 loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
16254 If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
16257 Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
16260 The wicked leader is one whom the people despise.
16261 The good leader is one whom the people revere.
16262 The great leader is one about whom the people say,
16263 "We did it ourselves."
16266 Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
16269 Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.
16272 No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one
16273 concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
16274 -- Niccolo Machiavelli
16276 Every exit is an entry somewhere.
16279 Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us
16280 nothing but the shape of the spoon.
16283 We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers
16284 connect us with our fellow men.
16287 There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
16288 -- Bertrand Russell
16290 If this is coffee, please bring me some tea,
16291 but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
16294 All men who have turned out worth anything have had
16295 the chief hand in their own education.
16296 -- Sir Walter Scott
16298 Few things can help an individual more
16299 than to place responsibility on him,
16300 and to let him know that you trust him.
16301 -- Booker T. Washington
16303 The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much
16304 better with a word processor," I replied, "They used to
16305 say the same thing about drugs."
16308 The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
16309 When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
16310 -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), German playwright, poet
16312 Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
16315 Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time.
16316 Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become
16320 To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.
16321 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
16323 the best part about killing software bugs is that
16324 there's no goo nor exoskeleton fragments left behind.
16326 Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares
16327 about doing it right, or doing it better.
16330 Great spirits have always encountered
16331 violent opposition from mediocre minds.
16334 There's a fine line between genius and
16335 insanity. I have erased this line.
16338 Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's
16339 original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
16342 Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves,
16343 or we know where we can find information upon it.
16346 Historically, consumer acceptance of new technologies has been
16347 slow and cumbersome, delaying anticipated profits by decades.
16348 Indeed, consumer acceptance of any innovation is typically slow,
16349 despite extraordinary benefits and convenience.
16350 When cake mixes were first created, they required consumers to
16351 only add water--a major behavioral shift. Consumers felt a cake
16352 made with such a mix could not possibly be as good as a homemade
16353 cake. So cake mix formulas were revised to require the addition of
16354 an egg and milk. The new mixes met with great success, because the
16355 behavior shift required of consumers was minor. Eventually some
16356 consumers became comfortable adding only water (some never will).
16359 An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even
16360 how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what
16361 you know and what you don't.
16364 A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.
16367 All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely
16368 players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one
16369 man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
16370 -- Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
16372 Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
16373 -- James Bryant Conant
16375 I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this
16376 government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
16377 We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before
16378 us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
16379 You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea,
16380 and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given
16381 us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the
16382 dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
16383 You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory.
16384 Victory at all costs--Victory in spite of all terrors--Victory, however
16385 long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
16386 Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no
16387 survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for
16388 the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward
16390 I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause
16391 will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this
16392 juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then,
16393 let us go forward together with our united strength."
16394 -- Winston Churchill, first speech to Parliament, May 13, 1940
16396 Be it religion, love under all its forms, literature, or art,
16397 there is not a single spiritual force that does not become an
16398 object of commercial exploitation.
16401 History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
16402 -- James Joyce from "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
16404 Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon,
16405 but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!
16406 -- John Parker, leader of the "Minutemen", April 19, 1775
16408 These are the times that try men's souls.
16411 Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a day which will live in infamy--the
16412 United states of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by
16413 naval and air forces of the empire of Japan... The attack yesterday
16414 on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and
16415 military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives
16416 have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported
16417 torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu... Japan
16418 has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the
16419 Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves.
16420 The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and
16421 well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our
16423 As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all
16424 measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation
16425 remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long
16426 it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American
16427 people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
16428 I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the
16429 people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the
16430 uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery
16431 shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no
16432 blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests
16433 are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the
16434 unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable
16435 triumph. So help us God.
16436 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
16438 Our strength grows out of our weakness.
16439 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
16441 The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
16442 I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
16443 I shall use my time.
16446 What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly;
16447 it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
16450 it's hard not to blame microsoft for the new worm. they point at
16451 their feeble little patch (which actually doesn't stop all the
16452 types of attack nimda uses), but why aren't their operating systems
16453 automatically getting the patch if it's critical? also, why are
16454 there so many huge gaping holes in the first place? they'll never
16455 stop plugging them... it's like a dyke made out of sponges.
16458 after i got my millionth annoying spam today, i decided that there must
16459 be something to it after all. perhaps i can write spam all day while
16460 wearing only underpants and make money by magic too. clearly no one has
16461 shut off the spammers' internet connections yet, so they survive somehow.
16462 subsistence-level living based on a life of evil, here i come!
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16489 Courage is grace under pressure. -- Ernest Hemingway
16491 To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years.
16492 To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
16493 -- Winston Churchill
16495 I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that
16496 gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
16499 The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are
16500 worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all
16501 attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy
16502 ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of
16503 treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.
16504 It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation,
16505 enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by
16506 violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of
16507 false and designing men.
16508 Of the latter we are in most danger at present; let us therefore be aware
16509 of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to
16510 maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the
16512 Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made,
16513 which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever,
16514 calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.
16515 Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty,
16516 we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious
16517 consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn
16518 may be the miserable sharers in the event.
16519 -- Samuel Adams, tasty American Patriot
16521 The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is
16522 before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out
16526 I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself
16527 I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
16528 and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble
16529 or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of
16530 truth lay all undiscovered before me.
16533 As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been
16534 used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
16537 Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
16538 -- George Bernard Shaw
16540 When fanatics are on top, there is no limit to oppression.
16543 Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
16544 Willing is not enough; we must do.
16545 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
16547 tkelele ekki eekkle cthulhu hurf hurf hurf *plat*
16548 -- H. P. Lovecraft's "cat" ejecting a hairball
16550 If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
16551 -- Reinhold Niebuhr
16553 Computer Science is no more about computers
16554 than astronomy is about telescopes.
16555 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
16557 What we become depends on what we read after all of the
16558 professors have finished with us. The greatest university
16559 of all is a collection of books.
16562 The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in
16563 higher esteem those that think alike than those who think differently.
16564 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
16566 The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
16570 crucial in these turbulent
16571 final days of earth...
16573 president shrub does
16574 wonders for sagging garment
16575 industry's profits.
16579 christian values? hate the bombs,
16580 but love the bombers?
16582 Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
16585 Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly,
16586 I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it.
16587 -- Theodore Roosevelt
16589 Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve
16590 greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
16591 -- William Shakespeare
16594 then he frittered it away
16598 Half this game is ninety percent mental.
16601 Action may not always bring happiness;
16602 but there is no happiness without action.
16603 -- Benjamin Disraeli
16605 The world is faced with a transcendent conflict between those who love life
16606 and those who love death both for themselves and their enemies.
16607 -- Charles Krauthammer
16609 doomed bovines eat sand
16610 scrape on cactus in AZ
16611 then chowed on and gone
16614 To find out what one is fitted to do,
16615 and to secure an opportunity to do it,
16616 is the key to happiness.
16619 I have never understood Brahms. I believe he was
16620 burning the midnight oil trying to be complicated.
16621 -- Albert Einstein, in a conversation with Peter G. Neumann
16623 Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
16626 It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
16627 entertain a thought without accepting it.
16630 The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing
16631 by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.
16635 a brick; microsoft sinking
16636 fast as cement shoes
16638 Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction.
16639 Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
16640 -- G. K. Chesterton
16642 We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
16643 -- Thomas Alva Edison
16645 Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet
16646 of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
16649 Any activity becomes creative when the doer
16650 cares about doing it right, or doing it better.
16653 Experience with technology teaches us that once a technology makes
16654 something possible, it gets applied, whether for good or bad.
16655 -- Donald A. Norman
16657 The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in
16658 other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
16661 Without education we are in a horrible and deadly
16662 danger of taking educated people seriously.
16663 -- G. K. Chesterton
16665 When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
16668 Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only
16669 the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
16672 Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness
16673 that some things are really important, others not; and that the two
16674 kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
16675 -- Christopher Morley
16677 Nobody ever died of laughter.
16680 Mein Herr looked so thoroughly bewildered that I thought it best
16681 to change the subject. "What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I
16683 "That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein
16684 Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What
16685 do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
16686 "About six inches to the mile."
16687 "Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six
16688 yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And
16689 then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the
16690 country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
16691 "Have you used it much?" I enquired.
16692 "It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers
16693 objected; they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out
16694 the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and
16695 I assure you it does nearly as well."
16696 -- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded"
16698 The fly has an autonomous system that avoids being swatted. It has
16699 the ability to see and navigate and make decisions on millisecond time
16700 scales. We've never been able to make artificial vision systems that
16701 come within orders of magnitude of that, with all the computation we
16705 The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending,
16706 we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours;
16707 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
16708 -- William Wordsworth
16710 You return and again take the proper course, guided by what?
16711 By the picture in mind of the place you are headed for.
16714 The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who
16715 are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
16718 Xtianity the Easy Way
16719 ---------------------
16721 jesus heal my head,
16722 so i won't drop dead;
16723 god better get me real happy,
16724 'cause he's my celestial pappy.
16726 yo god, i'll just lie around here at home,
16727 you fill my pockets with money while i moan.
16728 it'll make me real religious,
16729 if you ain't fictitious...
16731 being a zealot is a lot of hassle,
16732 and with my faith i must wrassle.
16733 'til jesus gets my brain repaired,
16734 to humans my butt remains bared.
16736 surmounting one's lot is for others,
16737 who have energy unsmothered,
16738 by wacky notions of invisible spirits,
16739 that reward and punish holy twits.
16741 heaven better live up to my imagination,
16742 and to its oft repeated reputation;
16743 the next life better not suck, holy dad,
16744 'cause this one on earth you f*cked pretty bad.
16747 When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so
16748 long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see
16749 the ones which open for us.
16750 -- Alexander Graham Bell
16752 The mind is its own place and
16753 in itself can make a heaven
16754 of hell, a hell of heaven.
16757 Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
16758 Willing is not enough; we must do.
16759 -- Johann von Goethe
16761 I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.
16762 -- Charlie Brown, in Charles Schultz's cartoon "Peanuts"
16764 It is hard to say exactly when the monumentalization of the trivial became
16765 a way of life in America. It may have been when the National Football League
16766 started according contests between large men in skintight pants the sort of
16767 solemn designations formerly reserved for armed global conflicts.
16768 -- Michael Kelly, in "The Atlantic Monthly"
16770 When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.
16771 When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.
16775 We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned,
16776 so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
16779 The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
16782 Unless one's predictions are confirmed more often than a random
16783 guesser's, we should be suspicious of their quality, however
16784 cogent they may have seemed when made.
16785 -- Richard A. Posner
16787 It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a
16788 sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
16789 in all times and situations. They presented him with the words,
16790 "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening
16791 in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
16794 Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
16795 Small people always do that, but the really great make you
16796 feel that you, too, can become great.
16799 The belief that microsoft has done it all right this time with Windows-XP
16800 is just like... the suspension of disbelief that allows people to think
16801 it's perfectly normal to see kids flying around on brooms in the Harry
16802 Potter movie while they're in the darkened movie theater. It's time to
16803 turn on the lights in your mental theater...
16806 We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love--
16807 first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
16810 The majority of important television commercials take the form of
16811 religious parables organized around a coherent theology. Like all religious
16812 parables, they put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way to
16813 redemption, and a vision of Heaven. They also suggest what are the roots of
16814 evil and what are the obligations of the holy.
16815 Consider, for example, the Parable of the Ring Around the Collar. This
16816 is to television scripture what the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to the
16817 Bible, which is to say it is an archetype containing most of the elements of
16818 form and content that recur in the genre.
16819 The narrative structure of the Parable of the Ring Around the Collar is,
16820 indeed, comfortably traditional. The story has a beginning, a middle, and an
16821 end. A married couple is depicted in some relaxed setting--a restaurant, say--
16822 in which they are enjoying each other's company and generally having a
16823 wonderful time. But then a waitress approaches their table, notices that the
16824 man has a dirty collar, stares at it boldly, sneers with cold contempt, and
16825 announces to all within hearing the nature of his transgression. The man is
16826 humiliated and glares at his wife with scorn, for she is the source of his
16827 shame. She, in turn, assumes an expression of self-loathing mixed with a
16828 touch of self-pity...
16829 The parable continues by showing the wife at home using a detergent
16830 that never fails to eliminate dirt around the collars of men's shirts...
16831 In television-commercial parables, the root cause of evil is
16832 "Technological Innocence", a failure to know the particulars of the
16833 beneficent accomplishments of industrial progress...
16834 Technological innocence refers not only to ignorance of detergents,
16835 drugs, sanitary napkins, cars, salves, and foodstuffs, but also to
16836 ignorance of technical machinery such as savings banks and transportation
16838 -- Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age
16841 Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some
16842 blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
16843 Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a
16844 spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
16845 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
16847 I don't know much about being a millionaire,
16848 but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
16851 term: Microflaccidity
16852 definition: An addiction to Microsoft products accompanied by a decrease in IQ.
16854 Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
16857 Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people". People
16858 say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each
16859 instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense
16863 [Hollywood is] a place where they shoot too many films and not enough actors.
16866 Money sometimes makes fools of important persons,
16867 but also makes important persons of fools.
16870 I made my money by selling too soon.
16873 Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
16874 -- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve
16876 False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often
16877 endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm,
16878 for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness.
16881 I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
16884 I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from
16885 listening carefully. Most people never listen.
16886 -- Ernest Hemingway
16888 Ten point list of lessons learned
16889 from the high-tech industry failures during 2001:
16891 1) Prediction tools must improve.
16892 2) It's hugely difficult to build chicken and egg simultaneously.
16893 3) Venture capital firms' demands that startups generate $50 million
16894 in revenue within three years were unrealistic.
16895 4) Companies used narrowcast to broadcast.
16897 6) We all, like sheep, will go astray (with enough pressure).
16898 7) Many startups were fundamentally uncreative and "un-Internet."
16899 8) Too early to market? Too bad.
16900 9) New stuff doesn't replace old.
16901 10) Nothing changes overnight.
16905 The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
16908 The ultimate result of shielding men from the
16909 effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
16912 Sports is the toy department of human life. -- Howard Cosell
16914 First keep the peace within yourself,
16915 then you can also bring peace to others.
16918 What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.
16921 Newspapermen learn to call a murderer "an alleged murderer" and the
16922 King of England "the alleged King of England" to avoid libel suits.
16925 I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places.
16926 He told me to quit going to those places.
16929 Never mistake motion for action. -- Ernest Hemingway
16931 The first duty of a leader is to make himself
16932 be loved without courting love. To be loved
16933 without "playing up" to anyone--even to himself.
16936 All you need in this life is ignorance and
16937 confidence, and then success is sure.
16940 Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited
16941 energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of
16942 order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.
16943 -- Norman Podhoretz
16945 If only I could master the skill of telefecalkinesis, the act of
16946 sh*tting on someone from any distance. Another useful skill is
16947 evilknievelportation, the ability to jump out of the way right
16948 before some horrible accident occurs. This is useful to avoid
16949 the telefecalkinetics.
16952 Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six,
16953 result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
16954 expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
16955 -- Charles Dickens, in "David Copperfield"
16957 Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
16958 way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
16961 It's the wonder of the world, it's a rocket to the moon, it gets you high,
16962 it gets you low, but once you get that glow... Love, love, hooray for love,
16963 who was ever too blase for love? Make this the night for love. If we have
16964 to fight, let's fight for love. Some sigh and cry for love--Ah, but in
16965 Pa-ree they die for love. Some waste away for love. Just the same--hooray
16969 Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
16972 Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
16975 Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
16978 The young have aspirations that never come to pass,
16979 the old have reminiscences of what never happened.
16980 -- H.H. Monroe (Saki)
16982 An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement
16983 of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
16986 There's nothing quite like doing nothing.
16989 For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
16990 over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
16991 -- Richard Feynmann
16993 The mind commands the body and the body obeys.
16994 The mind commands itself and finds resistance.
16997 The English word "way" is perhaps the nearest translation that we can
16998 make to the Chinese word tao. It is usually pronounced "dow." The Tao
16999 means many things. Primarily, it means the way of nature, the process of
17000 the universe. But it also means a way of life, a way of living in
17001 accordance with that process. We have lost the idea that our occupations
17002 are vocations. Our idea of an occupation is that it is a way of making
17003 money. We make a very, very destructive division between work and play.
17004 We spend eight hours, or whatever it may be, at work in order to earn the
17005 money to enjoy ourselves in the other eight hours. And that is a perfectly
17006 ridiculous way of living. It is much better to be very poor indeed than to
17007 do something so stupid as boring ourselves and wasting ourselves for eight
17008 hours in order to be able to enjoy ourselves the other eight hours. The
17009 result of this fantastic division between work and play is that work
17010 becomes drudgery, and play becomes empty. When we say that our occupation
17011 should also be our vocation, we are speaking of a conception of life within
17012 which work and play should be identical.
17013 It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the
17014 universe, do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God,
17015 the Vishnu-lila, lila meaning "play." And they look upon the whole
17016 manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of
17017 dance--lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt. We in the
17018 West have tended to lose the idea of our work, our profession, as being a
17020 Now, mind you, these ways I am talking about in Asia are not followed
17021 by an enormous number of people, except in a kind of nominal, superficial
17022 way. And I am not trying to make any vast comparisons between Asian society
17023 and Western society or to say that the total Asian way of life is superior
17024 to ours. I do not think it is, but I do not think it is necessarily
17025 inferior, either; it is just different. But the fact remains that there is
17026 an aspect of Asian religion and philosophy that is very subdued in Western
17027 religion and philosophy, so that you might say that the Way, in the sense of
17028 the Chinese Tao, does not quite exist in the West, in any recognizable form.
17029 It does exist, yes. It exists unofficially, it exists occasionally, but it
17030 is never clearly recognized.
17031 -- Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen"
17033 It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
17036 We used to think that
17037 if we knew one, we knew two,
17038 because one and one are two.
17039 We are finding that we must
17040 learn a great deal more about "and".
17041 -- Sir Arthur Eddington
17043 The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics,
17044 not only advanced this subject, but, saturated with it, they fancied
17045 that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
17048 Civilization advances by extending the number of important
17049 operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
17050 -- Alfred North Whitehead
17052 Any solution to a problem changes the problem.
17055 I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure,
17056 could walk on a cloud without coming through.
17059 Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has
17060 never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.
17063 Do not ask things to happen as you wish, but wish them to
17064 happen as they do happen, and your life will go smoothly.
17067 One of the things most beguiling to cat lovers is the
17068 intractability of a cat... its refusal to surrender
17069 the least part of its spiritual independence.
17070 -- Marguerite Steen
17072 Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed.
17073 Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery
17074 and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they
17075 might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say
17076 to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams
17077 come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
17078 -- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
17080 I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the
17081 morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.
17084 The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
17085 -- William Butler Yeats
17087 Drinking provides a beautiful excuse to pursue the one activity that
17088 truly gives me pleasure, hooking up with fat, hairy girls.
17091 What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?
17094 Life is a waste of time, time is a waste of life, so get
17095 wasted all of the time and have the time of your life.
17096 -- Michelle Mastrolacasa
17098 I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
17101 Newscasters have gotten so repellant,
17102 talk shows so superficial,
17103 sitcoms so unfunny,
17105 movies so predictable,
17106 that the Food Network offers the best
17107 fare on TV in every sense of the word.
17110 My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.
17111 Unless there are three other people.
17114 The people's good is the highest law. -- Cicero
17116 In all recorded history there has not been one economist who
17117 has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
17120 The great thing in this world
17121 is not so much where we stand,
17122 as in what direction we are moving.
17123 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
17125 Reality is the leading cause of stress
17126 amongst those in touch with it.
17129 If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
17132 The nice thing about egotists is that
17133 they don't talk about other people.
17134 -- Lucille S. Harper
17136 Wisdom outweighs any wealth. -- Sophocles
17138 A problem is a chance for you to do your best. -- Duke Ellington
17140 It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing.
17141 It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.
17144 The human mind is like an umbrella--it functions best when open.
17147 They always say that time changes things, but
17148 you actually have to change them yourself.
17151 If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the
17152 computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles
17153 per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
17154 -- Robert X. Cringely
17156 The man who says he is willing to meet you
17157 halfway usually is a poor judge of distance.
17158 -- Laurence J. Peter
17160 To do two things at once is to do neither.
17163 We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.
17166 Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
17169 Hell, there are no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something.
17172 The days of the digital watch are numbered. -- Tom Stoppard
17174 A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude.
17177 World peace must develop from inner peace.
17178 Peace is not just mere absence of violence.
17179 Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.
17180 -- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
17182 The human mind treats a new idea the same way
17183 the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
17186 A hat should be taken off when you greet a
17187 lady and left off for the rest of your life.
17188 Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
17191 Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
17194 It is a very sad thing that nowadays
17195 there is so little useless information.
17198 I was born not knowing and have had only a
17199 little time to change that here and there.
17202 I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the
17203 best of them, and I know how bad I am.
17206 Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
17209 It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
17212 Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't
17213 mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
17214 -- Edward R. Murrow
17216 What can you say about a society that says that
17217 God is dead and Elvis is alive?
17220 Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
17221 -- G. K. Chesterton
17223 Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
17224 -- Edgar Bergen, as "Charlie McCarthy"
17226 A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can
17227 do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
17230 Whatever you do will be insignificant,
17231 but it is very important that you do it.
17234 Cats know how to obtain food without labor,
17235 shelter without confinement,
17236 and love without penalties.
17239 Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.
17240 -- Diogenes the Cynic
17242 When it is not necessary to make a decision,
17243 it is necessary not to make a decision.
17246 Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew
17247 and for several days we had nothing to live on but food and water.
17250 Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet? -- Lily Tomlin
17252 I took a speed reading course and read "War and
17253 Peace" in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
17256 Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
17257 -- Michel de Montaigne
17259 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
17262 In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. -- Andy Warhol
17264 Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
17267 The reason grandparents and grandchildren get
17268 along so well is that they have a common enemy.
17271 A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
17274 The prayer of the scientist if he prayed, which is not likely:
17275 Lord, grant that my discovery may increase knowledge and help other men.
17276 Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man's destruction.
17277 Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in "Brain" be published before
17278 the destruction takes place.
17279 -- Walker Percy, in "Love in the Ruins"
17281 Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by
17282 confessing our parents' shortcomings.
17283 -- Laurence J. Peter
17285 Cooperate on Standards, Compete on Implementation
17286 -- Sun Corporations's Founding Principle
17288 If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
17291 Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose
17292 all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
17295 Kids who have yet to master spelling or basic math are in no position to
17296 dogmatize about scientific questions like global warming or nuclear power.
17299 If you can't ride two horses at the same time you shouldn't be in the circus.
17302 Whenever a person walks in on the middle of a film or a conversation, or
17303 starts a new friendship, opens a book, takes a new job, or moves to a new
17304 city, his first need is to orient himself. We all must know, in a general
17305 way, what to expect so that we can plan and respond intelligently and feel
17306 comfortable. And although all animals work with their senses and brains to
17307 orient themselves, human being do something unique. We live less simply and
17308 directly in the world than do other animals. We make a version of a world,
17309 an interpretation of it, and then we live in that. The degree of comfort
17310 and success that we achieve in our lives depends on how well that
17311 interpretation suits our circumstances.
17312 Another way to state this idea is that genetically built into people is
17313 a special organizing mode of perception. The philosopher Susanne Langer
17314 calls this mode transformational: we are co-creators of our own perceptions.
17315 In the very act of physically perceiving, we interpret; we transform the raw
17316 data gathered by our senses into complex symbolic meanings. We literally
17317 cannot function and survive without seeing in our world evidence of order
17318 and purpose. We take nothing at face value; we systematize, explain, weave
17319 a large network of connected meanings.
17320 While nonhuman animals toil for their lives, play, or lie in the sun--do
17321 whatever is suitable for the moment--only people fret and practice and
17322 struggle to achieve distant or abstract goals. We are the only animals who
17323 live partly removed from our immediate physical circumstances. This
17324 extravagance is the source of our language, art, science, music, religions,
17325 philosophies: those things we value most. Aside from such direct physical
17326 causes of death as hunger, exposure, old age, or disease, the one
17327 circumstance we truly cannot survive is living in a raw, uninterpreted
17328 place--in chaos. Each of us either finds a meaning in some traditional
17329 religion or philosophy or patches together one of his own, or else he
17330 panics, loses the will to live, and, in one way or another perishes.
17331 -- Shirley Park Lowery, "Familiar Mysteries: The Truth in Myth"
17333 I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific
17334 problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
17337 The operating system for the *world* is too important a resource to be
17338 entrusted to just one proprietary company. No one company can handle
17339 the responsibility, nor can any one company be trusted to stay honest
17340 and fair when wielding such awesome power.
17343 Middle age is when you've met so many people that every
17344 new person you meet reminds you of someone else.
17347 Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
17350 I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.
17353 Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not.
17354 In either case, the thought is staggering.
17355 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
17357 Birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can't I?
17360 The software business is the worst
17361 of all possible business models,
17362 except for all the others.
17365 Instant gratification takes too long.
17368 Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
17369 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
17371 No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have,
17372 and I think he's a dirty little beast.
17375 Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but
17376 man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
17377 -- Reinhold Niebuhr
17379 The great tragedy of Science--the slaying of a
17380 beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
17381 -- Thomas H. Huxley
17383 Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. -- Laurence J. Peter
17385 In mathematics you don't understand things.
17386 You just get used to them.
17387 -- John von Neumann
17389 Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
17392 As for me, except for an occasional heart attack,
17393 I feel as young as I ever did.
17396 Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.
17397 -- Benjamin Franklin
17399 When ideas fail, words come in very handy. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
17401 The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages,
17402 may be preserved by quotation.
17403 -- Benjamin Disraeli
17406 I am not familiar with the command RTFM.
17407 I tried giving it but got an warning that the command does not exist.
17410 -- A real user's response to advice
17412 A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
17413 -- Robertson Davies
17415 The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
17416 opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the
17417 ability to function.
17418 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
17420 Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and
17421 less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there
17422 are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a
17423 solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces.
17424 There are no straight lines.
17425 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
17427 Our happiness doesn't depend on somebody else's action or on anything
17428 else. It doesn't depend on our success, but rather on the effort we're
17429 willing to put into everything we do. Even if people disappoint or fail
17430 us left and right, even if people turn against us, hurt us, lie about us,
17431 don't understand us, even if they think they know everything about us and
17432 judge us unfairly, they can't infringe upon our happiness. True happiness
17433 means that we have a deep-seated peace and tranquility that transcends all
17434 the difficulties of life, that cannot be disturbed by the chaos and
17435 warfare that might touch our lives.
17436 Digging in the trenches of a Nazi concentration camp Victor Frankl once
17437 said to a fellow inmate: "This is where you've got to find your happiness--
17438 right here in this trench, in this camp." It is a simple matter of fact:
17439 you can be just as happy in a concentration camp, horrific and terrible as
17440 it surely is, as you can in any other circumstance in life.
17441 For this is where we're supposed to find our happiness--where we are
17442 now, wherever that might happen to be, in all that we do, in whatever
17443 circumstances we find ourselves. Being happy involves the intense
17444 struggle of entering intimately into all that we do.
17445 -- "The Monks of New Skete, In the Spirit of Happiness"
17447 Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
17448 Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
17449 Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
17450 Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
17451 Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
17452 To weave it into fabric.
17453 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay, from "Upon This Age"
17455 An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
17458 Everybody gets so much information all day long
17459 that they lose their common sense.
17462 Rationalists, wearing square hats,
17463 Think, in square rooms,
17464 Looking at the floor,
17465 Looking at the ceiling.
17466 They confine themselves
17467 To right-angled triangles.
17468 If they tried rhomboids,
17469 Cones, waving lines, ellipses--
17470 As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon--
17471 Rationalists would wear sombreros.
17474 I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
17475 -- G. K. Chesterton
17477 fat in dee head / fat in dee mind / thin on dee love / absent dee kind
17478 yon falwell got dee big head / falwell got dee tiny brain
17479 falwell don' like what you be liken' / falwell hate what he don' understan'
17480 which be everyteen' for dis one / falwell dee bigot boy.
17481 -- love poem to jerry f.
17483 The cat is, above all things, a dramatist.
17486 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed
17487 us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
17490 The human mind treats a new idea the same way
17491 the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
17494 I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
17495 -- Bertrand Russell
17497 The key to being a good manager is keeping the people
17498 who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
17501 Reality is nothing but a collective hunch. -- Lily Tomlin
17503 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison
17505 If I knew I was going to live this long,
17506 I'd have taken better care of myself.
17509 What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
17510 -- Benjamin Disraeli
17512 The cat is the mirror of the human mind, personality and attitude,
17513 just as the dog mirrors his human's physical appearance.
17514 -- Winfred Carriere
17516 Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
17517 I don't know and I don't care.
17520 Historians are like deaf people who go on
17521 answering questions that no one has asked them.
17524 There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you
17525 start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.
17528 The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems
17529 to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
17532 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you
17533 looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
17536 common sense is just the things your parents tell you that
17537 actually make it into your brain when you're a kid.
17539 don't touch hot things,
17540 look both ways when crossing the street,
17543 these ones work; thus they survive.
17546 Men have become the tools of their tools. -- Henry David Thoreau
17548 Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the
17549 ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.
17550 -- Clare Booth Luce
17552 You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
17555 When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries
17556 disappear and life stands explained.
17559 Why was I born with such contemporaries? -- Oscar Wilde
17561 It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact. -- Edmund Burke
17563 What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement? -- Fred Allen
17565 The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof,
17566 a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an
17567 oracle, is inborn in us.
17570 The mad mind does not halt. If it halts, it is enlightenment.
17571 -- Chinese Zen Saying
17573 He who controls his mind and has cut off desire and anger realizes the Self.
17574 -- The Bhagavad Gita
17576 A fly, when it exists, has as much being as God. -- Soren Kierkegaard
17578 Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural.
17579 We move between two darknesses.
17582 If you have not lived through something, it is not true. -- Kabir
17584 I like a view but I like to sit with my back to it. -- Gertrude Stein
17587 So bright in the eyes of those
17588 clutching at the thought of death.
17591 The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,
17592 the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
17593 And only she who listens can speak.
17594 -- Dag Hammarskjold
17596 If knowledge does not liberate the self from the self,
17597 then ignorance is better than such knowledge.
17600 When the eye wakes up to see again,
17601 it suddenly stops taking anything for granted.
17602 -- Frederick Franck
17604 Only when we know little things do we know
17605 anything; doubt grows with knowledge.
17606 -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
17613 He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates,
17614 knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
17617 Words are just like a man carrying a lamp to look for
17618 his property, by which he can say: this is my property.
17619 -- The Lankavatara Sutra
17622 of a good man's life,
17623 His little, nameless,
17625 Of kindness and love.
17626 -- William Wordsworth
17628 I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm
17629 some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself
17630 in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
17633 Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.
17637 The cries of the cicadas
17638 Sink into the rocks.
17641 We live in a rainbow of chaos. -- Paul Cezanne
17643 love's like a purple dinosaur because it can't outrun a truck,
17644 life's like a bowl of nixons sometimes you f*ck.
17647 Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
17648 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
17650 Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the
17651 imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
17654 We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not
17655 unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of
17656 thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what
17657 we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
17660 The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambols, is infinitely
17661 more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world.
17662 -- Lady Sydney Morgan
17664 The mystery of life is not a problem to be
17665 solved but a reality to be experienced.
17666 -- Aart Van Der Leeuw
17668 Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. This has nothing
17669 whatever to do with sitting or lying down.
17672 When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves,
17673 it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
17674 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
17676 We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big
17677 difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which,
17678 over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
17679 -- Marian Wright Edelman
17681 Golf is a good walk spoiled.
17684 The day we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity. -- Seneca
17686 Life is stressful enough without customer service. -- Thomas Oliver
17688 To assume a cat's asleep is a grave mistake.
17689 He can close his eyes and keep both his ears awake.
17692 Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged
17693 in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
17696 The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received
17697 a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of
17698 its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found,
17699 men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined
17700 that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
17701 -- John Stuart Mill
17703 You aren't a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes.
17706 The master, Hseuh-feng, asked a newly arrived monk where
17707 he had come from. The monk answered: "From the Monastery of
17709 The master said, "In the daytime we have sunlight; in the
17710 evening, lamplight. What is spiritual light?"
17711 The monk had no answer.
17712 The Master said, "Sunlight. Lamplight."
17715 There is no wealth but life. -- John Ruskin
17717 Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it
17718 and there is no end. You can't know it, but you
17719 can be it, at ease in your own life.
17722 And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where
17723 we started and know the place for the first time.
17726 There's an old saying in Tennessee--I know it's in Texas, probably in
17727 Tennessee--that says: Fool me once, shame on [pause] shame on you.
17728 [Pause] Fool me [long, uncomfortable, agonizing pause] you can't get
17730 -- Bush at East Literature Magnet School in Nashville yesterday.
17732 Concentration is my motto--first honesty,
17733 then industry, then concentration.
17736 Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. -- Charles de Gaulle
17738 If you would make a man happy, do not add to his possessions but
17739 subtract from the sum of his desires.
17742 Live life like your hair is on fire. -- Ashley Brilliant
17744 City people have a hard time handling the silences when they first
17745 come out to the country. After a certain period of solitude, I myself
17746 experiencing an aloneness that is sometimes disturbing, but the country
17747 eventually cleanses my spirit and purges my body of the sounds, fumes and
17748 toxins of urban life. I think cities feed psychological stress and tension
17749 in many ways, including an overload of electrical forces and energy. When
17750 you go to a country cabin without electricity, you will be surprised at how
17751 tensions fall away.
17752 Some practitioners advocate that urban dwellers removed from the
17753 country find a space in the yard or the garden and dig a hole deep enough
17754 to enfold the body. Lie down in the hole. Make sure your body can lie just
17755 below the surface of the ground. Stay in this hollow of earth. You will be
17756 surprised how rested you will feel simply because you have escaped for a
17757 moment the man-made influences. You have retreated for a moment to Mother
17758 Earth's very simple electrical systems. For the chemical and electrical
17759 balance of the body to be calibrated, you have to stay close to the earth
17760 itself, align yourself with its polarity so that your body can find harmony
17761 between the interior world and the exterior universe.
17762 Once we become detached from nature, we begin to think we can do
17763 without it. The lights of the Great White Way overpower the stars. It is
17764 very hard to see the brightest constellation when you live in or near a
17765 city. The dark solitude of the country reunites you with the universe of
17766 the stars. The woods and hills restore in you something primal in yourself.
17767 The sea's pulse sets your own heartbeat.
17768 -- James Earl Jones, "Voices and Silences"
17770 Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
17773 i think i found my other leak now. and this was a frelling dumb one.
17774 somehow the deletion of the memory was commented out. wtf?
17775 arrrrrrrhhhh... i don't know what i'm doing....
17776 i hate the C and everything coded in it.
17779 When men are pure, laws are useless;
17780 when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
17781 -- Benjamin Disraeli
17783 Only the mediocre are always at their best. -- Jean Giraudoux
17785 If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome;
17786 if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent;
17787 if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
17790 He is indebted to his memory for his jests
17791 and to his imagination for his facts.
17792 -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
17794 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
17795 arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
17796 physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of
17797 poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
17800 As a public company, and as a CEO, you have to worry about the stock price
17801 to some extent. But you figure out after a while that there are very few
17802 things you can do in the short term that can positively impact stock price.
17803 If you build a great company, the value of the company goes up. That's very
17804 important for employees to realize coming out of this age of day trading,
17805 mass hysteria and "we're all going to be bazillionaires." You've got to get
17806 people saying: "Why are we really here?" Well, we're here to build a great
17807 company. That takes time. You may have a great day today and the stock goes
17808 down, and you may have a horrible day tomorrow and the stock goes up. Short
17809 term, they don't have a lot to do with each other. But over a long period of
17810 time you build a great company, and it's going to be worth a lot. Customers
17811 will reward it. Shareholders will reward it. Employees will want to be a
17812 part of it and beat our door down to want to work here.
17813 -- Michael Dell, Founder of Dell Computers
17815 Cats have the gift of appearing at ease in any situation--high, low or
17816 anywhere in between.
17819 I am no more humble than my talents require. -- Oscar Levant
17821 Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
17822 -- Albert Schweitzer
17824 It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there
17825 is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
17828 The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by. -- Chuang-Tzu
17830 I would patch them, but I have not a half-sheet of paper.
17831 Ah, well--at least torn windows don't need to be pushed open.
17832 The blowing wind puts out my lamp.
17833 Rain falling from the eaves wets my inkstone.
17836 The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
17837 Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
17840 I tell you: one must still have chaos in one,
17841 to give birth to a dancing star.
17842 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
17845 the frog is growing old now--
17846 among fallen leaves.
17849 Consciousness is a being,
17850 the nature of which
17851 is to be conscious of
17852 the nothingness of its being.
17853 -- Jean-Paul Sartre
17855 Since it is all too clear,
17856 It takes time to grasp it.
17857 When you understand that it's foolish
17858 To look for fire with fire,
17859 The meal is already cooked.
17862 May you live all the days of your life. -- Jonathan Swift
17864 How could there be any question of acquiring
17865 or possessing, when the one thing needful for
17866 a man is to /become/--to /be/ at last, and to die
17867 in the fullness of his being.
17868 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
17870 Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us;
17871 for while we exist death is not present,
17872 and when death is present we no longer exist.
17875 Singing and danching are the voice of dharma. -- Hakuin
17877 All great truths begin as blasphemies. -- George Bernard Shaw
17879 Hope is not a strategy. -- Thomas McInerney
17881 I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month,
17882 and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
17883 -- Thomas Jefferson
17885 As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now
17886 to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
17889 Sometimes the veil between human and animal intelligence wears
17890 very thin--then one experiences the supreme thrill of keeping
17891 a cat, or perhaps allowing oneself to be owned by a cat.
17892 -- Catherine Manley
17894 I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the
17895 roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single
17896 thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
17899 One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the
17900 belief that one's work is terribly important.
17901 -- Bertrand Russell
17903 The universality of change, when completely understood, is the seeing
17904 into the heart of all things, and the Mind that thus understands is
17905 the Mind that truly seeks the way.
17908 The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun,
17909 in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.
17912 To free oneself is nothing--the really arduous task is to
17913 know what to do with one's freedom.
17916 I hate women because they always know where things are. -- James Thurber
17918 I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting. -- Mark Twain
17920 Be careful about reading health books.
17921 You may die of a misprint.
17924 Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
17925 The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
17926 Dawn, in the clear morning air.
17927 Farmers busy after long rain.
17928 The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
17929 The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
17930 A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
17931 A single wild goose climbs into the void.
17934 When you get there, there isn't any there there. -- Gertrude Stein
17936 I want to sing like birds sing,
17937 not worrying who hears or what they think.
17940 The practice of zazen is not
17941 for gaining a mystical mind.
17942 Zazen is for allowing a clear mind--
17943 as clear as a bright autumn day.
17946 ... and he was almighty because he had wrenched
17947 from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
17948 -- Jean-Paul Sartre
17950 Practice thirty more years. -- Zen proverb
17952 Student: "Roshi, what are you doing here?"
17953 Suzuki-roshi: "Nothing special."
17956 After the leaves fall in the village at the foot of Ogura Peak,
17957 one can see through the tree branches the moon shining in the clear.
17960 Chaos often breeds life, where order breeds habit.
17963 You yourselves must make the exertion.
17964 The Buddhas are only teachers.
17965 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
17967 Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words,
17968 and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your
17969 light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will
17970 drop away, and your original face will be manifest.
17973 Next time you have a bad day, imagine this: You are a Siamese twin.
17974 Your brother that is attached to you at the shoulder is gay.
17975 You are not. But you only have one ass.
17977 From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition
17978 is something up with which I will not put.
17979 -- Winston Churchill
17981 The meaning of life is to see. -- Hui-Neng
17983 Fundamentally not one thing exists. -- Hui-Neng
17985 In the blue heavens, cold geese calling.
17986 On the empty hills, leaves flying.
17989 When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
17990 -- George Bernard Shaw
17992 An intense love of solitude, distaste for involvement in worldly
17993 affairs, persistence in knowing the Self and awareness of the goal
17994 of knowing--all this is called true knowledge.
17995 -- The Bhagavad Gita
17997 Some people are born to lift heavy weights.
17998 Some are born to juggle with golden balls.
18001 Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for
18002 example, makes a wonderful ancestor.
18003 -- Lawrence J. Peter
18005 Smokey the Bear Sutra
18007 Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
18008 the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
18009 Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
18010 and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
18011 the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
18012 to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
18013 seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
18014 Enlightenment on the planet Earth.
18016 "In some future time, there will be a continent called
18017 America. It will have great centers of power called
18018 such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
18019 Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
18020 such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
18021 The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
18022 its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
18023 its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."
18025 "The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
18026 of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
18027 My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
18028 granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
18029 future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
18030 the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
18031 and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."
18033 And he showed himself in his true form of
18037 a.. A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs,
18038 showing that he is aroused and
18041 b.. Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath
18042 appearances; cuts the roots of useless
18043 attach- ments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
18045 c.. His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display -- indicating that all
18046 creatures have the full right to live to
18047 their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and
18048 lizards all grow in the realm of the
18051 d.. Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the
18052 countless men oppressed by a
18053 civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
18055 e.. Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that
18056 guard the Wilderness, which is the
18057 Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true
18058 paths lead through mountains --
18060 f.. With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the
18061 kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of
18062 those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is
18063 contained vast and free in the Blue Sky
18064 and Green Earth of One Mind;
18066 g.. Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has
18067 food enough for everyone who loves her
18070 h.. Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing
18071 the worms of capitalism and
18074 i.. Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses,
18075 canned foods, universities, and shoes;
18076 master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and
18077 fearlessly chop down the rotten
18078 trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn
18079 the leftover trash.
18081 Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will
18082 Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or
18085 HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
18087 Thus his great Mantra:
18089 Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
18090 Sphataya hum traks ham nam
18092 "I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
18093 BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED"
18095 And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
18096 Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
18097 people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:
18099 And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
18100 or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:
18107 And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out
18108 with his vajra-shovel.
18110 a.. Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice
18111 willl accumulate merit as countless as the
18112 sands of Arizona and Nevada.
18114 b.. Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
18116 c.. Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
18118 d.. Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
18120 e.. Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a
18121 pine tree to sit at.
18123 f.. AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.
18125 thus have we heard.
18127 I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a
18128 nice letter saying that I approved of it.
18131 We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. -- Annie Dillard
18133 Today is the eighth of the month, tomorrow is the thirteenth. -- Zen proverb
18135 Often I am still listening when the song is over.
18136 -- Marquis de Saint-Lambert
18138 Worldly acquisitions of wealth and the need of clinging to them, as well as
18139 the pursuit of the Eight Worldly Aims, I regard with as much loathing and
18140 disgust as a man who is suffering from biliousness regardeth the sight of
18141 rich food. Nay, I regard them as if they were the murderers of my father;
18142 therefore it is that I am assuming this beggarly and penurious mode of life.
18150 Maturity is only a short break in adolescence. -- Jules Feiffer
18152 It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker
18153 that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
18156 Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable
18157 that we have to alter it every six months.
18160 Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
18161 can't talk for people who can't read.
18164 Bodhidharma sat facing the wall. The Second Patriarch, after standing
18165 outside in the snow for so long, cut off his arm. "My mind is not yet
18166 at peace. Please, Master, put my mind at peace."
18167 Bodhidharma said: "Bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you."
18168 The Second Patriarch replied: "Although I have searched for my mind,
18169 it is totally ungraspable."
18170 Bodhidharma said: "In that case I have pacified your mind for you."
18172 Explanation of the unspeakable cannot be finished. -- Shakyamuni Buddha
18174 We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
18177 Since it is the practice of enlightenment,
18178 that practice has no beginning and
18179 since it is enlightenment within the practice,
18180 that realization has no end.
18183 The quieter you become, the more you can hear. -- Baba Ram Dass
18185 As long as you seek for something, you will get
18186 the shadow of reality and not reality itself.
18189 Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least
18190 triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to
18191 recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
18192 -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
18194 I love being married. It's so great to find that one
18195 special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
18198 I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
18201 A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life. -- Robertson Davies
18203 At this point in history genius has become
18204 a commodity, an ambition, even a lifestyle.
18207 A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world. -- Jean le Carre
18209 Martyrdom is the only way in which a
18210 man can become famous without ability.
18211 -- George Bernard Shaw
18213 For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
18214 For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
18215 -- Christopher Smart
18217 It's not autumn's cold that keeps me awake,
18218 but what I feel before the grasses and trees in my courtyard.
18219 My banana tree has lost its leaves; my parasol tree is old;
18220 and night after night--the sound of wind, the sound of rain.
18223 I believe in an ultimate decency of things. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
18230 We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye
18231 which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything.
18232 That is to understand Zen.
18235 Yes it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth
18236 sometimes comes to the top.
18239 Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing. -- Paul Valery
18241 The cat was a creature of absolute convictions,
18242 and his faith in his deductions never varied.
18243 -- Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
18245 Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
18246 any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose
18247 any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
18250 With Henry Adams we see the moment when the pronouncements
18251 of philosophers ceased to be greeted with forehead slaps of
18252 recognition or shouts of "Heretic!" and began to be met
18253 with mumbles of "Oh, shut up."
18256 The nature of mind, when understood, no human words can
18257 compass or disclose. Enlightenment is naught to be obtained,
18258 and he that gains it does not say he knows.
18261 As long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,
18262 you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.
18263 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
18265 Nirvana is right here, before our eyes. -- Hakuin
18267 It is the stars not known to science that I would know,
18268 the stars which the lonely traveler knows.
18269 -- Henry David Thoreau
18271 You've got to take the bitter with the sour. -- Sam Goldwyn
18273 And a man shall be free, and as pure as the day prior to
18274 his conception in his mother's womb, when he has nothing,
18275 wants nothing and knows nothing.
18278 Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything they do not make clear.
18281 Outside mind there is no Buddha,
18282 Outside Buddha there is no mind.
18285 They are ill discoverers that think there is no land,
18286 when they can see nothing but sea.
18287 -- Sir Francis Bacon
18289 My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be
18290 invented so he could hate that too.
18293 Opportunity is missed by most people because
18294 it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
18295 -- Thomas Alva Edison
18297 Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. -- Benjamin Franklin
18299 When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus,
18300 it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV
18301 has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
18302 -- Edward R. Murrow
18304 In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
18307 The art of medicine consists in amusing the
18308 patient while nature cures the disease.
18311 I am enlightened, and always have been, simultaneously
18312 with the beginning of the universe.
18313 -- The Buddha, first words after realizing the truth
18315 A billion stars go spinning through the night,
18316 blazing high above your head.
18317 But in you is the presence that will be,
18318 when the stars are dead.
18319 -- Rainer Maria Rilke
18321 The goal of Buddhism is to bring about right human life, not to have
18322 the teaching, or teacher, or sentient beings, or Buddhism, or Buddha.
18323 But if you think that without any training you can have that kind of
18324 life, that is a big mistake.
18327 So much of what we call management consists
18328 in making it difficult for people to work.
18331 People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
18334 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
18335 acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
18336 -- W. Somerset Maugham
18338 Everything you know is wrong. -- Firesign Theatre
18340 One day Yuan-wu took the high seat, and said:
18341 A monk asked Yun-men: 'Where did all the buddhas come from?'
18342 Yun-men answered: 'The East Mountain walks over the water.'
18343 But if I were asked, I would not answer that way.
18344 I would say: 'A fragrant breeze comes of itself from the south,
18345 and in the palace a refreshing coolness stirs.'
18348 I would believe only in a god who could dance. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
18350 The moon floats above the pines, and the night veranda is cold as the
18351 ancient, clear sound comes from your finger tips. The old melody usually
18352 makes the listeners weep, but Zen music is beyond sentiment. Do not play
18353 again unless the Great Sound of Lao-tzu accompanies you.
18356 Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. -- Oscar Wilde
18358 Logically considered, Zen may be full of contradictions and repetitions.
18359 But as it stands above all things, it goes serenely on its own way.
18362 Clouds come from time to time--and bring a chance
18363 to rest from looking at the moon.
18366 Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself.
18367 Stop looking in the other way of looking.
18370 Do not be an embodiment of fame; do not be a storehouse of schemes;
18371 do not be an undertaker of projects; do not be a proprietor of wisdom.
18372 Wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received
18373 from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that
18374 is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror--going after nothing,
18375 welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.
18378 In the end, everything is a gag. -- Charlie Chaplin
18380 One can not be certain of living
18381 even into the evening.
18382 In the dim first light
18384 from a departing boat.
18387 The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
18390 All things in this world are impermanent.
18391 They have the nature to rise and pass away.
18392 To be in harmony with this truth brings true happiness.
18395 True words always seem paradoxical but no other form
18396 of teaching can take their place.
18399 Did you not know that at the edge of a deep valley there is an excellent
18400 pine tree growing up straight in spite of the many years of cold?
18403 Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
18406 In a snowfall that covers the winter grass
18407 a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.
18410 Settle the self on the self. -- Shunryu Suzuki
18412 Finished, finished...
18413 when it is completely finished
18414 there is nothing to finish.
18417 I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity. -- Tom Stoppard
18419 Which is the more beautiful, feline movement or feline stillness?
18420 -- Elizabeth Hamilton
18422 We cannot speak without incurring some risk, at least in theory;
18423 the only way of being absolutely safe is to say nothing.
18426 Numerous studies demonstrate that people can be motivated to creativity
18427 simply with the addition of an instruction to "be creative."
18428 -- Richard Saul Wurman
18430 Our obsessions with history and prophecy perhaps reflect an inability
18431 to comprehend the implications of geological time. The mind's traditional
18432 organization of duration into past, present, and future really has more
18433 relevance to the five-thousand-year-old earth of the seventeenth century
18434 than it does to the five-billion-year-old one of the twentieth. Past and
18435 future require certain limitations and symmetries to be meaningful--there
18436 must be a plot or at least a story. But time is really not much like a
18437 story. It is more like an ocean current that rises from imperfectly
18438 perceived depths and flows into unseen distances.
18439 This immensity might seem to diminish the present--the living moment--
18440 to utter insignificance, but actually the present looms much larger in
18441 geological time than in historical time. If time is a story, the present
18442 is merely a hiatus between the significant events that were and will be.
18443 If time is an ocean, however, the present is not less important than the
18444 other moments, which stretch away on all sides, any more than a single
18445 water molecule in an ocean is less important than the others. In a sense
18446 each living moment is the whole of time--an eternal present--because it
18447 can't be set apart from all the other moments.
18448 -- David Rains Wallace, from "Idle Weeds"
18450 Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
18451 -- Henry David Thoreau
18453 We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we
18454 discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.
18457 You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
18460 Television has raised writing to a new low. -- Samuel Goldwyn
18462 I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue
18463 that I shall some day die, which is not so.
18466 People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
18469 He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
18472 If the voter cannot grasp the details of the problems of the day because he
18473 has not the time, the interest or the knowledge, he will not have a better
18474 public opinion because he is asked to express his opinion more often.
18477 i have eliminated every fault,
18478 except for pride...
18479 doomed to walk the earth
18483 In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. -- Laurence J. Peter
18485 Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: "Matters of
18486 great concern should be treated lightly." Master Ittei commented, "Matters
18487 of small concern should be treated seriously." Among one's affairs there
18488 should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great
18489 concern. If these are deliberated upon during ordinary times, they can be
18490 understood. Thinking about things previously and then handling them lightly
18491 when the time comes is what this is all about. To face an event and solve
18492 it lightly is difficult if you are not resolved beforehand, and there will
18493 always be uncertainty in hitting your mark. However, if the foundation is
18494 laid previously, you can think of the saying, "Matters of great concern
18495 should be treated lightly," as your basis for action.
18496 -- Hagakure, book of the samurai
18498 There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with
18499 a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road.
18500 But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still
18501 get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be
18502 perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding
18503 extends to everything.
18504 -- Hagakure, book of the samurai
18506 I deserve good things.
18507 I am entitled to my share of happiness.
18508 I refuse to beat myself up.
18509 I am attractive person.
18510 I am fun to be with.
18513 The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous,
18514 the sensible man hardly anything.
18517 In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.
18518 -- Lawrence Summers
18520 I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the
18521 river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.
18522 I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the
18523 starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and
18524 brotherhood can never become a reality.
18525 I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must
18526 spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear
18527 destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will
18528 have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is
18529 stronger than evil triumphant.
18530 I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets,
18531 there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded
18532 justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can
18533 be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of
18535 I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three
18536 meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and
18537 dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what
18538 self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still
18539 believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be
18540 crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive
18541 goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.
18542 -- Martin Luther King, Jr
18544 Every increased possession loads us with new weariness. -- John Ruskin
18546 If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind,
18547 what is the significance of a clean desk?
18548 -- Lawrence J. Peter
18550 I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
18553 I am not young enough to know everything. -- Oscar Wilde
18555 I had never held a position for more than four years,
18556 and did not so much plan my new jobs as flee my old ones.
18559 It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
18560 -- The White Queen, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
18562 I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by
18563 the animosities he excites among his opponents.
18564 -- Winston Churchill
18566 All things are difficult before they are easy. -- Thomas Fuller
18568 There's no business like show business, but
18569 there are several businesses like accounting.
18572 All truth passes through three stages.
18573 First, it is ridiculed.
18574 Second, it is violently opposed.
18575 Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
18576 -- Arthur Schopenhauer
18578 Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence
18579 but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to
18580 shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
18581 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
18583 Talent is like the battery in a car. It'll get you started,
18584 but if the generator is bad, you don't go very far.
18587 No man ever listened himself out of a job. -- Calvin Coolidge
18589 I was unable to devote myself to the learning of this algebra and the continued
18590 concentration upon it, because of obstacles in the vagaries of time which
18591 hindered me; for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for
18592 a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to
18593 snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to
18594 the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who
18595 imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but
18596 deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the
18597 sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain
18598 person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute
18599 the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool
18600 of him and mock him.
18601 -- Omar Khayyam, "Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra"
18603 It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish. -- Aeschylus
18605 Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good.
18606 It would be the end of everything we know.
18609 Many engineering deadlocks have been broken by people who are not engineers
18610 at all. This is simply because perspective is more important than IQ.
18611 -- Nicholas Negroponte
18613 We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.
18616 California is a fine place to live--if you happen to be an orange.
18619 Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first call promising.
18622 It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
18623 incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted
18624 by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
18627 All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They
18628 never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced
18629 on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.
18632 The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often
18633 talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing.
18636 The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
18637 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
18639 Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. -- H. G. Wells
18641 Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that,
18642 once it is competently programmed and working smoothly,
18643 it is completely honest.
18646 Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by
18647 confessing our parents' shortcomings.
18648 -- Laurence J. Peter
18650 No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing
18651 when they are feeling sensible.
18654 All truths are easy to understand once they are
18655 discovered; the point is to discover them.
18658 We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential.
18659 Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
18662 Considering how dangerous everything is,
18663 nothing is really very frightening.
18666 A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude
18667 without providing you with company.
18668 -- Gian Vincenzo Gravina
18670 What the world needs is more geniuses with humility.
18671 There are so few of us left.
18674 In the end, we will remember not the words of
18675 our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
18676 -- Martin Luther King
18678 Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the
18679 living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children,
18680 and by children to adults.
18683 You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
18684 -- Stanislaw W. Lec
18686 I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
18687 The answer is 12? I think I'm in the wrong building.
18688 -- Charles M. Schulz in "Peanuts"
18690 The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who
18691 hate me away from those who are still undecided.
18694 What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
18697 People who've never fired a gun ("weapon", in Army-talk) explain "fire power"
18698 realities. Nobody--yet--would pretend to be an expert on brain surgery. But
18699 military tactics and modern warfare? What could be easier, right?
18700 -- Kenneth G. Robinson
18702 When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
18703 -- William Wrigley Jr.
18705 Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an
18706 international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
18707 -- George Bernard Shaw
18709 Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
18712 A well-laid business plan is no guarantee against the
18713 disappearance of the industry on which it is based.
18716 The way to protect human freedom is to make sure that your society is one
18717 in which the benefits of being a member of the society are so tempting and
18718 so great that people will take responsibility in order for it to happen.
18721 Technology seems to always start out promising specialization and
18722 personalization. In the end, it delivers more homogenization instead.
18725 Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
18726 -- Thomas H. Huxley
18728 Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. -- Frank Zappa
18730 Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence
18731 as you can find outside an advertising agency.
18732 -- Raymond Chandler
18734 The only way to discover the limits of the possible
18735 is to go beyond them into the impossible.
18738 Life is full of misery, loneliness, and
18739 suffering--and it's all over much too soon.
18742 An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
18745 The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
18748 In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen;
18749 in small things they show themselves as they are.
18750 -- Nicholas Chamfort
18752 Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us. -- Charles Kingsley
18754 There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them. The education system
18755 in this country is just terrible, and we're not doing anything about it.
18758 Each of us inevitable; each of us limitless--
18759 each of us with his or her right upon the earth.
18762 In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the
18763 world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
18764 -- Sir William Osler
18766 It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept
18767 anything but the best, you very often get it.
18768 -- W. Somerset Maugham
18770 Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to,
18771 with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
18774 We have a natural opportunity to investigate the connections
18775 of a problem when looking back at its solution.
18778 Money teaches us to count, but science, inasmuch as it is
18779 not governed by money, might yet teach us to think.
18780 -- Christopher M. Kelty
18782 Painting, like flipping burgers or shearing sheep, is physical labor. It is
18783 enough nowadays to declare yourself an artist and then to declare some artifact
18784 in the vast world of found objects to be *your* work of art.
18787 The art of creation is older than the art of killing. -- Ed Koch
18789 In wisdom gathered over time I have found that
18790 every experience is a form of exploration.
18793 Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority
18794 uses not his understanding but his memory.
18795 -- Leonardo Da Vinci
18797 We've had a taste of Siemens before in the past. -- Bonafide PHB
18799 The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as well
18800 as one's deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.
18803 A guilty conscience needs to confess.
18804 A work of art is a confession.
18807 When I examine myself and my methods of thought,
18808 I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy
18809 has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing
18810 positive knowledge.
18813 A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
18814 -- Laurence J. Peter
18816 No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into
18817 account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
18820 We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not
18821 the sole relation of human beings.
18824 No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.
18825 His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his
18826 relation to the dead poets and artists.
18829 There's a moment coming. It's not here yet. It's still on the way.
18830 It's in the future. It hasn't arrived. Here it comes.
18831 Here it is... It's gone.
18834 Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art;
18835 it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
18838 It is easy to spot an informed man--
18839 his opinions are just like your own.
18840 -- Miguel de Unamuno
18842 If you see in any given situation only what everybody else
18843 can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of
18844 your culture that you are a victim of it.
18847 If you are going through hell, keep going. -- Winston Churchill
18849 The Founders of the American nation were one of the most creative
18850 groups in modern history. Some among them, especially in recent years,
18851 have been condemned for their failures and weaknesses--for their racism,
18852 sexism, compromises, and violations of principle. And indeed moral
18853 judgments are as necessary in assessing the lives of these people as of
18854 any others. But we are privileged to know and to benefit from the outcome
18855 of their efforts, which they could only hopefully imagine, and ignore their
18856 main concern: which was the possibility, indeed the probability, that their
18857 creative enterprise--not to recast the social order but to transform the
18858 political system--would fail: would collapse into chaos or autocracy.
18859 Again and again they were warned of the folly of defying the received
18860 traditions, the sheer unlikelihood that they, obscure people on the outer
18861 borderlands of European civilization, knew better than the established
18862 authorities that ruled them; that they could successfully create something
18863 freer, ultimately more enduring than what was then known in the centers of
18865 Since we inherit and build on their achievements, we now know what the
18866 established world of the eighteenth century flatly denied but which they
18867 broke through convention to propose -- that absolute power need not be
18868 indivisible but can be shared among states within a state and among
18869 branches of government, and that the sharing of power and the balancing of
18870 forces can create not anarchy but freedom.
18871 We know for certain what they could only experimentally and prayerfully
18872 propose--that formal, written constitutions, upheld by judicial bodies, can
18873 effectively constrain the tyrannies of both executive force and populist
18875 We know, because they had the imagination to perceive it, that there
18876 is a sense, mysterious as it may be, in which human rights can be seen to
18877 exist independent of privileges, gifts, and donations of the powerful, and
18878 that these rights can somehow be defined and protected by the force of law.
18879 We casually assume, because they were somehow able to imagine, that
18880 the exercise of power is no natural birthright but must be a gift of those
18881 who are subject to it."
18882 -- Bernard Bailyn, from "To Begin The World Anew: The Genius and
18883 Ambiguities of the American Founders
18885 Discretion in speech is more than eloquence. -- Francis Bacon
18887 I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamed that
18888 I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom.
18891 I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep
18892 contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could
18893 share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.
18894 It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill
18895 of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping
18896 forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
18897 -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
18899 Another cause of your sickness, and the most important:
18900 you have forgotten what you are.
18903 All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of
18904 their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible,
18905 exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.
18906 One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on
18907 by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
18910 When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.
18911 -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
18913 Did you ever see dishonest calluses on a man's hands? Hardly.
18914 When a man's hands are callused and women's hands are worn,
18915 you may be sure honesty is there. That's more than you can
18916 say about many soft white hands.
18919 The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which
18920 a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
18923 The American invents
18924 as the Greek chiseled,
18925 as the Venetian painted,
18926 as the modern Italian sings.
18929 If it's mechanical, has tits, or wheels, it will give you trouble.
18932 Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
18935 A small nose means a small penis. Small noses make for difficult breathing
18936 and small penises make for difficulty breeding.
18939 Executives are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running
18940 on the spot. If you drag an executive away from his business, he goes
18941 on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never
18942 stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them.
18943 -- Jean Baudrillard
18945 Every man bears in himself the germs of every human quality;
18946 but sometimes one quality manifests itself, sometimes another,
18947 and the man often becomes unlike himself,
18948 while still remaining the same man.
18951 You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
18954 If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
18955 -- Professor Irwin Corey
18957 When you wish to instruct be brief--so that people's minds can
18958 quickly grasp what you have to say, understand your point, and
18959 retain it accurately. Unnecessary words just spill over the
18960 side of a mind already crammed to the full.
18963 I just don't understand why anyone is unable to realize what a disaster
18964 a meeting is for a business. Never meet. If it can't be settled in a
18965 five minute conversation, it's probably insoluble no matter how many
18966 people talk about it for however long.
18969 Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. -- Sholem Asch
18972 led by the unknowing,
18973 are doing the impossible
18974 for the ungrateful.
18975 We have done so much for so long with so little
18976 We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
18977 -- Blue Collar Lament
18979 Endure, and save yourself for happier times. -- Virgil
18981 I don't think being funny is anyone's first choice. -- Woody Allen
18983 i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly
18984 spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
18985 which is natural which is infinite which is yes
18988 None but myself ever did me any harm. I was, I may say, the only enemy to
18989 myself: my own projects, that expedition to Moscow, and the accidents which
18990 happened there, were the causes of my fall. I must say, though, that those
18991 who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me, accepted all my views,
18992 and yielded easily to my opinions, were those who did me the most injury,
18993 and were my worst enemies, because, by surrendering to me so easily, they
18994 encouraged me to go too far... I was then too powerful for any man, except
18995 myself, to injure me.
18996 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
18998 If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better
18999 mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the
19000 world will make a beaten path to his door.
19001 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, attributed by Sarah B. Yule, Borrowings, 1889
19003 Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
19004 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19006 All conservatives are such from personal defects.
19007 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19009 The reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which
19010 protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
19011 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19013 We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
19014 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19016 The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
19017 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19019 Fame is proof that people are gullible.
19020 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19022 What is the hardest task in the world? To think....
19023 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19025 The greatest discovery of any generation is that a
19026 human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
19029 Were we perfectly acquainted with the object,
19030 we should never passionately desire it.
19031 -- Francois De La Rochefoucauld
19033 The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot
19034 stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either.
19037 There were two "Reigns of Terror", if we could but remember and consider it;
19038 the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood;
19039 the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one
19040 inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million;
19041 but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to
19042 speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with
19043 lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city
19044 cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have
19045 all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France
19046 could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that
19047 unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see
19048 in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
19051 You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
19054 To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable. -- John Adams
19056 In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
19057 In practice, there is.
19060 The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy,
19061 chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly
19062 photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
19065 Literature is the art of writing something that will be
19066 read twice; journalism what will be read once.
19069 It takes at least a couple of decades to realize that you were well taught.
19070 All true education is a delayed-action bomb assembled in the classroom for
19071 explosion at a later date. An educational fuse of 50 years long is by no
19073 -- Kenneth D. Gangel
19075 When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy,
19076 it ceases to be a subject of interest.
19079 Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the
19080 industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
19083 An author is a fool who, not content with boring those
19084 he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
19085 -- Charles de Montesquieu
19087 Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you
19088 don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's
19089 a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
19092 If knowledge can create problems, it is not through
19093 ignorance that we can solve them.
19096 A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. -- Sir Francis Bacon
19098 The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
19099 And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little
19100 we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our
19101 thoughts and deeds.
19104 People who are unhappy with the way things are tend to remain unhappy
19105 even after they have changed them. The nature of their unhappiness
19106 is such that change does not slake it.
19109 The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
19110 production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
19111 draws all nations into civilization.
19114 I learned one really sad fact from my career as a columnist: nobody changes
19115 their mind about anything. Ever. Once we form the opinion, we become
19116 evidence processors and we just collect all the evidence that supports our
19117 opinion and reject all the evidence that disputes it.
19120 I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first
19121 dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
19124 The end of the road map is a cliff that both sides will fall off.
19125 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, on the Mideast peace effort, 2003.
19127 Once we admit that there is room for newness--that there are vastly more
19128 conceivable possibilities than realized outcomes--we must confront the fact
19129 that there is no special logic behind the world we inhabit, no particular
19130 justification for why things are the way they are. Any number of arbitrary
19131 small perturbations along the way could have made the world as we know it
19132 turn out very differently.
19135 Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be
19136 sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
19137 -- Robert Louis Stevenson
19139 All human beings should try to learn before they die
19140 what they are running from, and to, and why.
19143 The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the
19144 world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
19147 All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really
19148 happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all
19149 that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and
19150 the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places
19151 and how the weather was.
19152 -- Ernest Hemingway
19154 The true conquests, the only ones that leave no regret,
19155 are those that have been wrested from ignorance.
19156 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
19158 No love, no friendship can cross the path of our
19159 destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.
19160 -- Francois Mauriac
19162 Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic
19163 wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
19164 -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
19166 A thick skin is a gift from God. -- Konrad Adenauer
19168 Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
19169 it is rather the only true good.
19170 -- Soren Kierkegaard
19172 It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
19173 -- Logan Pearsall Smith
19175 The secret of joy is the mastery of pain. -- Anais Nin
19177 Everything is practice. -- Pele
19179 However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in
19180 the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we
19181 imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of
19182 ourselves in their words.
19185 It is astonishing what you can do when you have
19186 a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.
19187 -- Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
19189 The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
19190 -- G. K. Chesterton
19192 If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe
19194 For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes,
19195 new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.
19198 A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king,
19199 and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
19202 Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution. -- Karl Kraus
19204 Love demands infinitely less than friendship. -- George Jean Nathan
19206 People only see what they are prepared to see. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19208 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one
19209 dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are
19210 relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past,
19211 present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in
19212 the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
19215 I hate house work! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months
19216 later you have to start all over again.
19219 The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only
19220 a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and
19221 deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the
19222 man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
19225 If a man watches three football games in a row
19226 he should be declared legally dead.
19229 To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at. -- Claude Monet
19231 Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence,
19232 by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and
19233 rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life.
19234 Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and
19235 scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
19238 Being defeated appears to be an inexhaustible
19239 wellspring of intellectual progress.
19240 -- Reinhart Koselleck
19242 Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing
19243 how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
19246 George Orwell, on why someone might write a book...
19248 1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered
19249 after death, to get your own back on grownups who snubbed you in childhood,
19250 etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong
19251 one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians,
19252 lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen-in short, with the whole top crust
19253 of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After
19254 the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition and live chiefly for
19255 others or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority
19256 of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the
19257 end, and writers belong to this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on
19258 the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested
19260 2. Esthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on
19261 the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact
19262 of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good
19263 story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not
19264 to be missed. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from
19265 esthetic considerations.
19266 3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true
19267 facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
19268 4. Political purpose -- using the word "political" in the widest possible
19269 sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other
19270 people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once
19271 again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art
19272 should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
19274 The only true exploration, the only real Fountain of Youth, will not be
19275 in visiting foreign lands, but in having other eyes, in looking at the
19276 universe through the eyes of others.
19279 They said it couldn't be done but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
19282 To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. -- Cicero
19284 Nobody ever died of laughter. -- Max Beerbohm
19286 A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for. -- W. C. Fields
19288 Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks
19289 only when driven to speech by something outside himself--like,
19290 for instance, he can't find any clean socks.
19293 Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all-time thing. You don't win
19294 once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them
19295 right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
19298 It is by logic that we prove but by intuition that we discover.
19301 Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win,
19302 by fearing to attempt.
19303 -- William Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure"
19305 Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom
19306 of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
19309 Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules.
19310 They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin
19311 that won't heal because there's not enough material.
19312 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
19314 One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with
19315 gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is
19316 so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for
19317 the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
19320 Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. -- Josh Billings
19322 One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before
19323 you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
19324 -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
19326 When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision,
19327 then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
19330 Fascism should more properly be called corporatism,
19331 since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
19332 -- Benito Mussolini
19334 Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. -- Ovid
19336 There is hardly anything in the world that some men cannot make a little
19337 bit worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price
19338 only are this man's lawful prey.
19341 The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey
19342 a kingdom and note the results in maps, but all the savants in the world
19343 could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.
19346 Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death.
19349 Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
19352 One important key to success is self-confidence.
19353 An important key to self-confidence is preparation.
19356 If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will
19357 change a past or future event, then you are residing on another
19358 planet with a different reality system.
19361 As people grow up, they change brands. -- Al Ries
19363 If there is just one beam of sunshine coming into a room,
19364 you can be sure that the cat is lazing in its heat.
19365 -- Stuart and Linda MacFarlane
19367 If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
19370 If the human race wishes to have prolonged and indefinite period
19371 of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful
19372 and helpful way toward one another.
19373 -- Winston Churchill
19375 All charming people have something to conceal, usually
19376 their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
19379 Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break
19380 down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and
19381 at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday.
19382 -- Christopher Hitchens
19384 Try to be one of the people on whom nothing gets lost. -- Henry James
19386 If a man hasn't discovered something that
19387 he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
19388 -- Martin Luther King Jr.
19390 The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of
19391 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
19394 Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
19397 I am happy to engage in discussion with those who accept that technology and
19398 affluence are a net plus, but who worry about their troubling side effects.
19399 Spare me, however, the sensitive souls who deplore technological advance and
19400 economic growth over their cell phones on their way to the airport.
19403 There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish
19404 together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
19405 -- Sir Thomas Beecham
19407 The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.
19408 -- Laurence J. Peter
19410 The universe is full of magical things patiently
19411 waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
19414 Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
19415 usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and
19416 nobody thinks of complaining.
19419 My life needs editing. -- Mort Sahl
19421 Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. -- Emile Coue
19423 Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My
19424 opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-
19425 seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
19426 -- Flannery O'Connor
19428 There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible
19429 woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon.
19432 There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said
19433 things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that
19434 he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.
19437 Adults are obsolete children. -- Dr. Seuss
19439 Barbie would also be tired of Microsoft's licensing bullsh*t.
19440 -- Maury Cesterino, Chief Software Architect, Mattel, Inc.
19442 When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we
19443 fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
19444 Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!
19447 A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
19448 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
19450 Allowing a schizophrenic in a cowboy costume to represent himself in a
19451 death penalty case gives new meaning to the term "frontier justice."
19452 -- Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service.
19454 Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves
19455 you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
19458 Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth
19459 and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the
19460 adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.
19463 Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
19464 -- Martin Luther King
19466 Life Shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. -- Anais Nin
19468 Freedom is the sure possession of those alone
19469 who have the courage to defend it.
19472 Psychoanalysis is that spiritual disease of
19473 which it considers itself to be the cure.
19476 Teaching is arduous work, entailing much grinding detail and
19477 boring repetition--a teacher, it has been said, never says
19478 anything once--interrupted only occasionally by moments of
19479 always surprising exultation. And I should like to add that
19480 I don't think I learned a thing from my students, except that,
19481 as one student evaluation informed me, I tend to jingle the
19482 change in my pocket.
19485 All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history,
19486 novels, art would be ineffectual.
19487 -- Honore de Balzac
19489 We do not sit in such-and-such a way because a carpenter has built
19490 a chair in such-and-such a way; rather, the carpenter makes the chair
19491 as he does because someone wants to sit that way.
19494 No brilliance is required in law, just common sense
19495 and relatively clean fingernails.
19498 Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. -- Seneca
19500 True friends stab you in the front. -- Oscar Wilde
19502 Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice. -- Henry Ford
19504 Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life.
19505 The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for
19509 Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
19512 Life need not be easy provided only that it is not empty. -- Lise Meitner
19514 Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists.
19517 No more frisking as of old,
19518 Or chasing his shadow over the lawn,
19519 But a dignified old person, tickling
19520 His nose against twig or flower in the border,
19521 Until evening falls and bed-time's in order...
19522 My cat and I grow old together.
19525 Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken
19526 in too large quantities.
19529 The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and
19530 mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
19531 -- Thomas A. Edison
19533 Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative
19534 pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little
19535 falls into lazy habits of thinking.
19538 Engineering can be seen as a family of paths crossing a solution space--in
19539 this case a space defined by all the possible arrangements and combinations
19540 of geometry, time, and material properties that might satisfy the particular
19541 specifications of a design. Filtering a good design out of these possibilities
19542 by simple, direct calculation is impossible both because of the enormous number
19543 of variables and because there are always elements in the specifications--like
19544 aesthetics or ergonomics or compatibility with the corporate image--that can't
19545 be reduced to a number or folded into a common denominator. What humans do in
19546 these cases is: think up a completely wrong (but sincerely felt) approach to
19547 the problem, jump in, fail, and then do an autopsy. Each failure contains
19548 encrypted somewhere on its body directions for the next jump: "strengthen this
19549 part," "tie this down next time," "buy a better battery." Good engineering is
19550 not a matter of creativity or centering or grounding or inspiration or lateral
19551 thinking, as useful as those might be, but of decoding the clever, even witty,
19552 messages solution space carves on the corpses of the ideas in which you
19553 believed with all your heart, and then building the road to the next message.
19554 -- Fred Hapgood, from "Up the Infinite Corridor: MIT and Technical
19557 The hardest part of gaining any new idea is
19558 sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
19561 Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done
19562 it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my
19563 wall that runs counter-clockwise.
19566 What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
19567 -- Theodore Roethke
19569 A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
19570 an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
19571 -- Winston Churchill
19573 I have always felt that everybody on earth goes about in disguise.
19576 At bottom, every man knows perfectly well that he is a unique being,
19577 only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a
19578 marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever
19579 be put together a second time.
19580 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
19582 Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the
19583 lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
19586 If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.
19587 The more things you do, the more you can do.
19590 The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore
19591 its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a
19592 basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and
19593 human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car,
19594 by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the
19595 remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.
19598 I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal.
19599 -- Eugene Delacroix
19601 History never looks like history when you are living through it.
19604 In a cat's eyes round as golden bells,
19605 The mad Spring's flame glows.
19606 On a cat's gently closed lips,
19607 The soft Spring's drowsiness lies.
19608 On a cat's sharp whiskers,
19609 The green Spring's life dances.
19612 People always talk to me about my drinking; they never ask me about my thirst.
19615 Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
19616 -- Philippe Shnoebelen
19618 We don't stop playing because we grow old;
19619 we grow old because we stop playing.
19620 -- George Bernard Shaw
19622 Competitions are for horse, not artist. -- Bela Bartok
19624 I feel that if a person has problems communicating
19625 the very least he can do is to shut up.
19628 It is, of course, totally pointless to call a cat when it is intent
19629 on the chase. They are deaf to the interruptive nonsense of humans.
19630 They are on cat business, totally serious and involved.
19631 -- John D. MacDonald
19633 Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
19634 -- Sir William Osler
19636 The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
19637 -- Robertson Davies
19639 Where do the words come from? The same mysterious place, I suspect,
19640 where notes of music go. They precede ideas, and are inseparable
19641 from them. For myself, I bow my head, touch wood, and utter a small
19642 prayer that the flow of them never cease.
19645 The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I
19646 could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.
19647 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at BrainyQuotes
19649 Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
19650 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at ThinkExist.com
19652 Try moving off NT easily. You can move from Solaris to HP/UX to AIX or DEC
19653 easily relative to moving off of NT, which is like a Roach Motel. Once you
19654 check in, you never check out.
19655 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at World of Quotes
19657 With Microsoft the first hit is always free--remember that all your life.
19658 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at CNet
19660 I am convinced that if General Motors could eliminate [Microsoft] Office from
19661 their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year at half price.
19662 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at Anti-Microsoft Association Web site
19664 We've got bayonets fixed, and we'll go into any cave no matter how dark and
19665 dank it is. And in the air war [against Microsoft to win new developers],
19666 we'll go after any developer and not just let them turn over to the dark side.
19667 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at News.com
19669 Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system.
19670 I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology too.
19671 -- Scott McNealy, November 4, 1998, quoted at CNN.com
19673 Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors.
19674 Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a
19675 settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you
19676 don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?
19677 -- Scott McNealy, quoted at Anti-Microsoft Association Web site
19679 Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hittin'. -- Yogi Berra
19681 "I've seen things like this before," he told the daily Il Messaggero.
19682 "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods."
19683 -- Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church's exorcists, quoted
19684 in an article about Canneto di Caronia, a town where electronics
19687 Nature is an unlimited broadcasting station,
19688 through which God speaks to us every hour,
19689 if we only will tune in.
19690 -- George Washington Carver
19692 To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream;
19693 not only plan, but also believe.
19696 The first step to getting the things
19697 you want out of life is this:
19698 Decide what you want.
19701 A scientist will never show any kindness for
19702 a theory which he did not start himself.
19703 -- Mark Twain, in "A Tramp Abroad"
19706 Disappointments upon disappointments.
19708 This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.
19711 What is now proved was once imagined. -- William Blake
19713 We haven't had any tea for a week.
19714 The bottom is out of the universe.
19717 If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable
19718 of understanding truth and beauty.
19719 -- Japanese Proverb
19725 Telephone, n.: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
19726 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
19727 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
19729 I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers
19730 his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
19733 Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him
19734 with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.
19737 Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force
19738 that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.
19741 One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
19742 -- G. K. Chesterton
19744 Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation
19745 of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform the
19746 calamity and misfortune into the path.
19747 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom",
19748 published by Snow Lion Publications
19750 In Buddhism, both learning and practice are extremely important, and they must
19751 go hand in hand. Without knowledge, just to rely on faith, faith, and more
19752 faith is good but not sufficient. So the intellectual part must definitely be
19753 present. At the same time, strictly intellectual development without faith and
19754 practice, is also of no use. It is necessary to combine knowledge born from
19755 study with sincere practice in our daily lives. These two must go together.
19756 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Answers: Discussions with Western
19757 Buddhists", published by Snow Lion Publications
19759 The nature of beings is ever enlightened,
19760 yet not realizing this, they wander endlessly in samsara.
19761 May intense compassion arise within me
19762 for sentient beings, whose suffering knows no bounds.
19764 In the moment of love, when the vibrant power of intense compassion
19765 is uncontained, the empty essence shines forth nakedly.
19766 May I never step off this supreme path of unity that never goes awry,
19767 and practice it at all times, day and night.
19768 -- "The Eighth Situpa on the Third Karmapa's Mahamudra Prayer", translated
19769 by Lama Sherab Dorje, published by Snow Lion Publications
19771 The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
19772 -- Following the Equator
19774 Love is metaphysical gravity. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
19776 Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.
19777 Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.
19778 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
19780 In accordance with the conditioning of desire, fear, disgust, and so forth--
19781 the conditioning of habitual tendencies that one has been accustomed to since
19782 beginningless time--mind itself appears as body, enjoyments, abode, and so
19783 forth. Yet, childish ordinary individuals do not comprehend that these
19784 [appearances] are the identity of their own minds. Conceiving of mind as being
19785 "here" and objects "over there," they hold the separation, the vast divide
19786 between the apprehended and apprehender, to be established in actuality. This
19787 is entirely imputation, or a deluded misapprehension of the way things are, as
19788 when not knowing that the dream elephant is personal experience, but instead
19789 apprehending it as an actual elephant in the external world.
19790 -- "Speech of Delight: Mipham's Commentary on Shantarakshita's Ornament
19791 of the Middle Way", translated by Thomas H. Doctor.
19793 Instead of prompting the appearance of delusions and/or hallucinations,
19794 many of the patients receiving Valium displayed a progressive development
19795 of dislikes and hates. The patients themselves deliberately used the term
19796 "hate". This hatefulness first involved non-significant figures in the
19797 patients' environment, progressed from there to the involvement of key
19798 figures such as aides, nurses and physicians, and went on to the involvement
19799 of important personal figures such as parents and spouses... This
19800 hatefulness was of a peculiar type. The patients were unhappy with it; they
19801 realized that it was unnatural and without basis, but were impotent to do
19802 anything about it. Many of them, exhibiting real distress, would inquire,
19803 "Why do I feel like this?"
19804 -- P.E. Feldman, Journal of Neuropsychiatry
19806 The greatest book is not the one whose messages engraves itself on the brain,
19807 but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to
19808 reader spreads the fire that is fed by various essences, until it becomes a
19809 great conflagration.
19812 The world is a looking glass and gives back
19813 to every man the reflection of his own face.
19814 -- William M. Thackeray
19816 Travel is only glamorous in retrospect. -- Paul Theroux
19818 Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which
19819 difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
19820 -- John Quincy Adams
19822 Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden
19824 I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works
19825 to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets
19826 anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
19829 You might find this discussion of attitudes threatening or insulting. No one
19830 wants to be told they're practicing incorrectly. We don't want to hear that
19831 we are uptight or repressed, that we are unskillful in dealing with our pain.
19832 We just want to continue doing what we are doing. But there's a Tibetan saying
19833 that the highest teaching is the one that reveals practice and any mistake you
19834 might be making, it will only result in what you most truly desire--progress in
19835 your spiritual development. Remember, I know of these mistakes because I've
19836 made them all myself. Practice involves a radical transformation of our being,
19837 and we have to learn to face and eventually to dissolve all the attitudes we
19838 have about everything, not only meditation. So check yourself out.
19839 -- Bruce Newman, in "A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism: Notes from a
19840 Practitioner's Journey"
19842 Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality. -- Steve Allen
19844 At this point, a vote for Bush is a character flaw. -- Janeane Garofalo
19846 It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make
19847 their experiments on journalists and politicians.
19850 Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
19851 -- Laurence J. Peter
19853 Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -- Theodore Roosevelt
19855 I have taken all knowledge to be my province. -- Sir Francis Bacon
19857 Genius is childhood recaptured at will. -- Charles Baudelaire
19859 Generally speaking, whenever we perceive things, our perception is deluded, in
19860 that we project onto things a status of existence and a mode of being which is
19861 simply not there. We exaggerate things, and the way they then appear falsely
19862 to our minds gives rise to afflictive emotions. When we see our friends or
19863 enemies, for instance, we superimpose on them a quality of desirability or
19864 undesirability that is beyond the actual facts of the situation, and this
19865 superimposition or exaggeration sparks off fluctuating states of emotion in
19866 our mind. Towards our friends we feel strong attachment and desire, and
19867 towards our enemies powerful anger and hatred. So if we are serious about
19868 trying to purify our minds of these afflictive emotions, an understanding of
19869 emptiness becomes crucial.
19870 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
19871 Perfection", Snow Lion Publications
19873 If you examine the nature of your own mind, you will realize that the
19874 pollutants, such as afflictive emotions and thoughts rooted in a distorted
19875 way of relating to the world, are actually unstable. No matter how powerful
19876 an affliction, when you cultivate the antidote of true insight into the nature
19877 of reality, it will vanish because of the power of the antidote, which
19878 undermines its continuity. However, there is nothing that can undermine the
19879 basic mind itself; nothing that can actually interrupt the continuity of
19880 consciousness. The existence of the world of subjective experience and
19881 consciousness is a natural fact. There is consciousness. There is mind.
19882 There is no force that can bring about a cessation of your mental continuum.
19883 -- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, in "Illuminating the Path to
19884 Enlightenment", published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
19886 When we habituate our minds to being fearless, to being brave and open towards
19887 our emotions, fearlessness will also arise naturally. In order for this to
19888 happen we must train in applying antidotes to our thought patterns that are
19889 caught up in fear. In this way, we transcend fear first through a conceptual
19890 process, which later becomes nonconceptual, a natural fearlessness. In order
19891 to become fearless in this way, we need determination and the willingness to
19892 face our emotions. With that strong determination and courage, fearlessness
19893 will arise effortlessly.
19894 -- from Trainings in Compassion: Manuals on the Meditation of
19895 Avalokiteshvara, trans. by Tyler Dewar under the guidance of The
19896 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
19898 The strongest element of growth lies in the human choice. -- George Eliot
19900 But again, I warn you my son: If you want to continue to be a devoted yogi,
19901 generally you should never cling to dreams. If you do, you will eventually
19902 expose yourself to the influence of the four maras. If your dreams are
19903 positive, do not have any expectations. If we are filled with hopes and
19904 expectations, even positive things can turn negative. If your dreams are
19905 negative, don't take them too seriously. Learn to see negative dreams as
19906 illusion, not real. Then, although a dream seems negative, because we realize
19907 that it isn't real, it becomes a positive thing that prepares us for further
19908 development and realization in the spiritual path. This is the practice of
19910 -- "The Life of Gampopa", by Jampa Mackenzie Stewart, Snow Lion Publications
19912 In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where
19913 it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of
19914 rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy,
19915 of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political
19916 dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers
19917 and the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party,
19918 but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid,
19919 home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform
19920 mechanically repeating the familiar phrases--bestial atrocities, iron heel,
19921 bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder--
19922 one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being
19923 but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments
19924 when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank
19925 discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether
19926 fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance
19927 towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out
19928 of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were
19929 choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he
19930 is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of
19931 what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And
19932 this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate
19933 favorable to political conformity.
19934 -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
19936 An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
19937 A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life
19938 when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
19941 Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart. -- Seneca
19943 I am a devilish fellow, who has mastered many arts. -- August Strindberg
19945 Every real thought on every real subject
19946 knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
19947 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
19949 Come, lovely cat, and rest upon my heart,
19950 And let my gaze dive in the cold
19951 Live pools of thine enchanted eyes that dart
19952 Metallic rays of green and gold.
19953 -- Charles Baudelaire
19955 A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution. -- Hazel Nicholson
19957 As every cat owner knows,
19959 -- Ellen Perry Berkeley
19961 One of the most important practices is that of tolerance, patience. Tolerance
19962 can be learned only from an enemy; it cannot be learned from your guru. At
19963 these lectures, for instance, you cannot learn tolerance, except perhaps when
19964 you are bored! However, when you meet your enemy who is really going to hurt
19965 you, then, at that moment you can learn tolerance. Shantideva makes a
19966 beautiful argument; he says that one's enemy is actually a good spiritual
19967 guide because in dependence upon an enemy one can cultivate patience, and in
19968 dependence upon patience one accumulates great power of merit. Therefore, it
19969 is as if an enemy were purposefully getting angry in order to help you
19971 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
19972 Buddhist Path to Peace", Snow Lion Publications
19974 In the intermediate stages of practice, you must be like a farmer during the
19975 harvest. Once he has determined that it is time to reap his crop, he works
19976 at it continuously, no matter what anyone tells him. Just as a farmer works
19977 to make the most of the crop he has grown, we who now have opportunities and
19978 conditions which are so valuable to our practice, should use them
19979 immediately, understanding that there is no time to be wasted.
19980 -- "The Life of Gampopa", by Jampa Mackenzie Stewart, Snow Lion Publications
19982 I'm growing old, I delight in the past. -- Henri Matisse
19984 Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation
19985 with us--that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
19988 Things equal out pretty well.
19989 Our dreams seldom come true,
19990 but then neither do our nightmares.
19993 Inner development comes step by step. You may think "Today my inner calmness,
19994 my mental peace is very small," but still, if you compare, if you look five,
19995 ten, or fifteen years back, and think, "What was my way of thinking then? How
19996 much inner peace did I have then and what is it today?", comparing it with what
19997 it was then, you can realize that there is some progress, there is some value.
19998 This is how you should compare--not with today's feeling and yesterday's
19999 feeling, or last week or last month, even not last year, but five years ago.
20000 Then you can realize what improvement has occurred internally. Progress comes
20001 by maintaining constant effort in daily practice.
20002 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Kindness, Clarity, and Insight", Snow Lion Pub.
20004 Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when
20005 I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before
20006 me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is
20007 what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor
20009 -- Alexander Hamilton
20011 Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the
20012 young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that
20013 it cares for its helpless members.
20016 It is important for us to have a stable and peaceful mind, for it is mostly
20017 through our mind that we experience suffering and problems. With diligence,
20018 we can establish our minds in peace by abandoning the afflictions that create
20019 obstacles. Meditation makes this possible because it establishes a steady
20020 mind. Among the many types of meditation, calm abiding (shamatha) and deep
20021 insight (vipashyana) are central to this process. In calm abiding, our mind
20022 is focused inwardly, which allows us to suppress the afflictions so that they
20023 do not actually manifest. There is a sense of distance between us and the
20024 afflictions. It is not possible, however, to eradicate them with calm abiding
20025 alone; deep insight is necessary to remove them at the root.
20026 -- "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art & Teachings of the 17th Karmapa
20027 Ogyen Trinley Dorje", by Michele Martin, Snow Lion Publications
20029 Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.
20032 If you persevere in this practice of recognizing the state of natural
20033 light, it will progressively become easier to repeat the lucid recognition
20034 that you are dreaming. There will arise a steady awareness within the dream,
20035 and you will know that you are dreaming. When you look in a mirror, you see
20036 a reflection. Regardless of whether it is beautiful or ugly, you know that
20037 it is a reflection. This is similar to knowing that a dream is a dream, to
20038 being lucid. Whether the dream is tragic or ecstatic, you are aware that it
20040 Awareness within the Dream State becomes a way to develop oneself and to
20041 break one's heavy conditioning. With this awareness, one can manipulate the
20042 dream material. For example, one can dream whatever one wishes, or one can
20043 pick up a desired theme. One can continue dreaming from where one left off
20044 on a previous occasion.
20045 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, in "Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light"
20047 Responsibility educates. -- Wendell Phillips
20049 What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid
20050 of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that
20051 which he thinks he already knows.
20054 There are two kinds of food--food for mental hunger and food for physical
20055 hunger. Thus a combination of these two--material progress and spiritual
20056 development is the most practical thing. I think that many Americans,
20057 particularly young Americans, realize that material progress alone is not
20058 the full answer for human life. Right now all of the Eastern nations are
20059 trying to copy Western technology. We Easterners such as Tibetans, like
20060 myself, look to Western technology feeling that once we develop material
20061 progress, our people can reach some sort of permanent happiness. But when
20062 I come to Europe or North America, I see that underneath the beautiful
20063 surface there is still unhappiness, mental unrest, and restlessness. This
20064 shows that material progress alone is not the full answer for human beings.
20065 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness", Snow Lion
20067 Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small it takes time--we haven't
20068 time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
20069 -- Georgia O'Keeffe
20071 The eighth root downfall is to regard our physical bodies, or the skandhas or
20072 aggregates of our psycho-physical makeup, as impure and base. The reason why
20073 this is a root downfall is because Vajrayana sees everything as sacred. All
20074 appearances is a form of divinity, all sound is the sound of mantra, and all
20075 thought and awareness is the divine play of the transcending awareness, the
20076 Mahamudra experience. The potential for that sacredness exists within our
20077 present framework, so to speak, of the five skandhas. Acknowledging psycho-
20078 physical aggregates of an individual as the potential of the Buddhas of the
20079 five families, or the five elements, or the five feminine aspects, and so
20080 forth, is to recognize that, in tantra, the potential for the transformation
20081 exists within our present situation. To disparage that potential as something
20082 useless or impure or unwholesome is a root downfall, a basic contradiction,
20083 from the point of view of tantric practice.
20084 -- H.E. Kalu Rinpoche, in "Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism", Snow Lion Pub.
20086 Terrorists and totalitarians have always been two sides of one coin;
20087 a totalitarian out of office is a terrorist.
20090 Now that as humans we have met with spiritual teachings and have met a teacher,
20091 we should not be like a beggar doing nothing meaningful year after year, ending
20092 up empty-handed at death. I, an ordinary monk in the lineage of Buddha
20093 Shakyamuni, humbly urge you to make efforts in spiritual practice. Examine the
20094 nature of your mind and cultivate its development. Take into account your
20095 welfare in this and future existences, and develop competence in the methods
20096 that produce happiness here and hereafter. Our lives are impermanent and so
20097 are the holy teachings. We should cultivate our practice carefully.
20098 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Path to Enlightenment", Snow Lion
20101 Time makes more converts than reason. -- Tom Paine
20103 We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as
20104 we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better
20105 system, except possibly flipping a coin.
20108 To be dead is to stop believing in
20109 The masterpieces we will begin tomorrow.
20110 -- Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet
20112 The obvious is always least understood. -- Klemens von Metternich
20114 We are decent 99 percent of the time, when we could easily be vile.
20117 The whole world loves a maverick, but the whole world wants
20118 the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion.
20121 Insofar as the destructive effects of anger and hateful thoughts are
20122 concerned, one cannot get protection from wealth; even if one is a
20123 millionaire, one is subject to these destructive effects of anger and
20124 hatred. Nor can education guarantee that one will be protected from
20125 these effects. Similarly, the law cannot guarantee protection. Even
20126 nuclear weapons, no matter how sophisticated the defense system may be,
20127 cannot give one protection or defend one from these effects.
20128 The only factor that can give refuge or protection from the destructive
20129 effects of anger and hatred is the practice of tolerance and patience.
20130 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
20131 Buddhist Perspective", Snow Lion Publications
20133 Theoretically it may be comfortable to have compassion for "all sentient
20134 beings," but through our practice we realize that "all sentient beings" is
20135 a collection of individuals. When we actually try to generate compassion
20136 for each and every individual, it becomes much more challenging. But if we
20137 cannot work with one individual, then how can we work with all sentient
20138 beings? Therefore it is important for us to reflect more practically, to
20139 work with compassion for individuals and then extend that compassion further.
20140 -- "Trainings in Compassion: Manuals on the Meditation of Avalokiteshvara",
20141 translated by Tyler Dewar under the guidance of The Dzogchen Ponlop
20142 Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
20144 The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating
20145 the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
20146 -- Bertrand Russell
20148 I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
20151 The worst, the hardest, the most disagreeable thing that you may have
20152 to do may be the thing that counts most, because it is the hard discipline,
20153 and it alone, that makes possible the highest efficiency.
20156 I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
20157 I learn by going where I have to go.
20158 -- Theodore Roethke
20160 Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. -- Cherokee proverb
20162 Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. -- T'ien Yiheng
20164 Women are like tea bags. They don't know how strong
20165 they are until they get into hot water.
20166 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
20168 There are two appropriate methods of mahamudra meditation to give rise to
20169 the primordial awareness of the dharmadhatu: looking while the mind is
20170 resting and looking while the mind is moving. The approach to the first
20171 method is the meditation of calm abiding. One lets one's mind rest until
20172 it abides calmly, and then with precision one looks at it. One looks for
20173 how it rests, for where it abides, and whoever or whatever it is that
20174 abides there. This is looking at the true nature of the mind while the
20176 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, from "Everyday Consciousness and
20177 Buddha-awakening", Snow Lion Publications
20179 It is better to debate a question without settling it
20180 than to settle a question without debating it.
20183 What is the purpose of the Dharma? Just like other spiritual traditions,
20184 Buddhadharma is an instrument for training the mind--something we use to try
20185 to work out the problems that we all experience; problems that originate
20186 mainly at the mental level. Negative emotional forces create mental unrest,
20187 such as unhappiness, fear, doubt, frustration and so forth; these negative
20188 mental states then cause us to engage in negative activities, which in turn
20189 bring us more problems and more suffering. Practicing Dharma is a way of
20190 working out these problems, be they long-term or immediate. In other words,
20191 Dharma protects us from unwanted suffering.
20192 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment", Snow Lion.
20194 Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the
20195 symbol of his liberty--his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when
20196 it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
20199 Everything in the world has a hidden meaning... Men, animals, trees, stars,
20200 they are all hieroglyphics. When you see them you do not understand them.
20201 You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years
20202 later that you understand.
20203 -- Nikos Kazantzakis, from "Zorba the Greek"
20205 One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things
20206 like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.
20209 A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.
20212 Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
20215 For a romantic relationship to survive, more than romantic love is needed.
20216 We need to love the other person as a human being and as a friend. The sexual
20217 attraction that feeds romantic love is an insufficient basis on which to
20218 establish a long-term relationship. Deeper care and affection, as well as
20219 responsibility and trust, must be cultivated.
20220 In addition, we do not fully understand ourselves and are a mystery to
20221 ourselves. Needless to say, other people are even more of a mystery to us.
20222 Therefore, we should never presuppose, with a bored attitude that craves
20223 excitement, that we know everything about our partner because we have been
20224 together so long. If we have the awareness of the other person being a
20225 mystery, we will continue to pay attention and be interested in him or her.
20226 Such interest is one key to a long-lasting relationship.
20227 -- Thubten Chodron, from "Buddhism for Beginners", Snow Lion Pub.
20229 Two cats can live as cheaply as one, and their owner has twice as much fun.
20232 Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the
20233 same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least
20234 twice as fast as that!
20237 Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its
20238 instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary
20239 for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living
20240 for the ordinary human being.
20243 Vision without action is a daydream;
20244 action without vision is a nightmare.
20245 -- Japanese proverb
20247 To satisfy a cat, a new state of being needs to be
20248 created--halfway between in and out.
20249 -- Stuart and Linda MacFarlane
20251 The Perfection of Zeal
20252 1. Thus, one who has patience should cultivate zeal, because Awakening is
20253 established with zeal, and there is no merit without zeal, just as there is no
20254 movement without wind.
20255 2. What is zeal? It is enthusiasm for virtue. What is said to be its
20256 antithesis? It is spiritual sloth, clinging to the reprehensible, apathy, and
20258 3. Spiritual sloth arises from indolence, indulging in pleasures, sleep,
20259 and craving for lounging around due to one's apathy toward the miseries of the
20260 cycle of existence.
20261 4. Scented out by the hunters, the mental afflictions, you have entered the
20262 snare of rebirth. Why do you not recognize even now that you are in the mouth
20264 -- Shantideva, in "A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life", trans. from the
20265 Sanskrit and Tibetan by Vesna A. Wallace and B. Alan Wallace, published by
20266 Snow Lion Publications
20268 I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.
20269 -- Theodore Roosevelt
20271 Sufferings arise from specific causes and conditions, which are collected by
20272 individual sentient beings. That being so, it is extremely important that
20273 individual sentient beings know what is to be practiced and what is to be
20274 given up--what brings suffering and what brings long-lasting happiness. We
20275 must show sentient beings the right path, which brings happiness and the wrong
20276 path, which brings suffering. Therefore, when we talk about benefiting other
20277 sentient beings, it is through showing them the path and helping them
20278 understand what is to be given up and what is to be practiced. This is how
20279 we can help other sentient beings.
20280 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Stages of Meditation", Snow Lion Publications
20282 We make our lives miserable by being miserable, so why not do exactly the
20283 opposite, and make our lives happy, joyful, and harmonious, by being happy,
20284 joyful, and harmonious? We create our own lives and yet we think that
20285 something else is doing it. All we have to do is change our mental
20286 reactions towards the opposite direction. And the way to do that is to
20287 meditate, otherwise we won't have the strength of mind to do it. A mind
20288 that can meditate is a mind that is one-pointed. And a mind that is one-
20289 pointed, the Buddha said, is like an ax that has been sharpened. It has a
20290 sharp edge that can cut through everything. If we want to remove stress
20291 and strain, and have a different quality of life, we have every opportunity.
20292 We need to strengthen our mind to the point where it will not suffer from
20293 the things which exist in the world.
20294 -- from "Buddhism Through American Women's Eyes", edited by Karma Lekshe
20295 Tsomo, published by Snow Lion Publications
20297 I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study
20298 mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and
20299 philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation,
20300 commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study
20301 painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
20304 There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more
20305 easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
20306 -- Benjamin Franklin
20308 Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk
20309 step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and
20310 patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.
20313 Umpire's heaven is a place where he works third base every game.
20314 Home is where the heartache is.
20317 There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
20318 Other than the meditation that occurs, where is the one who is meditating?
20319 There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
20320 Other than the behavior that occurs, where is the one who is behaving?
20321 There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
20322 Other than the samaya vow that occurs, where is the one who is guarding it?
20323 There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
20324 Other than the fruition that occurs, where is the one who is realizing it?
20325 You should look at your own mind, observing it again and again.
20326 -- from "Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness", translation
20327 and commentary by John Myrdhin Reynolds, published by Snow Lion Pub.
20329 You must understand that I'm just as interested in someone I've
20330 known for ten minutes as in someone I've known for ten years.
20331 -- Alberto Giacometti
20333 Now in our day-to-day lives we know that the more stable, calm and contented
20334 our mind is, the more feelings and experiences of happiness we will derive
20335 from it. The more undisciplined, untrained, and negative our mind is, the
20336 more we suffer mentally, and physically as well. So we can see only too well
20337 that a disciplined and contented mind is the source of our happiness.
20338 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, from "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
20339 Perfection", published by Snow Lion Publications
20341 If we do not wish merely to know intellectually about the view of emptiness,
20342 but rather wish to experience it ourselves in our own continuum, we should
20343 build a firm foundation for this. Then, according to our mental ability we
20344 should hear and consider both the sutras and treatises which teach the profound
20345 view of emptiness as well as the good explanations of them by the experienced
20346 Tibetan scholars in their commentaries. Together with this, we should learn
20347 to make our own ways of generating experience of emptiness accord with the
20348 precepts of an experienced wise man.
20349 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Buddhism of Tibet", published by Snow Lion Pub.
20351 A great deal of our suffering comes from having too many thoughts. And, at
20352 the same time, the way we think is not sane. We are only concerned by our
20353 immediate satisfaction and forget to measure its long-term advantages and
20354 disadvantages, either for ourselves or for others. But such an attitude
20355 always goes against us in the end. There is no doubt that by changing our
20356 way of seeing things we could reduce our current difficulties and avoid
20358 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
20360 If, motivated by the attainment of fame and gain for this life and hoping to
20361 look good in the eyes of others, one's behavior appears to be temporarily
20362 beautiful and one appears to be diligent in moral conduct, hearing, and
20363 contemplation, then one should think, "What is the use of appearing good in the
20364 eyes of others when my practice does not counteract the afflictions? When my
20365 practice does counteract the afflictions then even if it is not beautiful,
20366 what have I got to lose?
20367 -- Ngorchen Konchog Lhundrub, from "Three Visions: Fundamental Teachings of
20368 the Sakya Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Pub.
20370 Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you,
20371 well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best
20372 preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
20373 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
20375 If you can't describe what you are doing as a process,
20376 you don't know what you're doing.
20377 -- W. Edwards Deming
20379 Our Dharma practice is the best offering to make to our teachers. If we have
20380 material possessions, talents, and time, we can offer those. However, we don't
20381 neglect our practice, for that is what our teacher cares about most. When we
20382 follow the Dharma instructions we've received and keep whatever precepts we've
20383 taken, that pleases our teacher more than anything else.
20384 -- Thubten Chodron, in "Taming the Mind", Snow Lion Pub.
20386 If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then
20387 disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.
20388 -- Principia Discordia
20390 When you are proclaiming peace with your lips,
20391 be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.
20392 -- St. Francis of Assisi
20394 Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
20395 -- Albert Einstein, "The World as I See It", 1934.
20397 It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie
20398 which is being systematically repeated. If something is in me which can be
20399 called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
20400 world so far as our science can reveal it.
20401 -- Albert Einstein, in "Albert Einstein : The Human Side", from a 1954
20402 letter to an atheist.
20404 This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military
20405 system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation
20406 to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been
20407 given his big brain by mistake; a spinal cord was all he needed.
20408 -- Albert Einstein, "The World as I See It", 1934.
20410 I'm not a teacher, but an awakener. -- Robert Frost
20412 It is very important to understand the context of the Buddhist emphasis on
20413 recognizing that we are all in a state of suffering, otherwise there is a
20414 danger we could misunderstand the Buddhist outlook, and think that it involves
20415 rather morbid thinking, a basic pessimism and almost an obsessiveness about the
20416 reality of suffering. The reason why Buddha laid so much emphasis on
20417 developing insight into the nature of suffering is because there is an
20418 alternative--there is a way out, it is actually possible to free oneself from
20419 it. This is why it is so crucial to realize the nature of suffering, because
20420 the stronger and deeper your insight into suffering is, the stronger your
20421 aspiration to gain freedom from it becomes. So the Buddhist emphasis on the
20422 nature of suffering should be seen within this wider perspective, where there
20423 is an appreciation of the possibility of complete freedom from suffering. If
20424 we had no concept of liberation, then to spend so much time reflecting on
20425 suffering would be utterly pointless.
20426 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama's Book of Awakening", Snow Lion Pub.
20428 A cat is a demure animal; it will not come into the living room
20429 wagging its tail and knocking over lamps and tables.
20430 -- H. Monger Burdock
20432 There is no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat.
20435 Lack of understanding of the true nature of happiness, it seems to me, is the
20436 principal reason why people inflict sufferings on others. They think either
20437 that the other's pain may somehow be a cause of happiness for themselves or
20438 that their own happiness is more important, regardless of what pain it may
20439 cause. But this is shortsighted, no one truly benefits from causing harm to
20440 another sentient being. Whatever immediate advantage is gained at the expense
20441 of someone else is short-lived. In the long run causing others misery and
20442 infringing their rights to peace and happiness result in anxiety, fear and
20443 suspicion within one-self. Such feelings undermine the peace of mind and
20444 contentment which are the marks of happiness.
20445 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness", Snow Lion
20447 When we're told that things are mere deceptive appearances, we shouldn't
20448 misinterpret it as license to act in any way we please. Of course, none of
20449 us would be so silly! Appearances are extremely powerful. You dream your
20450 house is on fire and you're surrounded by flames. You can't escape and feel
20451 terrified. You wake up soaked in sweat and screaming. What a relief! It was
20452 just a nightmare and none of it actually happened, but while it all seemed to
20453 be happening, you were in anguish.
20454 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, in "The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas",
20455 published by Snow Lion Publications
20457 A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.
20460 I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work. -- Mary Cassatt
20462 If one ever wishes to retain one's fantasies about the good sense
20463 of the people in the realm of literary taste, one does best never
20464 to consult the bestseller lists.
20467 The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
20469 Speaking of others' faults can also be a way to distract ourselves from
20470 acknowledging our own painful emotions. For example, if we feel hurt or
20471 rejected because a dear one hasn't called us in a long time, rather than
20472 feel the suffering nature of our attachment, we criticize our loved one
20473 for being unreliable and inconsiderate.
20474 -- Thubten Chodron, in "Taming the Mind", Snow Lion Publications
20476 A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.
20477 -- Benjamin Disraeli
20479 The things that we love tell us what we are. -- St. Thomas Aquinas
20481 Everything on this planet functions according to the law of nature. Particles
20482 come together, and on the basis of their co-operation everything around us, our
20483 whole environment, can develop and be sustained. Our own body too has the same
20484 structure. Different cells come together and work together in co-operation,
20485 and as a result, human life is sustained. In a human community the same law
20486 and principle of co-operation applies. Even for an aeroplane to fly or for a
20487 single machine to work, it can only do so by depending on many other factors,
20488 and with their co-operation. Without them it is impossible. Just so, to
20489 sustain everyday life in human society we need co-operation.
20490 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Pefection"
20492 We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the byways and
20493 untrodden depths of the wilderness, and travel and explore
20494 and tell the world the glories of our journey.
20495 -- John Hope Franklin
20497 Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
20500 Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in
20501 others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours.
20504 There are two ways to slide easily through life:
20505 to believe everything or to doubt everything;
20506 both ways save us from thinking.
20507 -- Alfred Korzybski
20509 We shall not cease from exploration. And at the end of our exploring will be
20510 to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.
20513 I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains
20514 be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate
20515 in greater pleasures.
20516 -- Michel de Montaigne
20518 A plot, if there is to be one, must be a secret. A secret that, if we only
20519 knew it, would dispel our frustration, lead us to salvation; or else the
20520 knowing of it in itself would be salvation. Does such a luminous secret
20521 exist? Yes, provided it is never known. Known, it will only disappoint us.
20524 The subjects that were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I
20525 fancied least... I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They
20526 always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed
20527 my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had
20528 only one result: I did not too well in examinations.
20529 -- Winston Churchill
20531 One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to
20532 commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money;
20533 we also feel we need to work.
20536 One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.
20539 The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -- Muriel Rukeyser
20541 Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacal impulse
20542 to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames, poisons and
20543 poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetly that I would
20544 rather die than change places with the King of Persia.
20545 -- Johann Joachim Becher
20547 Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society. -- Joan Ganz Cooney
20549 Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. -- Igor Stravinsky
20551 Purifying the unwholesome: In the past we have engaged in unwholesome physical,
20552 verbal, and mental actions. All these actions are of the past and cannot be
20553 touched; we cannot reach back and wipe them away. They have left detrimental
20554 imprints on our mind-stream that obstruct our spiritual practice and manifest
20555 as suffering when they come to full maturation, giving rise to misfortune and
20556 grief. However, these imprints can be affected, and even purified, by our
20557 present behavior. They are like seeds carried along in the current of our
20558 mind-stream. We cannot annihilate them without a trace, but we can burn them
20559 so that they have little or no potency to cause damaging results.
20560 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "The Seven-Point Mind Training", Snow Lion Pub.
20562 First it is important to recognize the human form as rare and precious. It is
20563 not enough just to obtain this precious human form which has great potential;
20564 rather, you should use that potential to its fullest extent by taking its
20565 essence. For example, if a person's ascent to high office is not followed by
20566 good work for the community and people, it is not very beneficial and
20567 worthwhile. If, on the basis of full use of the potential, one is able to
20568 accomplish great feats, that would truly be a great success. Therefore, it is
20569 important initially to recognize all the significance and great potential of
20570 this human existence.
20571 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "The Path to Bliss", Snow Lion Publications
20573 We haven't had any tea for a week.
20574 The bottom is out of the universe.
20577 Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that
20578 usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills
20579 conflicting in one man, Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
20580 -- Flannery O'Connor, in "Wise Blood", 1952
20582 We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect
20583 and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
20586 Only in the most unusual cases is it useful to determine whether
20587 a book is good or bad; for it is just as rare for it to be one or
20588 the other. It is usually both.
20591 A lie gets halfway around the world before
20592 the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
20593 -- Winston Churchill
20595 Like yourself, everyone else from their own side equally does not want
20596 suffering and equally wants happiness. For example, among ten ill people,
20597 each of them just wants happiness; from their side they are all ill, and
20598 they all want to be freed from their illness. Hence there is no possible
20599 reason for making a biased exception, treating a certain one better and
20600 neglecting the others. It is impossible to select one out for better
20601 treatment. Moreover, from your own viewpoint, all sentient beings, in
20602 terms of their connection with you over the course of lifetimes, have in
20603 the past helped you and in the future will help again. Thus, you also
20604 cannot find any reason from your own side to treat some better and others
20606 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
20607 Buddhist Path to Peace", Snow Lion Publications
20609 In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
20610 -- Raymond Chandler
20612 Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. -- George Santayana
20614 Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. -- Claude Bernard
20616 When we practice, initially, as a basis we control ourselves, stopping the
20617 bad actions which hurt others as much as we can. This is defensive. After
20618 that, when we develop certain qualifications, then as an active goal we
20619 should help others. In the first stage, sometimes we need isolation while
20620 pursuing our own inner development; however, after you have some confidence,
20621 some strength, you must remain with, contact, and serve society in any
20622 field--health, education, politics, or whatever.
20623 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Kindness, Clarity and Insight", Snow Lion Pub.
20625 Other paths that are aimed at "sudden awakening" lead one on an unmapped
20626 journey that may offer no clear indications of progress. In contrast, in this
20627 practice we have definite sign-posts along the way. Look at your mental
20628 distortions and see how they are doing. After practicing for a month, a year,
20629 six years, are the mental distortions somewhat diminished? Do wholesome
20630 qualities arise more readily, more frequently, more deeply? At the very root
20631 of the mental distortions, is the self-grasping attenuated? Is there less
20632 self-centeredness and greater humility? Is there more loving concern for the
20633 welfare of others? All of these are causes that lead either to well-being or
20635 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "The Seven-Point Mind Training", Snow Lion Pub.
20637 In the jungle of samsara arisings are ceaseless, there is never any let up in
20638 the interplay between past, present and future and in the turbulent interchange
20639 between inner thoughts and outer events. 'I', 'me' and 'mine' are tossed about
20640 like corks in the waves. There is no exit from this on the level of 'I'.
20641 There is no way to think yourself out of samsara. Even the thoughts that
20642 everything is empty, or is Padmasambhava, or pure from the very beginning do
20643 not help for no thought can unlock the door to awakening. The key is not
20644 shaped like a thing; it is not a thought, a feeling or a sensation. It's not
20645 something outer or inner. The key is your own nature, how you have been from
20646 the very beginning, simple, raw, naked, uncontrived, free of all constructs.
20647 -- Nuden Dorje, in "Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text", Snow Lion
20649 Great ideas originate in the muscles. -- Thomas A. Edison
20651 If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. -- Mark Twain
20653 Mathematics is a game played according to certain
20654 simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
20657 When you are poor enough, everything has some value. -- Barbara Ann Porte
20659 I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have
20660 been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and
20661 then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
20662 the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
20665 In ancient times, a candidate for initiation into the Mysteries was led through
20666 a series of dark chambers, virtually a labyrinth, beset by terrifying sounds
20667 and ominous presences. And then in the adytum, the final chamber, there was a
20668 sudden illumination. The enthroned hierophant tells the candidate, "Behold the
20669 light, my child! It is your own being and nature." Just this epopteia, or
20670 sudden illumination, is the introduction to the Clear Light that is one's own
20671 original nature. The course of the initiation in the ancient Mystery Religions
20672 simulates the experience of death and rebirth and leads the candidate into what
20673 lies beyond, so that one no longer need fear death. This initiatory process
20674 may be compared to the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
20675 -- John Myrdhin Reynolds, in "The Golden Letters", Snow Lion Pub.
20677 If only I had the theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough.
20678 -- Bernhard Riemann
20680 Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent,
20681 literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
20684 But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
20685 hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
20686 have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
20689 A memory is more atmospheric than accurate, more an evolving fiction than a
20690 sacred text. And thank heavens. If rude, shameful, or brutal memories
20691 can't be expunged, they can at least be diluted. So is nothing permanent
20692 and fixed in life? By definition life is a fickle noun, an event in
20693 progress. Still, we cling to philosophical railings, religious icons,
20694 pillars of belief. We forget on purpose that Earth is rolling at 1,000
20695 miles an hour, and, at the same time, falling elliptically around our sun,
20696 while the sun is swinging through the Milky Way, and the Milky Way migrating
20697 along with countless other galaxies in a universe about 13.7 billion years
20698 old. An event is such a little piece of time and space, leaving only a
20699 mindglow behind like the tail of a shooting star. For lack of a better
20700 word, we call that scintillation memory.
20701 -- Diane Ackerman, in "An Alchemy Of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of
20704 Many people who approach the practice of Buddhism are willing to sacrifice one
20705 or two hours of their day in order to perform some ritual practice or engage in
20706 meditation. Time is relatively easy to give up, even though their life may be
20707 very busy. But, they are not willing to change anything of their personality--
20708 they are not willing to forgo anything of their negative character. With this
20709 type of approach to Buddhism, it hardly matters how much meditation we do, our
20710 practice remains merely a hobby or a sport. It does not touch our lives. In
20711 order actually to overcome our problems, we have to be willing to change--
20712 namely to change our personality. We need to renounce and rid ourselves of
20713 those negative aspects of it that are causing us so much trouble.
20714 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama & Alexander Berzin in "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
20717 Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into
20718 you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into
20719 you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
20722 Whoso does not see that genuine life is a battle
20723 and a march has poorly read his origin and his destiny.
20726 The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality
20727 one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
20730 The last proceeding of reason, is to recognize that
20731 there is an infinity of things beyond it.
20734 Argument is the worst sort of conversation. -- Jonathan Swift
20736 No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.
20739 Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.
20740 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
20742 I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.
20743 -- Winston Churchill
20745 The self that is grasped by ignorance should be refuted, but we should not
20746 refute the conventionally existent self. If we refute the self that is merely
20747 conventionally existent, that is like a seeing a person and saying, "Oh, I
20748 didn't see the person." Or we might look at another person and say, "All I
20749 see is the basis of designation of the person or the visual form of the body."
20750 This is no way to speak. It would be impossible to maintain any valid or
20751 justifiable use of language in this way. We would be negating the existence
20752 of a merely designated self, but we would not negate the self that is refuted
20753 by means of the wisdom that investigates the nature of emptiness. Once again,
20754 the self to be negated is the self which is grasped by ignorance.
20755 -- Gen. Lamrimpa, in "Realizing Emptiness: Madhyamaka Insight Meditation",
20756 translated by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
20758 In general, the countries of the East have had less material progress and thus
20759 have great suffering from poverty. In the West, though poverty is not severe,
20760 there is the suffering of worry and not knowing satisfaction. In both East and
20761 West, many persons spend their lives in jealousy and competition; some think
20762 only of money, and when they meet with conditions unfavourable to their wish
20763 develop a dislike or enmity for these unfavourable circumstances from the very
20764 orb of their heart. Within and between countries people are disturbed, not
20765 trusting and believing each other, having to spend their lives in continual
20766 lies and deceit. Since the most we can live is a hundred years, what point is
20767 there in spending our lives in jealousy, deceit, and competition?
20768 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Deity Yoga", translated and edited by Jeffrey
20769 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
20771 She was fascinated by baths. I suppose total immersion in water
20772 must have seemed to her a peculiar method of cleansing oneself.
20773 -- Elizabeth Peters
20775 The uncompromising self-examination of a Rembrandt self-portrait remains,
20776 almost four centuries on, far more 'shocking' than a museum installation
20780 Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives. -- Jonathan Swift
20782 Mere belief in a source of refuge is not firm; unless there is valid cognition,
20783 you are going only on the assertion that Buddhism is good. Refuge is not an
20784 act of partisanship but is based on analysing what scriptures are reasonable
20785 and what scriptures are not. In order for the mind to engage one-pointedly in
20786 practice, there must be reasoned conviction that only the Buddhist path is
20787 non-mistaken and capable of leading to the state of complete freedom from
20788 defects and possession of all auspicious attainments. One should engage in
20789 honest investigation, avoiding desire and hatred and seeking the teaching that
20790 sets forth the means for fulfilling the aims of trainees.
20791 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Tantra in Tibet", trans. & ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins
20793 A bad peace is even worse than war. -- Tacitus
20795 The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a number of
20796 smaller stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together; so it is a number
20797 of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that
20798 make men fortunate.
20801 Ability will never catch up with the demand for it. -- Confucius
20803 There is more to life than increasing its speed. -- Mahatma Gandhi
20805 If cats could talk, they wouldn't. -- Nan Porter
20807 I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
20810 The teeth, hair and nails are not I, nor am I bone, blood, mucus, phlegm,
20812 Bodily oil is not I, nor is sweat, fat or the entrails either. The cavity
20813 of the entrails is not I, nor is excrement or urine.
20814 Flesh is not I, nor are the sinews, warmth nor air. The bodily cavities are
20815 not I, nor is any one of the six types of consciousness.
20816 If the self truly exists in the manner in which it appears, then it should be
20817 identifiable as one inspects the components of a person one by one. Following
20818 the above verses, no part of the body, including the four elements and space,
20819 nor the six types of consciousness can be identified as the self. This implies
20820 that the self that experiences joy and sorrow and that appears to the mind as
20821 if it existed independently does not exist at all. This is ascertained by
20822 engaging in such analysis.
20823 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Transcendent Wisdom", Snow Lion Publications
20825 Once, on behalf of his mother, Kyogom produced a thangka of the five buddha
20826 families. He asked the guru, Gampopa, to bless it quickly.
20827 Gampopa agreed, saying, "Burn this stick of incense and make a mandala
20829 He then transformed himself into the Buddha, and from his ushnisha there
20830 radiated a glorious light that dissolved into the thangka. The air resounded
20831 with the tinkling of bells and the drumbeat of the damaru, and the sky was
20832 filled with parasols, auspicious banners, and canopies. The sound of cymbals
20833 was heard, and a rain of flowers fell from the sky.
20834 When Kyogom saw this, the lama said, "This is the way to do a rapid
20836 -- Jampa Mackenzie Stewart, in "The Life of Gampopa", Snow Lion Pub.
20838 The absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill
20839 treatment means that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a
20840 state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any
20841 other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.
20842 -- Theo van Boven, UN official charged with monitoring incidents of torture
20844 No executive, legislative, administrative, or judicial measure authorizing
20845 recourse to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
20846 can be considered as lawful under international law.
20847 -- Theo van Boven, UN official charged with monitoring incidents of torture
20849 In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a
20850 long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians
20851 will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an
20852 unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time--literally
20853 --substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the
20854 first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally
20856 -- Peter F. Drucker
20858 Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food. -- Hippocrates
20860 One of the lessons of the Web is that if people have access to information,
20861 they will consume it, whether they are hungry or not.
20864 If cats seem distant and aloof, it is because this is not their native
20865 planet--they are here just to visit and dominate.
20868 History is the only laboratory we have in which to test
20869 the consequences of thought.
20872 In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out.
20873 It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.
20876 If we have only cultivated undistracted meditative concentration and lack the
20877 supreme knowledge that realizes how things actually are, it is impossible to
20878 see ultimate reality. On the other hand, if we have the correct view of
20879 understanding identitylessness but no meditative concentration in which the
20880 mind rests one-pointedly, our mind will be distracted by other objects, not be
20881 under control, and thus not be workable. Consequently, it will be impossible
20882 for the light of wisdom to shine clearly and realize ultimate reality. Another
20883 analogy for the need to combine calm abiding and superior insight as an
20884 inseparable unity is a sharp scalpel in the steady hand of an experienced
20885 surgeon. If the scalpel is blunt or the surgeon's hand shaky, the operation
20886 cannot be performed properly. In the same way, when the mind rests in a state
20887 that involves both stillness and a crisp wakefulness or awareness, it is like
20888 a steady hand that deftly operates on our objects of investigation with the
20889 sharp blade of superior insight.
20890 -- Karl Brunnhoelzl, in "The Center of the Sunlit Sky: Madyhamaka in the
20891 Kagyu Tradition, Snow Lion Publications
20893 Golf is the only sport where the ball doesn't move until you hit it.
20896 ... when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men
20897 of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact
20898 that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending
20899 any save the most elemental--men whose whole thinking is done in terms of
20900 emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.
20901 So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost.
20903 ... all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and
20904 mediocre--the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is
20907 The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is
20908 perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of
20909 the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the
20910 plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the
20911 White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
20912 -- H. L. Mencken (July 26, 1920, in the Baltimore Sun):
20914 The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a
20915 means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small.
20916 -- William Langewiesche
20918 Flight's greatest gift is to let us look around. I mean a simple form of
20919 looking around, and one that requires little instruction--just gazing down at
20920 the ordinary scenery sliding by below. The best views are views of familiar
20921 things, like cities and farms and bottlenecked freeways. So set aside the
20922 beauty of sunsets, the majesty of mountains, the imprint of winds on golden
20923 prairies. The world beneath our wings has become a human artifact, our most
20924 spontaneous and complex creation. Tourists may not like to contemplate the
20925 evidence, with its hints of greed and self-destruction, but the fact remains
20926 that the old sterilized landscapes--like designated outlooks and pretty parks
20927 and sculpted gardens--have become obsolete, and that it is largely the airplane
20928 that has made them so. The aerial view is something entirely new. We need to
20929 admit that it flattens the world and mutes it in a rush of air and engines, and
20930 that it suppresses beauty. But it also strips the facades from our
20931 constructions, and by raising us above the constraints of the treeline and the
20932 highway it imposes a brutal honesty on our perceptions. It lets us see
20933 ourselves in context, as creatures struggling through life on the face of a
20934 planet, not separate from nature, but its most expressive agents. It lets us
20935 see that our struggles form patterns on the land, that these patterns repeat to
20936 an extent which before we had not known, and that there is a sense to them.
20937 -- William Langewiesche, "Inside The Sky: Meditation on Flight"
20939 A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool
20940 who knows what he is talking about.
20941 -- Miguel de Unamuno
20943 Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real. -- Jules Verne
20945 We have the bias of considering some people to be enemies and others to be
20946 friends. If this really were true such that an enemy always remained an enemy
20947 and a friend always remained a friend, then there might be a reason to hate
20948 certain people and love others. But, again, this is not the case. There is
20949 no certainty in relationships.
20950 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
20951 Buddhist Path to Peace", Snow Lion Publications
20953 Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are. -- George Santayana
20955 It is said that the awareness of a buddha is completely even, like the ocean,
20956 taking in equally the joys and sorrows of all people, friends, loved ones,
20957 relatives, and those never met. This is the meaning of a statement made by so
20958 many of the world's great spiritual teachers, "Love your enemy." It doesn't
20959 mean love the person you hate. You can't do that. Love those who hate you.
20960 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point
20961 Mind-Training", Snow Lion Publications
20963 Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal
20964 does this--no dog exchanges bones with another.
20967 Art is not about thinking something up.
20968 It is the opposite--getting something down.
20971 Although we regard the realization of the selflessness of persons as something
20972 particularly exalted and therefore difficult to achieve, in fact, if you look
20973 directly at your mind and see its nature, you will realize this selflessness.
20974 This is not a matter of trying to convince yourself that there is no self in
20975 the mind. It is simply a matter of looking. And when you look, you will see
20976 that there is no mind, and that therefore there is no self that could be
20977 imputed on the basis of the mind.
20978 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, in "Pointing out the Dharmakaya", Snow Lion
20980 Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd have frozen to death.
20983 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. -- Henry Fielding
20985 Material progress is for the sake of achieving that happiness and relieving
20986 that suffering which depends upon the body. But it is indeed difficult to
20987 remove all suffering by these external means and thereby achieve complete
20988 satisfaction. Hence there comes to be a great difference between seeking
20989 happiness in dependence upon external things and seeking it in dependence
20990 upon one's own internal spiritual development. Furthermore, even if the
20991 basic suffering is the same, there is a great difference in the way we
20992 experience it and in the mental discomfort that it creates, depending upon
20993 our attitude towards it. Hence our mental attitude is very important in
20994 how we spend our lives.
20995 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Kindness, Clarity and Insight", Snow Lion Pub.
20997 Love is a condition in which the happiness of another
20998 person is essential to your own.
21001 Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes
21002 it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.
21003 -- Leonard Michaels
21005 Waking in the night
21010 Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
21013 If you have love, deities and humans will love you and will naturally
21014 gravitate toward you. Moreover, the Conqueror defeated Mara's armies with the
21015 power of love, so love is the supreme protector, and so forth. Thus, although
21016 love is difficult to develop, you must strive to do so.
21017 The way to cultivate love is as follows. Just as you can develop compassion
21018 once you have repeatedly thought about how living beings are made miserable by
21019 suffering, develop love by thinking repeatedly about how living beings lack all
21020 happiness, both contaminated and uncontaminated. When you become familiar with
21021 this, you will naturally wish for beings to be happy. In addition, bring to
21022 mind various forms of happiness and then offer them to living beings.
21023 -- from "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment",
21024 Volume 2, Snow Lion Publications
21026 There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found
21027 in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.
21030 You'll never need a lawn ornament if you have a cat in the yard.
21031 -- Katherine Palmer Peterson
21033 Karma has four main characteristics. The first is its increasing effect:
21034 goodness heralds further goodness and evil heralds further evil. Secondly,
21035 karma is definite: in the long run, goodness always produces joy and negativity
21036 always produces suffering. Thirdly, one never experiences a joy or sorrow that
21037 does not have an according karmic cause. And lastly, the karmic seeds that are
21038 placed on the mind at the time of an action will never lose their potency even
21039 in a hundred million lifetimes, but will lie dormant within the mind until one
21040 day the conditions that activate them appear.
21041 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Path to Enlightenment", Snow Lion
21043 The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat. -- Jules Reynard
21045 There are generally two kinds of buddhist meditation: stabilizing meditation
21046 and analytical meditation. The stabilizing type of meditation gets the brain
21047 very mellow. It is a soothing of the mind to a clear state of calm, like a
21048 still lake. Stabilization allows all thoughts to flow through the mind without
21049 attachment to any of them. But the analytical type of meditation uses the
21050 power of logic to examine what is bothering one. Through meditative analysis,
21051 problems are conquered by finding their root causes and by developing
21052 techniques for mitigating the effects of those causes on the mind. Analysis
21053 can focus on topics such as impermanence, suffering, the need for patience,
21055 These two phases of meditation are not practiced at different times of the
21056 day, but from instant to instant. At first, when one is a beginner, one must
21057 actively work to stabilize the mind and release all the distractions. But
21058 just when one starts to doze off because this process is so relaxing, one
21059 switches over to analytical meditation to keep the brain moving and to balance
21061 One has to pay careful attention to the state of one's mind to determine
21062 what is needed at a particular time. But this wakeful refocusing of the
21063 attention helps to develop mindfulness, which in turn helps develop
21064 understanding and concentration. Later on, the switch between analytical
21065 and stabilizing meditations will happen somewhat more automatically; if
21066 thoughts start swirling too fast, the meditative mind seeks stabilization. If
21067 things get too calm or placid, then analysis can bring the balance back to
21068 thinking and improving.
21069 Analysis is insufficient by itself, because it might be all about what's
21070 currently "wrong" or it might produce a billion approaches to improving the
21071 mind which cannot all be followed, but it would miss out on just enjoying our
21072 somewhat short existence. Complete realization of the enjoyability of
21073 sentience and sapience seems to come from stabilization, not analysis. And
21074 stabilization is not enough by itself either, because one sees the result
21075 of too much placidity in a person asleep in bed: they have a cow-like calm
21076 without any thoughts breaking the surface to cause future progress. The
21077 impetus behind the push towards enlightenment seems to come from analysis,
21078 because one cannot see why one would want to fully awake and aware unless
21079 one can logically compare that state with the current one. Thus analytical
21080 and stabilizing meditations are the dynamic duo of meditation, the laurel
21081 and the hardy, the R and the D, the anion and the cation, for without both
21082 the ultimate mental state is unattainable.
21085 The bad news: there is no key to the universe.
21086 The good news: it was never locked.
21087 -- Swami Beyondananda
21089 What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of
21090 frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly. That is the
21091 first law of nature.
21094 A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
21095 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21097 If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.
21098 -- Frederick the Great
21100 I know that many people have difficulty thinking of spirits in the way I
21101 describe them. There are many spirits described in Tibetan texts related to
21102 specific places in Tibet. I'm not sure, if we live in New York or Tokyo, that
21103 it's very helpful to try to connect to those spirits. When we are in Western
21104 cities, rather than thinking of spirits living in mountain passes or caves, we
21105 might find it easier to think that spirits travel the streets, creating anger
21106 and agitation in the drivers. When we experience aggressive driving, it is a
21107 good idea to breathe evenly and relax. Otherwise, we may find ourselves
21108 connected to traffic demons!
21109 -- "Healing with Form, Energy and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan
21110 Shamanism, Tantra and Dzogchen", published by Snow Lion Publications
21112 I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
21113 Let's start with typewriters.
21114 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
21116 As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school.
21119 In Tantra the term bodhicitta assumes a more specific connotation. The essence
21120 of enlightenment or "Buddha-nature," revealed in the sutras of the third
21121 turning of the wheel of Dharma, is equated to the subtle essence (thig le) of
21122 the human body, the coarse aspect of which is present in the seminal fluid and
21123 in the ovum. Thus in Tantra, bodhicitta is recognized as the seed of the
21124 manifestation of the infinite mandalas and deities who are all already
21125 contained in potentiality in the energy structure of the physical body itself,
21126 what is known as the "vajra body." However in spite of this underlying
21127 recognition as its base, tantric practice entails visualization and commitments
21128 of body voice, and mind to achieve the transformation of the energies of impure
21129 vision into the pure dimension of the mandala and of the deities.
21130 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu and Adriano Clemente, in "The Supreme Source: The
21131 Fundamental Tantra of the Dzogchen Semde Kunjed Gyalpo", Snow Lion Pub.
21133 Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books
21134 I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.
21137 It is impossible to keep a straight face in
21138 the presence of one or more kittens.
21139 -- Cynthia E. Varnardo
21141 I always explain that violence is not the human way. I believe that,
21142 fundamentally, human nature is positive, gentle; therefore, the non-violent way
21143 is the human way. Also, whatever result we achieve through non-violence has no
21144 negative side effect. Through violence, even though we may get some kind of
21145 satisfaction, negative side effects are also incurred. Then, most importantly,
21146 whether we like it or not, we have to live side by side with the Chinese; thus,
21147 in the long future, generation to generation, in order to live happily,
21148 peacefully, it is extremely important, while we are carrying on the struggle,
21149 to accord with the principle of non-violence.
21150 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Art of Peace: Nobel Peace Laureates discuss
21151 Human Rights, Conflict and Reconciliation", Snow Lion Pub.
21155 I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--
21156 that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have
21157 been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
21158 I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless
21159 to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent,
21160 can be anything but vicious.
21161 I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must
21162 necessarily make war upon liberty...
21163 I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence
21164 of witches, and deserves no more respect.
21165 I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...
21166 I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what
21167 it is made of, and how it is run.
21168 I believe in the reality of progress.
21169 I--But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it
21170 is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be
21171 free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be
21175 The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small
21176 electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying
21177 even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is
21178 nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and
21179 the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds
21180 are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre--the man
21181 who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual
21183 The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is
21184 perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the
21185 people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the
21186 plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White
21187 House will be adorned by a downright moron.
21188 -- Henry Louis Mencken, "Bayard vs. Lionheart", Baltimore Evening Sun,
21191 The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of
21192 wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
21195 There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
21196 -- Sir Francis Bacon
21198 I say that the art of sculpture is eight times as great as any other art based
21199 on drawing, because a statue has eight views and they must all be equally good.
21200 -- Benvenuto Cellini
21202 When we talk about patience or tolerance, we should understand that there are
21203 many degrees, starting from a simple tolerance, such as being able to bear a
21204 certain amount of heat and cold, progressing toward the highest level of
21205 patience, which is the type of patience and tolerance found in the great
21206 practitioners, the Bodhisattvas on the high levels of the Buddhist path.
21207 Since patience or tolerance comes from a certain ability to remain firm and
21208 steadfast, to not be overwhelmed by the adverse situations or conditions that
21209 one faces, one should not see tolerance or patience as a sign of weakness, but
21210 rather as a sign of strength coming from a deep ability to remain steadfast and
21211 firm. We can generally define patience or tolerance in these terms. We find
21212 that even in being able to tolerate a certain degree of physical hardship, like
21213 a hot or cold climate, our attitude makes a big difference.
21214 If we have the realization that tolerating immediate hardship can have long-
21215 term beneficial consequences, we are more likely to be able to tolerate
21216 everyday hardships. Similarly, in the case of those on the Bodhisattva levels
21217 of the path practicing high levels of tolerance and patience, intelligence also
21218 plays a very important role as a complementary factor.
21219 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
21220 Buddhist Perspective", Snow Lion Publications
21222 One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the
21223 background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
21224 -- Stephen Sondheim
21226 All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
21229 Completely pure desirous attachment expresses itself through Buddha Amitabha.
21230 A person guided by desire, attachment, or grasping becomes diffused and loses
21231 power over phenomena. Through completely purified desirous attachment,
21232 however, one is able to gain control over, and to independently coordinate,
21233 everything. This is because the entourage, possessions, merit, and so forth
21234 are controlled by the power of this Buddha. In this way Amitabha grants us the
21235 empowering enlightened activity and the empowering extraordinary achievements.
21236 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, in "Everyday Consciousness and
21237 Buddha-awakening", Snow Lion Pub.
21239 No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.
21240 -- David McCollough
21242 If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and
21243 only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement
21244 would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the
21245 atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, if you wish to call it that) that all
21246 things are made of atoms--little particles that move around in perpetual
21247 motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but
21248 repelling upon being squeezed into one another.
21249 -- Richard P. Feynman
21251 The third aspect of the practice of generosity is giving the gift of the
21252 Dharma by making the teachings available. Through the Dharma, we can bring
21253 understanding into the lives of others and help them remove their patterns of
21254 ignorance. We do not have to be great scholars to practice generosity through
21255 the Dharma. We may know just one line of the Dharma, but if we know that one
21256 line clearly and correctly, we can genuinely express it to others and help
21257 them. If we know four lines of the teachings, through those four lines we can
21258 help to clear up someone's ignorance or lessen someone's problems and
21259 sufferings. What counts is not how much we know but how correctly we know it
21260 and how sincerely we use it to help others. We should not wear the mask of the
21261 Dharma, pretending we know a great deal and are doing great things, while
21262 hiding ugliness inside us.
21263 -- Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, in "Dharma Paths", Snow Lion Pub.
21265 One difference between the destructive, negative emotions on the one side and
21266 constructive, positive emotions on the other is that constructive, positive
21267 emotions have a strong grounding in valid experience and reasoning. In fact,
21268 the more we analyze these positive emotions, the more they are enhanced.
21269 Negative, afflictive emotions, by contrast, are usually quite superficial.
21270 They have no grounding in reason and often arise out of habit rather than
21271 reasoned thought processes.
21272 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment",
21273 Snow Lion Publications
21275 Whenever you travel on an airplane, the flight attendants demonstrate what to
21276 do in an emergency. They tell you to put the oxygen mask over your own nose
21277 before putting it over your child's nose. That's not because you should be
21278 selfish, but because if you pass out, you won't be able to help anyone at all.
21279 So you see, the essential point is that we must first subdue our own minds
21280 before we can effectively serve others.
21282 If you have failed to subdue your own mind, even if a thousand Buddhas surround
21283 you, they will be of no benefit. If you want to subdue your enemies, you must
21284 subdue your own mind. If you want to bring about world peace, subdue your
21285 mind. A subdued mind is the Lama. A subdued mind is the Dakini, the chosen
21286 deity, and the Buddha. A subdued mind is the pure land. You are already
21287 imbued with the Buddha-nature. This is your inherent nature. What actual
21288 benefit have you gotten from the essential nature of your mind?
21289 -- Karma Chagme, in "A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on
21290 the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga", Snow Lion Publications
21292 From: non-verbal sys-admin
21293 To: support technician
21294 Subject: harriet crash
21296 harriet crashed this afternoon
21297 it is back online now
21298 looks like a bad drive in the array
21299 i have an ibm ticket opened
21300 hope to have it serviced sometime tomorrow
21302 the current state or the repair
21303 should not affect core team work in build
21307 From: support technician
21308 To: non-verbal sys-admin
21309 Subject: Re: harriet crash
21312 complete sentences, grammar
21315 I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little,
21316 they become its visible soul.
21319 I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite
21320 ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.
21323 Besides the first degree of eminence in science, a professor with us must be
21324 of sober and correct morals and habits, having the talent of communicating his
21325 knowledge with facility, and of an accommodating and peaceable temper. The
21326 latter is all important for the harmony of the institution.
21327 -- Thomas Jefferson
21329 Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities,
21330 of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
21331 -- Queen Elizabeth II
21333 We do not see, or we forget, that the birds that are idly singing around us
21334 mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life.
21337 Obstacles to our practice may be external, internal or secret. The external
21338 ones consist of natural disasters, harm inflicted by human and nonhuman
21339 beings, sicknesses and so forth. Internal obstacles are our own disturbed
21340 states of mind and emotions and all the obstructions to liberation and full
21341 knowledge of all phenomena. Secret obstacles are seemingly good
21342 circumstances, which distract the practitioner and make him or her forget
21343 about practice. For instance, one might gain a good reputation as a sincere
21344 practitioner and thereby attract followers and wealth, which in the end make
21345 one neglect one's practice.
21346 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, in "Eight Verses for Training the Mind",
21349 From Linus Benedict Torvalds Oct 5 1991, 8:53 am
21350 Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
21351 From: torva...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
21352 Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
21353 Local: Fri, Oct 4 1991 10:41 pm
21354 Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
21356 Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
21357 their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
21358 to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
21359 finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-
21360 nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
21363 As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a
21364 minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage
21365 where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want),
21366 and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is
21367 just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully
21368 run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.
21370 Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at nic.funet.fi
21371 (128.214.6.100) in the directory /pub/OS/Linux. The directory also
21372 contains some README-file and a couple of binaries to work under linux
21373 (bash, update and gcc, what more can you ask for :-). Full kernel
21374 source is provided, as no minix code has been used. Library sources are
21375 only partially free, so that cannot be distributed currently. The
21376 system is able to compile "as-is" and has been known to work. Heh.
21377 Sources to the binaries (bash and gcc) can be found at the same place in
21380 ALERT! WARNING! NOTE! These sources still need minix-386 to be compiled
21382 (and gcc-1.40, possibly 1.37.1, haven't tested), and you need minix to
21383 set it up if you want to run it, so it is not yet a standalone system
21384 for those of you without minix. I'm working on it. You also need to be
21385 something of a hacker to set it up (?), so for those hoping for an
21386 alternative to minix-386, please ignore me. It is currently meant for
21387 hackers interested in operating systems and 386's with access to minix.
21389 The system needs an AT-compatible harddisk (IDE is fine) and EGA/VGA. If
21390 you are still interested, please ftp the README/RELNOTES, and/or mail me
21391 for additional info.
21393 I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be
21394 out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
21395 minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjouyed doing
21396 it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for
21397 their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and
21398 modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.
21400 I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the
21401 utilities/library functions for minix. If your efforts are freely
21402 distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear
21403 from you, so I can add them to the system. I'm using Earl Chews estdio
21404 right now (thanks for a nice and working system Earl), and similar works
21405 will be very wellcome. Your (C)'s will of course be left intact. Drop me
21406 a line if you are willing to let me use your code.
21410 PS. to PHIL NELSON! I'm unable to get through to you, and keep getting
21411 "forward error - strawberry unknown domain" or something.
21413 Question: How do things exist if they are empty of inherent existence?
21415 His Holiness: The doctrines of emptiness and selflessness do not imply the non-
21416 existence of things. Things do exist. When we say that all phenomena are void
21417 of self-existence, it does not mean that we are advocating non-existence, that
21418 we are repudiating that things exist. Then what is it we are negating? We are
21419 negating, or denying, that anything exists from its own side without depending
21420 on other things. Hence, it is because things depend for their existence upon
21421 other causes and conditions that they are said to lack independent self-
21423 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
21424 Snow Lion Publications
21426 You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
21427 But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
21430 Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things,
21431 in which smiles, and kindnesses, and small obligations, given habitually,
21432 are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort.
21433 -- Sir Humphrey Davy
21435 It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.
21436 -- Federico Fellini
21438 When you engage in a project or an activity that helps other sentient beings,
21439 there is no question of a time limit. You must do it continuously. This is
21440 how you should train your mind. If you think you will achieve enlightenment or
21441 bodhichitta within a few days or months, and if you think that you will get
21442 enlightened after entering into a retreat for three years and three months, you
21443 are mistaken. When I hear the suggestion that you will attain Buddhahood if
21444 you go into retreat for three years and three months, sometimes I jokingly say
21445 that this is just like communist propaganda. I tell my Western friends that
21446 wanting to practice the most profound and the quickest path is a clear sign
21447 that you will achieve no result. How can you achieve the most profound and the
21448 vast in the shortest way? The story of the Buddha says that he achieved
21449 Buddhahood after three countless aeons. So harboring an expectation to achieve
21450 Buddhahood within a short time-like three years and three months-is a clear
21451 indication that you will make no real progress. We have to be practical.
21452 There is no use in fooling others with your incomplete knowledge.
21453 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Stages of Meditation", Snow Lion Publications
21455 Buddhist moral philosophy is strikingly pragmatic. Something is valuable
21456 insofar as it is relevant to people's lives and useful for achieving their
21457 happiness. If it will bring happiness for oneself and others, pursue it; if it
21458 will bring suffering, better to avoid it. There are no absolute dictates;
21459 ethical personal behavior is seen as simply the most practical way to cope with
21460 the difficulties of the human condition. Although guidelines and copious
21461 illustrations are given, nothing is absolute or definitive. The power and
21462 freedom to make decisions rests with the individual. There is no arbitrary or
21463 mysterious force controlling our lives; there is simply the law of cause and
21464 effect. Of course, decisions are dependent upon many factors. The choices we
21465 make are conditioned by circumstances, both outer and inner, but ultimately
21466 human beings have free will to decide. Individuals make decisions and
21467 experience the consequences of their decisions.
21468 -- from "Buddhism Through American Women's Eyes", edited by Karma Lekshe
21469 Tsomo, Snow Lion Pub.
21471 Chemistry stands at the pivot of science. On the one hand it deals with biology
21472 and provides explanations for the processes of life. On the other hand it
21473 mingles with physics and finds explanations for chemical phenomena in the
21474 fundamental processes and particles of the universe. Chemistry links the
21475 familiar with the fundamental.
21478 In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats. -- English Proverb
21480 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty
21481 loses interest in students.
21484 Ye can lead a man up to the university, but ye can't make him think.
21485 -- Finley Peter Dunne
21487 The new electronic interdependence recreates the
21488 world in the image of a global village.
21489 -- Marshall McLuhan
21491 One of the ways in which cats show happiness is by sleeping.
21494 For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. -- William Blake
21496 Love is a kind of warfare. -- Ovid
21498 Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what
21499 is excellent in others belong to us as well.
21500 -- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, 1694
21502 From a Buddhist point of view, one might be able to distinguish different
21503 states of dreaming. Generally speaking, a dream is a dream, something you
21504 can't control. But for the highly advanced meditator, there could be
21505 possibilities for gaining certain insights through dreams.
21506 I know some Tibetans who lived in Tibet prior to the 1959 uprising. Before
21507 their escape from Tibet, they did not know about the natural trails and passes
21508 by which to get over the Himalayas into India. Some of these people I met had
21509 very clear dreams of these tracks and, years later, when they actually had to
21510 follow the actual trails, they found that they were already familiar with them
21511 because of the very clear dreams they had had previously.
21512 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
21513 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", ed. by Zara Houshmand,
21514 Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, Snow Lion Publications
21516 I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things.
21517 It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the
21518 shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to
21519 another book, and that to successive others.
21520 -- Carolyn Wells (1862-1942), Mystery Writer
21522 It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life
21523 that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that
21524 goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
21527 Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity,
21528 we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second
21529 time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
21530 -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
21532 One method for disciples to develop bodhichitta entails recognizing all
21533 beings as having been their mothers in some previous life and focusing on
21534 their mothers' kindness. Similarly, guru-meditation requires focusing on
21535 their mentors' kindness.
21536 Many Westerners, however, have difficulty focusing on the kindness of their
21537 mothers. Unable to find the goodness and kindness in their mothers, most
21538 cannot find any goodness in themselves either. Although they may be desperate
21539 for love and kindness, their mental blocks often prevent them from recognizing
21540 and appreciating the kindness of others, for instance their spiritual mentors.
21541 No matter how much kindness they receive, it is never enough.
21542 One of the reasons for being unable to acknowledge our mothers' kindness
21543 may be that they fail to live up to our models of ideal parents. Similarly,
21544 when our spiritual mentors have shortcomings and do not live up to our models
21545 of ideal teachers, we may also have difficulty recognizing their kindness.
21546 Like children yearning for ideal love, we feel cheated if our mentors fail
21547 to meet our expectations.
21548 -- Alexander Berzin, in "Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy
21549 Relationship", Snow Lion Publications
21551 Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
21554 I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis
21555 and I don't deserve that either.
21558 I have come to believe over and over again that what is most
21559 important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at
21560 the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
21561 -- Audre Geraldine Lorde
21563 The word dharma in Sanskrit means "that which holds". All existents are
21564 dharmas, phenomena, in the sense that they hold or bear their own entity or
21565 character. Also, a religion is a dharma in the sense that it holds persons
21566 back or protects them from disasters. Here the term dharma refers to the
21567 latter definition. In rough terms, any elevated action of body, speech or
21568 mind is regarded as a dharma because through doing such an action one is
21569 protected or held back from all sorts of disasters. Practice of such
21570 actions is practice of dharma.
21571 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Buddhism of Tibet", Snow Lion Publications
21573 What will survive of us is love. -- Philip Larkin
21575 Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
21578 Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
21581 Optimism can make you look stupid but cynicism always makes you look cynical.
21584 An architect proves his skill by turning the defects of a site into advantages.
21585 -- Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
21587 Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world
21588 being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is
21589 asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.
21592 What is my purpose in life, what is my responsibility? Whether I like it or
21593 not, I am on this planet, and it is far better to do something for humanity.
21594 So you see that compassion is the seed or basis. If we take care to foster
21595 compassion, we will see that it brings the other good human qualities. The
21596 topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is very important to
21597 know that it is human business, that it is a question of human survival, that
21598 is not a question of human luxury. I might say that religion is a kind of
21599 luxury. If you have religion, that is good. But it is clear that even without
21600 religion we can manage. However, without these basic human qualities we cannot
21601 survive. It is a question of our own peace and mental stability.
21602 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An
21603 Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited
21604 by Sidney Piburn, published by Snow Lion Publications
21606 Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
21607 -- Benjamin Disraeli
21609 We often get angry when something we consider undesirable happens. But what
21610 use is this anger? If we can change the situation, then let's go ahead and do
21611 it. There's no need to be angry. It's very useful to think like this when
21612 confronted with social problems and injustice. They can be changed, so rather
21613 than be angry, it's wiser to work calmly to improve the society.
21614 On the other hand, if the situation can't be changed, anger is equally
21615 useless. Once our leg is broken, we can't unbreak it. All of the corruption
21616 in the world can't be solved in a year. Getting angry at something we can't
21617 alter makes us miserable. Worrying about or fearing something that hasn't
21618 happened immobilizes us. Shantideva said in A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way
21620 Why be unhappy about something If it can be remedied? And what is the
21621 use of being unhappy about something If it cannot be remedied?
21622 -- Thubten Chodron, in "Open Heart, Clear Mind", Snow Lion Publications
21624 From the Hacker's Lexicon:
21626 Heisenbug /hi:'zen-buhg/ from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in
21627 quantum physics n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one
21628 attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of Bohr bug; see also mandelbug,
21629 schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from either
21630 fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the
21631 malloc arena) or errors that smash the stack.
21633 Schroedinbug MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in
21634 quantum physics n. A design or implementation bug in a program which
21635 doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an
21636 unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the
21637 program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though this
21638 sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent
21639 schroedinbugs for years. Compare heisenbug, Bohr bug, mandelbug.
21641 Bohr bug /bohr buhg/ from quantum physics n. A repeatable bug; one that
21642 manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of
21643 conditions. Antonym of heisenbug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug.
21645 Mandelbug /mon'del-buhg/ from the Mandelbrot set n. A bug whose
21646 underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its behavior
21647 appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. This term implies that the
21648 speaker thinks it is a Bohr bug, rather than a heisenbug. See also
21651 If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in
21652 music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
21655 Nothing's impossible I have found,
21656 For when my chin is on the ground,
21657 I pick myself up, Dust myself off,
21658 Start all over again.
21661 You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats.
21662 -- Colonial American Proverb
21664 The essence of dharma practice is to bring about a discipline within the mind,
21665 a state of mind free of hatred, lust and harmful intentions. Hence the entire
21666 message of the buddhadharma could be summed up in two succinct statements:
21667 "Help others," and "If you cannot help them, at least do not harm others."
21668 It is a grave error to think that apart from such a disciplining of the
21669 physical and mental faculties there is something else called "the practice of
21670 dharma." Various, and in some cases divergent, methods to achieve such an
21671 inner discipline have been taught in the scriptures by the Buddha.
21672 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", Snow Lion Publications
21674 It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
21675 nor the most intelligent,
21676 but the one most responsive to change.
21679 As progress is made in dream practice, dreams become clearer and more detailed,
21680 and a larger part of each dream is remembered. This is a result of bringing
21681 greater awareness into the dream state. Beyond this increased awareness in
21682 ordinary dreams is a second kind of dream called the dream of clarity, which
21683 arises when the mind and the prana are balanced and the dreamer has developed
21684 the capacity to remain in non-personal presence. Unlike the samsaric dream, in
21685 which the mind is swept here and there by karmic prana, in the dream of clarity
21686 the dreamer is stable. Though images and information arise, they are based
21687 less on personal karmic traces and instead present knowledge available directly
21688 from consciousness below the level of the conventional self.
21689 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep",
21690 published by Snow Lion Publications
21692 In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate.
21695 Be careful when reading health books--you might die of a misprint.
21698 The practice of pure perception is effective when it is practiced a lot. In
21699 pure perception, look beyond the surface and imagine that other people are none
21700 other than expressions of buddha-mind. We can choose to focus on positive
21701 attributes. What we attend to becomes our reality and if we attend to the
21702 buddhas in situations, in things, in other people it is the buddhas we engage
21703 with and the reality of the buddhas that becomes our reality.
21704 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "Buddhism with an Attitude: Tibetan Seven-Point
21705 Mind-Training", Snow Lion Publications
21707 Correctness is clearly the prime quality. If a system does not do what it
21708 is supposed to do, then everything else about it matters little.
21711 The path to genuine co-operation is again through sincere compassion and love.
21712 Sometimes we misunderstand compassion as being nothing more than a feeling of
21713 pity. Compassion is much, much more. It embraces not only a feeling of
21714 closeness, but also a sense of responsibility. When you develop compassion, it
21715 will help you enormously to generate inner strength and self-confidence, and to
21716 reduce your feelings of fear and insecurity. So compassion and love, embodied
21717 in an attitude of altruism, are qualities that are of tremendous importance for
21718 the individual, as well as for society and the community at large.
21719 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
21720 Perfection", published by Snow Lion Publications
21722 The value of transmission is not only that of introducing the state of
21723 knowledge, but lies also in its function of bringing about the maturing of the
21724 transmission, right up until one reaches realization. For this reason the
21725 relationship that links master and disciple is a very close one. The master,
21726 in Dzogchen, is not just like a friend who helps and collaborates with the
21727 disciple; rather the master is himself or herself the path. This is because
21728 the practice of contemplation develops through the unification of the state of
21729 the disciple with that of the master. The master is extremely important, too,
21730 at the Sutra and the Tantra levels of teaching, in the former because he or she
21731 is the holder of Buddha's teachings, and in the latter because he or she is the
21732 source of all the manifestations of transformation.
21733 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, in "Dzogchen: The Self-perfected State",
21734 published by Snow Lion Publications
21736 Setting the Appropriate Motivation
21737 It is very important before receiving any Dharma teaching to set a proper
21738 motivation, or reaffirm and enhance that motivation if we already basically
21739 have it. This is important not only for those who are listening to a spiritual
21740 discourse, but also for the person delivering it. If a discourse or
21741 explanation is given with an attitude of pride, competitiveness or jealousy, it
21742 will not do as a Dharma teaching. A Buddhist teaching must be given with the
21743 sincere wish to benefit all beings by means of it.
21744 Likewise, the listeners to a Buddhist teaching must have a proper
21745 motivation, always thinking, "What new point can I learn from this that will
21746 help me be of more benefit to others?" If we sit here with the notion to learn
21747 something about mahamudra so that we can make a display of ourselves and
21748 proudly talk to others about mahamudra so that they will consider us an
21749 erudite, spiritual person, we have a completely wrong motivation.
21750 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, from "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra",
21751 published by Snow Lion Publications
21753 There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity
21754 latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the
21755 smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she
21756 is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.
21757 -- Giordano Bruno, "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast", (1582)
21759 Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer
21760 is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able
21761 to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor
21762 could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any
21763 equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a
21765 -- Giordano Bruno, "De Monade"
21767 Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made
21768 manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single
21769 earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of
21773 The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs
21774 of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented
21775 lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald--and Paul
21776 Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.
21779 The Tibetan word that is usually translated as "blessing" or "inspiration" can
21780 more literally be translated as "to transform into magnificence." We are
21781 asking the Buddhas to transform our minds into magnificence. How that happens
21782 isn't by the Buddha going in and pulling some switches inside our mind.
21783 Because our mind is conditioned and changing, the mental energy of the Buddha's
21784 realizations can affect our energy, so to speak. Conditioned phenomena affect
21785 each other, so the force of Tara's realizations can positively affect our mind.
21786 -- Thubten Chodron, in "How to Free Your Mind", Snow Lion Publications
21788 A botnet is comparable to compulsory military service for windows boxes.
21791 The greatest strength is gentleness. -- Iroquois proverb
21793 Whether or not we actually achieve the realisation of bodhicitta and to what
21794 level or depth we gain such a realisation depends upon the force of our
21795 experience of great compassion. This great compassion, which aspires to free
21796 all sentient beings from suffering, is not confined to the level of mere
21797 aspiration. It has a dimension of far greater power, which is the sense of
21798 commitment or responsibility to personally bring about this objective of
21799 fulfilling others' welfare. In order to cultivate this powerful great
21800 compassion, we need to train our mind separately in two other factors. One is
21801 to cultivate a sense of empathy with or closeness to all sentient beings, for
21802 whose sake we wish to work so that they become free from suffering. The other
21803 factor is to cultivate a deeper insight into the nature of the suffering from
21804 which we wish others to be relieved.
21805 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, from "Lighting the Way", Snow Lion Publications
21807 Religion does not mean just precepts, a temple, monastery, or other external
21808 signs, for these as well as hearing and thinking are subsidiary factors in
21809 taming the mind. When the mind becomes the practices, one is a practitioner
21810 of religion, and when the mind does not become the practices one is not.
21811 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Deity Yoga", Snow Lion Pub.
21813 Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy
21815 To go outside, and there perchance to stay
21816 Or to remain within: that is the question:
21817 Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
21818 The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
21819 That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
21820 Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
21821 And so by dozing melt the solid hours
21822 That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
21823 And stall the dinner bell.
21824 To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
21825 A wish to venture forth without delay,
21826 Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
21827 As if transfixed by doubt.
21828 To prowl; to sleep;
21829 To choose not knowing when we may once more
21830 Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
21831 For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
21832 Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
21833 And going out and coming in were made
21834 As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
21835 What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
21836 The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
21837 The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
21838 The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
21839 That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
21840 He might his exodus or entrance make
21841 With a mere mitten?
21842 Who would spaniels fear,
21843 Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
21844 But that the dread of our unheeded cries
21845 And scratches at a barricaded door
21846 No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
21847 And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
21848 Than run away to unguessed miseries?
21849 Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
21850 And thus the bristling hair of resolution
21851 Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
21852 And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
21853 We pause upon the threshold of decision.
21856 It is not good to begin many different works, saying "This looks good; that
21857 looks good", touching this, touching that, and not succeeding in any of them.
21858 If you do not generate great desires but aim at what is fitting, you can
21859 actualise the corresponding potencies and become an expert in that. With
21860 success, the power or imprint of that practice is generated.
21861 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Tantra in Tibet", Snow Lion Pub.
21863 Through the skillful methods of tantra, meditators are able to cultivate
21864 pleasure in a way that actually aids in spiritual progress. Afflicted
21865 grasping and desires based on mistaken ideas are the problem, not happiness
21866 and pleasure. If the pursuit of happiness and pleasure can be separated
21867 from afflictive emotions, then it can be incorporated into the path and
21868 will even become a powerful aid to the attainment of enlightenment.
21869 -- John Powers, in "Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", Snow Lion Pub.
21872 What kind of refuge does Buddhism offer? How are Buddhists and non-Buddhists
21873 differentiated? From the viewpoint of refuge, a Buddhist is someone who
21874 accepts Buddha, his doctrine, and the spiritual community as the final refuge.
21875 From the viewpoint of philosophy, a Buddhist is someone who asserts the four
21876 views that guarantee a doctrine as being Buddhist. With respect to the three
21877 refuges, called the Three Jewels, it is said that the Buddha is the teacher of
21878 refuge but that the actual refuge is the Dharma, the doctrine. Buddha himself
21879 said, "I teach the path of liberation. Liberation itself depends upon you."
21880 From the same perspective, Buddha said, "You are your own master." The
21881 spiritual community are those who assist one in achieving refuge.
21882 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama at Harvard", Snow Lion
21885 Bodhisattvas are motivated by universal compassion, and they seek the ultimate
21886 goal of buddhahood in order to be of service to others. They embark on this
21887 path with the generation of the mind of enlightenment, which Geshe Rabten
21888 states is "the wish for Supreme Enlightenment for the sake of others. The sign
21889 of the true Bodhicitta is the constant readiness to undergo any sacrifice for
21890 the happines of all beings." Unlike ordinary beings, who think of their own
21891 advantage, bodhisattvas consider how best to benefit others.
21892 -- John Powers, in "Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", Snow Lion Publications
21894 Why are there fierce protectors? Peaceful deities such as Tara have a certain
21895 energy that calms and gladdens our mind. But sometimes our mind is so
21896 belligerent and stuck that we need the kind of energy that goes "Pow!" to wake
21897 us up or to pull us out of unproductive behavior. For this reason, the
21898 Buddhas' wisdom and compassion appear in the form of these wrathful deities to
21899 demonstrate clean-clear wisdom and compassion that act directly. This active
21900 wisdom doesn't vacillate and pamper us. This wisdom doesn't say, "Well,
21901 maybe," or, "Poor you. You deserve to be treated well, not like that horrible
21902 person treated you." Instead, it's forceful: "Cut it out! Stop those false
21903 expectations and preconceptions right now!" Sometimes we need that strong,
21904 wise energy to be in our face to wake us up to the fact that our afflictions
21905 and old patterns of thought and behavior are making us miserable.
21906 -- Thubten Chodron, in "How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator"
21908 I never joined the army because at ease was never that easy to me. Seemed
21909 rather uptight still. I don't relax by parting my legs slightly and putting
21910 my hands behind my back. That does not equal ease. At ease was not being
21911 in the military. I am at ease, bro, because I am not in the military.
21914 The human essence of good sense finds no room with anger. Anger, jealousy,
21915 impatience, and hatred are the real troublemakers; with them problems cannot
21916 be solved. Though one may have temporary success, ultimately one's hatred or
21917 anger will create further difficulties. With anger, all actions are swift.
21918 When we face problems with compassion, sincerely and with good motivation, it
21919 may take longer, but ultimately the solution is better, for there is far less
21920 chance of creating a new problem through the temporary "solution" of the
21922 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "Kindness, Clarity and Insight", Snow Lion Pub.
21924 Killing and eating meat are interrelated, so do we have to give up eating
21925 animal products? I myself once tried to give it up, but health problems arose
21926 and two years later my doctors advised me to again use meat in my diet. If
21927 there are people who can give up eating meat, we can only rejoice in their
21928 noble efforts. In any case, at least we should try to lessen our intake of
21929 meat and not eat it anywhere where it is in scarce supply and our consumption
21930 of it would cause added slaughter.
21931 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "The Path to Enlightenment", Snow Lion Publications
21933 The mind is beyond expression, thought and conceptualization, because it is
21934 empty. Yet, there is phenomena and appearance. The objects that you cling to
21935 in this waking reality are dreamlike, but if you do not inquire into the nature
21936 of this dream, you remain attracted as though there were really something here.
21937 Upon examination, you find that these objects have no true existence at all and
21938 are just like space. A practitioner who understands that phenomena lack
21939 inherent existence and resemble space should then examine himself or herself to
21940 discover whether he or she possesses an individual self. Then it will be
21941 discovered that there is no truly existing examiner either.
21942 -- Gyatrul Rinpoche, from "The Generation Stage in Buddhist Tantra",
21943 published by Snow Lion Publications
21945 Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
21948 In discursive meditations it is imperative that one's growing disenchantment
21949 with mundane existence is complemented with growing confidence in the real
21950 possibility of true freedom and lasting joy that transcends the vicissitudes
21951 of conditioned existence. Without this faith and the yearning for such
21952 liberation, the meditations may easily result in profound depression, in which
21953 everything seems hollow, unreal, and futile. Thus instead of polarizing one's
21954 desires towards the single-pointed pursuit of nirvana, one is reduced to a
21955 debilitating kind of spiritual sloth.
21956 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach
21957 to Refining Attention", Snow Lion Publications
21959 I believe that in human actions, the prime mover is motivation. On the spot,
21960 it is important to tackle the symptoms of problems, but in the long run, it is
21961 necessary to look at the motivation and whether there is possibility to change
21962 it. For the long run, this is crucial. As long as the negative motivation is
21963 not changed, then although there might be certain rules and methods to stop
21964 counterproductive actions, human beings have the ability through various ways
21965 to express their negative feeling. Thus, for the long run, we need to look at
21966 our motivation and try to change it. This means that we must try to cultivate
21967 the right kind of motivation and try to reduce the negative motivation.
21968 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Art of Peace: Nobel Peace Laureates Discuss
21969 Human Rights, Conflict and Reconciliation", edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
21970 published by Snow Lion Publications
21972 When we talk of karma or action, it entails action committed by an agent, in
21973 this case, oneself, in the past. So what type of future will come about, to a
21974 large extent, lies within one's own hands and can be determined by the kind of
21975 initiatives that one takes now. Not only that, but karma should not be
21976 understood in terms of passive, static kind of force, but rather in terms of
21977 active process. This indicates that there is an important role for the
21978 individual agent to play in determining the course of the karmic process.
21979 Consider, for instance, a simple act like fulfilling our need for food. In
21980 order to achieve that simple goal one must take action on one's own behalf: one
21981 needs to look for food, to prepare it, to eat it. This shows that even a
21982 simple act, even a simple goal is achieved through action.
21983 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
21984 Buddhist Perspective", Snow Lion Publications
21986 Nothing is easier than to bring others down to our level, particularly in
21987 cultures where it is taken as a sign of keen intelligence to view every person
21988 and situation as a challenge to "name the ten things wrong with this picture."
21989 The presence of Guru Rinpoche in so many forms in our world makes us question
21990 life in a way pre-1959 persons rarely had to. Life isn't the same after
21991 meeting the Dalai Lama or Kyentse Rinpoche and others. We can't erase them
21992 from our minds, as inconvenient as these open doors to enlightenment might be.
21993 We had other plans; we didn't ask to see so vividly another totally different
21995 The question, "How can I integrate this into my daily life?" doesn't plumb
21996 the depth of the inquiry. I have translated for lamas in North America,
21997 Europe, and Asia, and have found this to be the typical North American
21998 question. I think the best answer is, "You can't; don't even try." But I
21999 have to wonder about the question itself. What do you do when an event or an
22000 encounter changes your life? If you won a 10,000,000 dollar jackpot, if a
22001 dear friend dies, or if you fall deeply in love, do you ask, "How can I
22002 integrate this into my daily life?" Some events change us, are earth-
22003 shattering, and are not meant to be integrated into what can sometimes feel
22004 like a rat race existence. Meeting Guru Rinpoche is one such event.
22005 -- Ngawang Zangpo, in "Guru Rinpoche: His Life and Times", Snow Lion Pub.
22007 Now in terms of the actual practice, when one is immersed in the contemplation
22008 of the clear light, since all dualistic appearances vanish, it becomes
22009 impossible to distinguish the object from the consciousness perceiving it.
22010 They seem to become as if they were one, like water mixed with water. Of
22011 course, strictly speaking, there are two entities, subject and object, but
22012 within the experience of the clear light this duality is lost.
22013 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
22014 published by Snow Lion Publications
22016 Guardians of the teachings
22017 There are eight principal classes of Guardians each with many subdivisions.
22018 Some are highly realized beings, others not realized at all. Every place--
22019 every continent, country, city, mountain, river, lake or forest--has its
22020 particular dominant energy, or Guardian, as have every year, hour and even
22021 minute: these are not highly evolved energies. The various teachings all have
22022 energies which have special relationships with them: these are more realized
22023 Guardians. These energies are iconographically portrayed as they were
22024 perceived when they manifested to masters who had contact with them, and their
22025 awesome power is represented by their terrifyingly ferocious forms, their many
22026 arms and heads, and their ornaments of the charnel ground. As with all the
22027 figures in tantric iconography, it is not correct to interpret the figures of
22028 the guardians as merely symbolic, as some Western writers have been tempted to
22029 do. Though the iconographic forms have been shaped by the perceptions and
22030 culture of those who saw the original manifestation and by the development of
22031 tradition, actual beings are represented.
22032 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra
22033 and Dzogchen, Teachings of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu", compiled and edited by
22034 John Shane, published by Snow Lion Publications
22036 5. When others out of jealousy treat me unreasonably, with abuse, slander, and
22037 so on, I will learn to take all loss and offer the victory to them. When any
22038 type of deserved or undeserved slander, prompted by jealousy, and so forth,
22039 and unpleasant verbal abuse [comes to one], do not lose patience. Keep a
22040 peaceful mind. Further, when problems arise, do not say "It is his fault,
22041 not mine!" Accept the blame, as did Geshe Lang ri thang pa. [Reflect:]
22042 "Whoever created this mess, it includes me! I have [a hand in it] also."
22043 The reason for this is that we must endeavor toward generosity and the various
22044 modes of ethical behavior, for the sake of purifying our many misdeeds and
22045 completing the accumulations [of merit and wisdom].
22046 Therefore, when one shows kindness to slanderers, even if one does not
22047 deserve the abuse and slander, it is said to be necessary for purifying our
22048 misdeeds when problems arise. Taking all blame on ourselves prevents our evil
22049 karma from arising.
22050 Geshe Lang ri thang pa speaks of a person from the Valley of Phan who
22051 sometimes gave a little butter cake to the Lamas, and at other times slandered
22052 them for no reason. The Lamas regarded him with great kindness. This
22053 cleansed their misdeeds and helped their accumulation of the two collections.
22054 They claimed that his slanderous talk was great. Shantideva's
22055 bodhisattvacaryavatara says:
22056 Therefore, since patience can be generated
22057 In dependence upon a very hate filled mind
22058 And because it is the cause of patience,
22059 Make offerings to it as if it was the most excellent doctrine!
22060 More correct even than this statement is that ethics and patience lead to
22061 great merit, and to the end of misdeeds such as anger. Therefore it is said
22062 that the hardest practice is patience. [Learn] the patience that is keeping
22063 still no matter what happens.
22066 I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
22067 -- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
22069 All sentient beings are exactly the same in that every one desires happiness
22070 and seeks to avoid misery. We are not isolated entities disconnected from
22071 each other. The happiness and suffering of other beings affect us. This
22072 mutual relation is obvious. Sentient beings have been kind and have benefited
22073 us directly and indirectly throughout beginningless time. These beings are
22074 intrinsically the same as us in their pursuit of happiness and effort to avoid
22075 suffering. Thus, it is essentially logical for us to train in cultivating an
22076 impartial attitude wishing for the happiness of all beings.
22077 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", Snow Lion Pub.
22079 Our exaggerated sense of self and our compulsion to find happiness for this
22080 larger-than-life self we have fabricated cause us to ignore, neglect and harm
22081 others. Of course, it is our right to love and take care of ourselves, but
22082 not at the expense of others. While "As long as I'm alright" is our motto,
22083 we have no hesitation in acting with total disregard for others.
22084 We may find this description of self-concern altogether too crass to apply
22085 to us. "I'm not like that," we object, but though we may not consciously
22086 think in this way, when self-concern is operating, our behavior shows a cold
22087 indifference to others. Conflicts between partners, parents and children and
22088 with other family members, conflicts between students and teachers and on a
22089 larger scale within and between countries have their source in personal and
22090 collective self-concern.
22091 Buddhas and Bodhisattvas see clearly that our neglect of others, our self-
22092 preoccupation and our disregard for the connection between actions and their
22093 effects are responsible for all our miseries.
22094 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, in "The Three Principal Aspects of the Path: An
22095 Oral Teaching", translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by
22096 Snow Lion Publications
22098 Ordinarily, it is difficult to remember one's past life. Such recollections
22099 seem to be more vivid when the child is very young, such as two or three, and
22100 in some cases even younger. ...When the present body is fully formed, the
22101 ability to recall past life seems to diminish.
22102 The mental associations with this life become increasingly dominant. There
22103 is a close relationship during the first few years of one's life with the
22104 continuum of consciousness from the previous life. But as experiences of this
22105 life become more developed and elaborate, they dominate.
22106 It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind,
22107 enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection
22108 tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state.
22109 Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one
22110 gradually recalls them in the waking state.
22111 -- H.H Dalai Lama, in "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with
22112 The Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", Edited by Zara Houshmand,
22113 Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, Snow Lion Publications
22115 Relaxation involves a kind of awareness which reverses the normal tendency
22116 that we have. Because, as we have seen, this ordinary sense of self that we
22117 have lacks inherent self existence, it has to keep constructing itself and
22118 that requires a particular kind of effort. The ego's root feeling is that if
22119 I do not hold myself together there will be a falling apart into something
22120 chaotic and difficult. So there is anxiety, an energetic anxiety which is
22121 located in the body, in the whole energetic system of the body and
22122 interpersonal turbulence reminds us again and again "If I don't keep it
22123 together, I will get in trouble." The belief in reincarnation indicates that
22124 for many lifetimes we have been caught up in this anxiety, this nervous
22125 contraction which is holding our ordinary grasping sense of self in place.
22126 -- from "Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje entitled
22127 'The Mirror of Clear Meaning,'" commentary by James Low, Snow Lion Pub.
22129 Buddhas are always striving for the welfare of beings migrating in cyclic
22130 existence. In every hour and minute they create limitless forms of welfare
22131 for beings throughout billions of emanations of their body, speech and mind.
22132 For instance, in this aeon--an aeon being a period of an extremely great
22133 number of years--they will appear in the aspect of one thousand supreme
22134 Emanation Bodies (Nirmanakaya) as Buddhas, and each will have his own new
22136 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Buddhism of Tibet", Snow Lion Publications
22139 The Buddhist teachings differentiate between flash insights (nyam, nyams),
22140 and stable realizations (togpa, rtogs-pa). A flash insight does not make a
22141 significant change in one's life, but may lead in that direction. A stable
22142 realization, on the other hand, whether it be partial or complete, actually
22143 produces a noticeable improvement that lasts. The distinction we are drawing
22144 here between Dharma instructors and spiritual mentors derives from this
22145 difference. Dharma instructors may have either insight or realization,
22146 whereas spiritual mentors need to have some level of stable realization.
22147 -- Alexander Berzin, in "Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a
22148 Healthy Relationship, published by Snow Lion Publications
22150 Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
22151 -- Edward Shepherd Mead
22153 If you can't do what you want, do what you can. -- Lois McMaster Bujold
22155 Human history is work history. The heroes of the people are work heroes.
22156 -- Meridel le Sueur
22158 It is not the man who has too little,
22159 but the man who craves more, that is poor.
22162 Drive-in banks were established so most of the
22163 cars today could see their real owners.
22164 -- E. Joseph Crossman
22166 I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. -- Gilda Radner
22168 It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.
22171 You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that
22172 make you want to live to be a hundred.
22175 No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
22178 Do not look where you fell but where you slipped.
22180 There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
22183 Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.
22184 -- Elizabeth Barret Browning
22186 Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
22187 -- Robert Louis Stevenson
22189 We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from
22190 artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.
22191 -- Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine
22193 The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
22196 You are what you are--and not what people think you are. -- O.W. Polen
22198 Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
22201 From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
22204 I touch the future. I teach. -- Christa McAuliffe
22206 Curiosity is one of the permanent and
22207 certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
22210 People ask for criticism, but they only want praise. -- W. Somerset Maugham
22212 Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. -- Sir Francis Bacon
22214 The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting
22215 otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
22218 We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
22219 -- Wernher von Braun
22221 The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and
22222 write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
22225 Wealth is the possession of whatever gives us happiness,
22226 contentment or a sense of significance.
22229 To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. -- Oscar Wilde
22231 I bought some batteries, but they weren't included. -- Steven Wright
22233 The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.
22236 People who work sitting down get paid
22237 more than people who work standing up.
22240 It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. -- Sir Edmund Hillary
22242 What we should ask of ourselves is growth, not perfection. -- Pat Boone
22244 Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand. -- Unknown
22246 The purpose of life is to fight maturity. -- Dick Wertheimer
22248 Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with. -- Bob Wells
22250 A good mind possesses a kingdom. -- Lucius Anaaeus Seneca
22252 I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the
22253 position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has
22254 overcome while trying to succeed.
22255 -- Booker T. Washington
22257 An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart
22258 he would have been not to have taken it.
22259 -- Laurence J. Peter
22261 I have not lost my mind--it's backed up on disk somewhere. -- Unknown
22263 Wise men talk because they have something to say;
22264 fools, because they have to say something.
22267 Don't waste a thousand dollars' worth of emotion over a 5-cent triviality.
22270 Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. -- Suzanne Necker
22272 Some people are born on third base and go
22273 through life thinking they have hit a triple.
22276 I can't understand why people are scared of new ideas.
22277 I'm frightened of the old ones.
22280 It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
22283 A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. -- Samuel Goldwyn
22285 When we practice, initially, as a basis we control ourselves, stopping the bad
22286 actions which hurt others as much as we can. This is defensive. After that,
22287 when we develop certain qualifications, then as an active goal we should help
22288 others. In the first stage, sometimes we need isolation while pursuing our
22289 own inner development; however, after you have some confidence, some strength,
22290 you must remain with, contact, and serve society in any field--health,
22291 education, politics, or whatever.
22293 There are people who call themselves religious-minded, trying to show this by
22294 dressing in a peculiar manner, maintaining a peculiar way of life, and
22295 isolating themselves from the rest of society. That is wrong. A scripture of
22296 mind-purification (mind-training) says, "Transform your inner viewpoint, but
22297 leave your external appearance as it is." This is important. Because the
22298 very purpose of practicing the Great Vehicle is service for others, you should
22299 not isolate yourselves from society. In order to serve, in order to help, you
22300 must remain in society.
22301 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness",
22302 Snow Lion Publications
22304 The indivisible nature of mind is said to possess a "mobile quality." This
22305 mobile quality is described as currents of energy which flow through the
22306 channels of various parts of the body, presiding over physical as well as
22307 mental functions, and pass through the nostrils as breathing. Such currents
22308 of energy, called "winds" (rlung, vayu), serve as the bridge between body and
22310 The winds are a blend of two types of energy, one associated with
22311 emotionality, called karmic or conditioned wind (las kyi rlung), and the other
22312 related to the original state of the individual, called pristine awareness
22313 wind (ye shes kyi rlung). Distinguished in terms of the three principles,
22314 darkness (tamas), mobility (rajas), and buoyancy (sattva), winds are of three
22315 types: wind of Rahu, solar wind, and lunar wind. Moreover, the winds are
22316 differentiated as the five root winds (rtsa ba'i rlung), the natures of the
22317 five elements, and five branch winds (yan lag gi rlung), produced through the
22318 five elemental transformations. The winds of the five elements, or five
22319 mandalas, flow back and forth through the right and left nostrils in the order
22320 of generation of the elements and of birth (first space, then wind, fire,
22321 water, earth) and in the order of dissolution of the elements and of death
22322 (first earth, then water, and so on), respectively. In one day, they are
22323 exhaled and inhaled 21,600 times, divided between the two nostrils, a time
22324 corresponding to eight periods or watches (thun). The outward movement of
22325 these energy currents as the breath diminishes the strength of the wind
22326 associated with pristine awareness. Therefore, when outward movement
22327 increases, there occur signs of death. If the winds are held inside,
22328 pristine awareness wind is strengthened. Hence, many extraordinary powers
22329 such as longevity are gained through breath control techniques for "holding
22330 the winds" in the central channel.
22331 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, in "The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Six,
22332 Part Four: Systems of Buddhist Tantra, The Indestructible Way of
22335 When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
22338 ...you should have the deep conviction that cessation of the sufferings and
22339 the delusions is possible, and also that it is possible within your mind.
22340 True cessation is a state where you have destroyed the delusions at their root
22341 so that there remains no potential for their re-emergence. Such a cessation
22342 can be realized only through the true paths that penetrate into the nature of
22344 When you develop this conviction, you will also be able to develop faith in
22345 a being who has really mastered cessation, who is the Buddha--a person who has
22346 fully accomplished the realization of the dharma. If you contemplate along
22347 such lines, you will be able to develop a very deep faith and conviction in
22348 Buddha Shakyamuni and see him as an incomparable master.
22349 What distinguishes Buddhist practitioners from others is the factor of
22350 taking refuge. But merely seeking a refuge out of the fear of suffering is
22351 not unique to Buddhists; non-Buddhists could also have such a motivation. The
22352 unique practice of refuge that Buddhists should have is that of taking refuge
22353 in the Buddha out of a deep conviction in his exceptional qualities and
22354 realizations. If you think in such terms you will be able to understand Lama
22355 Tsongkhapa's profound praise of Buddha Shakyamuni: "Those who are far from his
22356 doctrine always reinforce the illusion of self-existence that they have within
22357 themselves, whereas those who follow his guidance will be able to free
22358 themselves from such confusions."
22359 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Path to Bliss", Snow Lion Publications
22361 ...they say that the initial realization of the nature of the mind is the
22362 first breakthrough. It's a very important point in all Buddhist schools. At
22363 that moment, you cease to be an ordinary person. You become in Buddhist
22364 parlance an arya, a noble one. It doesn't mean you are finished. It doesn't
22365 mean you are a high level bodhisattva. We can fall back from this. But
22366 still, this is a big breakthrough. We now understand what is true and what is
22367 not true. We don't have to take it all on faith any more. It is a direct
22368 non-dual experience. The point is that it is very easy. It's not difficult,
22369 and it's not something that can only be attained after years and years of
22371 Our main obstacle is the fact that we don't know how to relax our minds
22372 enough to be open to this experience. In the back of our minds we keep
22373 thinking this is something so difficult and so advanced. For this reason we
22374 don't recognize what is in front of our face. This is why a teacher can be
22375 extraordinarily helpful. A teacher living within that realization is able--
22376 if the mind of the disciple is completely open--to transmit his or her
22377 experience. The problem here is that we have too many hopes and fears; it
22378 creates a barrier. It is very hard to be open. You can't just will it.
22379 -- Ani Tenzin Palmo, in "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on
22380 Practical Buddhism"
22382 The Level of Initial Capacity
22384 All the essential spiritual practices related primarily to the achievement of
22385 rebirth in the higher realms belong to what Atisha calls the 'small capacity'.
22388 Know that those who by whatever means
22389 Seek for themselves no more
22390 Than the pleasures of cyclic existence
22391 Are persons of the least capacity.
22392 [Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment]
22394 ...the principal means for attaining birth in the higher realms is the ethical
22395 discipline of refraining from the ten negative actions of body, speech and
22396 mind. These comprise three actions of the body--killing, stealing and sexual
22397 misconduct; four verbal actions--lying, divisive speech, harsh speech and
22398 frivolous speech; and three mental actions--covetousness, ill-will and
22399 harbouring wrong views. To live an ethically sound life, it helps to remind
22400 ourselves of what are known as the four reflections, namely the preciousness
22401 of human life; the inevitability of our death and the uncertainty of the time
22402 of death; the infallibility of the law of cause and effect and the workings of
22403 karma; and understanding the nature of suffering. Concerning the first
22404 reflection, some Tibetan masters have said that when we contemplate the
22405 preciousness of this human existence, we should literally cultivate the
22406 determination to make our human life something precious in itself, rather than
22407 allowing it to be wasted or to become a cause of future suffering.
22409 Contemplating these four reflections gives us the courage to engage earnestly
22410 in the practice of the Dharma in order to free ourselves from the possibility
22411 of rebirth in the lower realms. This involves a process of training our mind,
22412 not just at the mental level but also at the level of our emotions and
22413 actions. Living an ethical life is not a case of adhering to a set of
22414 regulations imposed on us from outside, such as the laws of a country. Rather
22415 it involves voluntarily embracing a discipline on the basis of a clear
22416 recognition of its value. In essence, living a true ethical life is living a
22417 life of self-discipline. When the Buddha said that 'we are our own master, we
22418 are our own enemy', he was telling us that our destiny lies in our own hands.
22420 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Lighting the Way", Snow Lion Publications
22422 In his autobiography Freedom in Exile, His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of
22423 his attachment as a child to the monastery's Master of the Kitchen,
22424 commenting, "I sometimes think that the act of bringing food is one of the
22425 basic roots of all relationships." And the connection between giving food and
22426 understanding the interrelationship of all life is recognized also in stories
22427 about the belated discovery of an enlightened master who lived humbly as a
22428 monastery cook; or the stories of a great lama who gathers his disciples to
22429 test their progress, only to discover that the most highly realized of all is
22430 the cook, who has neither meditated nor studied, but who simply served the
22432 May you have long life,
22433 may the house be filled with grain,
22434 and may you have the luck
22435 to make use of this abundance.
22436 -- Tibetan drinking song
22438 -- Tsering Wangmo and Zara Houshmand, in "The Lhasa Moon Tibetan Cookbook"
22440 The Level of Middling Capacity
22442 In the following verse Atisha describes the characteristics of spiritual
22443 trainees of the middling capacity.
22446 Those who seek peace for themselves alone,
22447 Turning away from worldly pleasures
22448 And avoiding destructive actions
22449 Are said to be of middling capacity.
22450 -- Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment
22452 The phrase "destructive actions" refers to the afflictions that, together with
22453 karma, constitute the origin of suffering. This is why practitioners at the
22454 level of middling capacity concentrate on the spiritual practices that are
22455 primarily aimed at the elimination of the afflictions. Broadly speaking,
22456 these practices fall into two categories. One is training the mind to
22457 cultivate the genuine desire to gain freedom from cyclic existence, which is
22458 often referred to as the cultivation of renunciation. The other is
22459 cultivating the path to bring about the fulfillment of that wish for
22460 renunciation. In order to train one's mind in this way, one needs to reflect
22461 upon the defects of cyclic existence and to develop an understanding of the
22462 causation chain of karma and the afflictions. Through these reflections one
22463 cultivates the wish to gain freedom and then embarks upon the path to bring
22464 about that freedom.
22465 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Lighting the Way", Snow Lion Publications
22467 Number of Recitations
22468 The sixth section of the yoga of speech concerns measuring the accumulation
22469 of mantra recitations. How do you know when you have recited enough of a
22470 particular mantra? Generally speaking, you should count a mantra until you
22471 achieve some common spiritual power and ideally until you achieve the supreme
22472 spiritual attainment. Wouldn't that be the best way?
22473 After all, if you are really hungry, don't you eat until you are satisfied?
22474 Similarly, if you plan a trip to San Francisco, you want to travel until you
22475 arrive at your destination. You would not travel halfway and be satisfied
22476 with that, would you? In the same way, when you recite a mantra, you have a
22477 specific goal in mind: to gain the supreme spiritual attainment--buddhahood.
22478 Wouldn't it be wise to keep on reciting the mantra until you have achieved
22479 your goal, or at least until you achieve some perceptible improvement?
22480 -- Gyatrul Rinpoche, in "The Generation Stage in Buddhist Tantra", published
22481 by Snow Lion Publications
22483 The Level of Great Capacity
22485 Atisha continues his discussion on the three capacities by turning his
22486 attention to spiritual trainees at the highest level.
22489 Those who, through their personal suffering,
22490 Truly want to end completely
22491 All the suffering of others
22492 Are persons of supreme capacity.
22493 -- Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment
22495 Practitioners at this level use their deep understanding of the nature of
22496 suffering, derived from reflection on their personal experience, to recognise
22497 the fundamental equality of oneself and others insofar as the desire to
22498 overcome suffering is concerned. This then leads to the arising of a
22499 spontaneous wish to free all sentient beings from their suffering, a wish
22500 which becomes the powerful impetus for engaging in spiritual practices aimed
22501 at bringing about this altruistic objective.
22503 The most important practice in relation to this altruistic goal is the
22504 generation of bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration to attain buddhahood for
22505 the benefit of all beings.
22506 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in Lighting the Way, Snow Lion Publications
22508 The Meaning of Empowerment
22509 As for empowerment in general, what does the term wang, or empowerment,
22510 signify? To begin with, our fundamental nature--what we term "the buddha
22511 nature", or tathagatagarbha, the very nature of our mind, is inherently
22512 present within us as a natural attribute. This mind of ours, the subject at
22513 hand, has been going on throughout beginningless time, and so has the more
22514 subtle nature of that mind. On the basis of the continuity of that subtle
22515 nature of our mind rests the capacity we have to attain enlightenment. This
22516 potential is what we call "the seed of buddhahood", "buddha nature", "the
22517 fundamental nature", or tathagatagarbha. We all have this buddha nature, each
22518 and every one of us. For example, this beautiful statue of Lord Buddha here,
22519 in the presence of which we are now sitting, is a representation that honours
22520 someone who attained buddhahood. He awakened into that state of enlightenment
22521 because his nature was the buddha nature. Ours is as well, and just as the
22522 Buddha attained enlightenment in the past, so in the future we can become
22524 In any case, there dwells within us all this potential which allows us to
22525 awaken into buddhahood and attain omniscience. The empowerment process draws
22526 that potential out, and allows it to express itself more fully. When an
22527 empowerment is conferred on you, it is the nature of your mind--the buddha
22528 nature--that provides a basis upon which the empowerment can ripen you.
22529 Through the empowerment, you are empowered into the essence of the buddhas of
22530 the five families. In particular, you are "ripened" within that particular
22531 family through which it is your personal predisposition to attain buddhahood.
22532 So, with these auspicious circumstances established in your mindstream,
22533 and when you reflect on what is taking place and maintain the various
22534 visualizations, the conditions are right for the essence of the empowerment to
22535 awaken within you, as a state of wisdom which is blissful yet empty--a very
22536 special state that is the inseparability of basic space and awareness. As you
22537 focus your devotion in this way, it allows this special quality of mind, this
22538 new capability, as it were, to awaken.
22539 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
22540 Perfection", published by Snow Lion Publications
22542 Value Our Good Circumstances
22543 We often focus on a few circumstances in our life that aren't going well
22544 instead of all those that are. Although we all have problems, when we over-
22545 emphasize their importance, we easily begin thinking that we are incapable and
22546 worthless. Such self-hatred immobilizes us and prevents us from developing
22547 our good qualities and sharing them with others.
22548 When we look at the broad picture, however, we can see many positive things
22549 in our life. We can rejoice that we are alive and appreciate whatever degree
22550 of good health we have. We also have food (often too much!), shelter,
22551 clothing, medicine, friends, relatives, and a myriad of good circumstances.
22552 Many of the people reading this book live in peaceful places, not in war-torn
22553 areas. Many have jobs they like, and family and friends they appreciate. We
22554 shouldn't take these for granted. Most importantly, from a spiritual
22555 viewpoint, we have access to an authentic path, qualified teachers to guide
22556 us, and kind companions who encourage us. We have genuine spiritual
22557 aspirations and the time to cultivate these. Thinking about these good
22558 conditions one by one, we will be filled with joy, and any sense of being
22559 incapable and hopeless will vanish.
22560 -- Thubten Chodron, in "Working with Anger", Snow Lion Publications
22562 15. This fresh state of present awareness, unspoiled
22564 This fresh state of present awareness (da lta'i shes pa)
22565 Unspoiled by dualistic thoughts,
22566 Effortlessly sustained in the natural state,
22567 Is Buddha Kuntu Zangpo's wisdom mind.
22569 Do not hope or fear for good or bad outcomes.
22570 Regardless of what formulation of thought occurs,
22571 they arise and are liberated simultaneously;
22572 Their essential nature is empty awareness.
22573 Reach that unmoving, unassailable state.
22575 I, Jnana, spoke these words immediately In response to
22576 Zangmo's supplication. May this be virtuous!
22577 -- from "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart Advice" translated and
22578 introduced by Ron Garry, published by Snow Lion
22580 Concern for others to be happy and compassion wishing them to be free from
22581 suffering are needed not only as the basis for a bodhichitta motivation for
22582 mahamudra* practice, but also for keeping that practice on course to its
22583 intended goal. When we have changed our focus in life from the contents of
22584 our experience to the process of experience, there is great danger of becoming
22585 fixated on mind itself. This is because the direct experience of mind itself
22586 is totally blissful--in a calm and serene sense--and entails extraordinary
22587 clarity and starkness. Concern for others is one of the strongest forces that
22588 brings us back down to earth after having been up in the clouds. Although all
22589 appearances exist as a function of mind, other beings do not exist merely in
22590 our head. Their suffering is real and it hurts them just as much as ours
22592 Furthermore, to be concerned about someone does not mean to be frantically
22593 worried about this person. If we are fixated on our child's problems at
22594 school, for example, we lose sight that whatever appearance of the problems
22595 our mind gives rise to is a function of mind. Believing the appearance to be
22596 the solid reality "out there," we again feel hopeless to do anything and thus
22597 become extremely anxious and tense. We worry to the point of becoming sick
22598 and we over-react toward our child, which does not help. If we focus instead
22599 on the process of mind that gives rise to our perception of the problem as if
22600 it existed as some horrible monster "out there," we do not eliminate our
22601 concern for our child, only our worry. This allows us to take whatever clear
22602 and calm action is necessary to alleviate the problem. Thus not only is
22603 compassion necessary for successful practice of mahamudra, but mahamudra
22604 realization is necessary for successful practice of compassion.
22605 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra",
22606 published by Snow Lion Publications
22607 * "Mahamudra" is a Sanskrit word meaning "great seal" and refers to the
22608 nature of all phenomena. Mahamudra also refers to sophisticated Buddhist
22609 systems of meditation and practice to realize this great sealing nature.
22611 Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one.
22614 45. This fresh present knowing, unbound
22616 This fresh present knowing,
22617 Unbound by the intellect that clings to meditation,
22618 Is naked unobstructed non-meditation.
22620 And settle in the state of naturalness.
22621 This is the meaning of realization of meditation.
22623 When thoughts move, let them.
22624 Movement arises and is liberated without a trace.
22625 When there is no movement, don't search for it.
22626 This is empty luminosity, naked empty awareness.
22627 Tantric practice without suppression or
22628 cultivation of thoughts
22629 Brings the accomplishment of the destruction
22632 There is nothing more to add to this.
22633 Madman Dudjom said this:
22634 Let it remain like this in your heart.
22635 -- from "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart Advice", translated and
22636 introduced by Ron Garry, published by Snow Lion Publications
22638 ...karma refers not only to our actions but, more importantly, to the
22639 motivation or intention behind them. The acts themselves are not the primary
22640 cause of our suffering; rather, it arises from the world of our intentions or,
22641 in other words, from our thoughts and emotions. These afflictive states of
22642 mind underlie our negative karma and are therefore the source of our
22645 Obviously, these afflictions won't go away simply by saying prayers or
22646 wishing them away; they can only be eliminated by cultivating their
22647 corresponding remedies or antidotes. To understand how this process of
22648 applying the antidote works we can observe our physical world. For instance,
22649 we can contrast heat and cold: if we are suffering from the effects of too
22650 cold a temperature, then we increase the thermometer on our heater or air-
22651 conditioning unit and adjust it to our comfort. Thus, even in the physical
22652 world we can see instances where opposing forces counter each other.
22654 ...From our own personal experience we recognise that anger and hostility
22655 disturb our peace of mind and, more importantly, that they have the potential
22656 to harm others. Conversely, we recognise that positive emotions like
22657 compassion and loving kindness can engender in us a deep sense of peace and
22658 serenity, beneficial results that we can extend to others as well. This
22659 appreciation of their great value naturally leads to a desire to cultivate
22660 these positive emotions. It is through this gradual process that the
22661 antidotes work in decreasing and eventually eliminating their opposing forces
22662 in the mental realm, the realm of our thoughts and emotions.
22663 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Lighting the Way", published by Snow Lion
22665 Starting Dzogchen Practice
22666 When we start to practice, in order to grasp the normal mind, our first
22667 practice consists in engaging our mind. For example, if we have a problem of
22668 some kind, we may go to a movie to distract ourselves from our problem.
22669 Likewise when we start to practice, we try to calm down our problem-creating
22670 mind in order to be able to observe the nature of thought. The observation of
22671 the arising, abiding, and dissolving of thought in the empty state of the mind
22672 is an essential practice in Dzogchen in order to discover that moving thoughts
22673 are of the same nature as the thoughtless state of the mind. Since we are not
22674 accustomed to meditation, it seems very difficult, and every slight sound or
22675 movement, outside or inside the mind itself, becomes a major distraction
22676 interfering with our ability to continue to practice. In order to overcome
22677 this problem, we engage the mind in a practice so that it is not so easily
22678 distracted, by focusing attention so that the movement of the mind caused by
22679 thought or sense perception does not have the power to divert our
22680 concentration. This first stage, of grasping the mind, is concentration
22681 practice, described in detail in the Bonpo 'Ati' system.
22682 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, in "Wonders of the Natural Mind: The Essence of
22683 Dzogchen in the Native Bon Tradition of Tibet", Snow Lion Publications
22685 Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic
22686 religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and
22687 theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a
22688 religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and
22689 spiritual, as a meaningful unity
22690 -- Albert Einstein in "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen
22691 Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1954
22693 Techniques for Improvement
22694 All of us have attained a human life; we are, in a sense, incomparable among
22695 the various types of sentient beings, as we are able to think about many
22696 topics with a subtler mind and are endowed with vaster capabilities. Dogs,
22697 birds, and so forth do communicate, but only humans can settle and ascertain
22698 deep topics on the basis of words; it is obvious that there are no other
22699 sentient beings capable of as many thoughts and techniques. Nowadays, humans
22700 are engaging in many activities that were not even objects of thought a
22701 century or two ago. The metaphors of the poets of the past, such as "the
22702 wonderful house of the moon", are becoming actualities.
22703 ...People have made great effort right up to this century, thinking to
22704 become free from suffering, but we cannot point to even one person in the
22705 world, no matter how rich he or she is, who has no worry--except for those
22706 who have the inner happiness of renouncing the material way of life. Without
22707 internal renunciation it is difficult to achieve happiness and comfort.
22708 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins from "Deity Yoga",
22709 published by Snow Lion Publications
22711 Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. -- Confucius
22713 Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake,
22714 zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.
22715 -- Jim Davis (Garfield)
22717 A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions
22718 than anything else in the world.
22719 -- Edmond de Concourt
22721 Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. -- Jimi Hendrix
22723 There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
22724 -- Hamlet (by William Shakespeare)
22726 People who have what they want are fond of telling people
22727 who haven't what they want that they really don't want it.
22730 There are only two ways of telling the complete
22731 truth--anonymously and posthumously.
22734 The easiest way for your children to learn
22735 about money is for you not to have any.
22736 -- Katharine Whitehorn
22738 If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
22741 Do not go where the path may lead, go instead
22742 where there is no path and leave a trail.
22743 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
22745 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
22748 I have a simple philosophy.
22751 Scratch where it itches.
22752 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
22754 Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
22755 -- John Archibald Wheeler
22757 You know that children are growing up when they start
22758 asking questions that have answers.
22761 The average man, who does not know what to do with his life,
22762 wants another one which will last forever.
22765 Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is
22766 a broken winged bird that canot fly.
22769 Spare no expense to save money on this one. -- Samuel Goldwyn
22771 It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.
22772 People are either charming or tedious.
22775 If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute
22776 powerlessness make you pure?
22779 Parents were invented to make children happy
22780 by giving them something to ignore.
22783 Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
22784 -- Jules de Gaultier
22786 I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse.
22787 I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
22790 If you find it in your heart to care for
22791 somebody else, you will have succeeded.
22794 Time is an illusion.
22795 Lunchtime doubly so.
22799 A person whom we know well enough to borrow from,
22800 but not well enough to lend to.
22801 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
22803 The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
22804 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
22806 Eighty percent of success is showing up. -- Woody Allen
22808 Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. -- Don Marquis
22810 The only reason some people get lost in thought
22811 is because it's unfamiliar territory.
22814 A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has
22815 a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
22818 Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. -- Steven Wright
22820 Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. -- Oscar Wilde
22822 It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
22823 -- William Shakespeare
22825 If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong. -- Mo Udall
22827 I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money. -- Pablo Picasso
22829 The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
22832 Lack of money is no obstacle.
22833 Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
22836 Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
22837 -- Marcus Valerias Martialis
22839 Great minds discuss ideas;
22840 average minds discuss events;
22841 small minds discuss people.
22842 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
22844 I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there. -- Herb Caen
22846 When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?"
22849 Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. -- Mahatma Gandhi
22851 I'm living so far beyond my income that we may
22852 almost be said to be living apart.
22855 I try to avoid looking forward or backward,
22856 and try to keep looking upward.
22857 -- Charlotte Bronte
22859 My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. -- Henry Ford
22861 Without democracy, religion becomes extreme.
22862 With religion, democracy becomes more spiritual.
22863 -- Mohammad Khatami, president of Iran
22865 For fast acting relief, try slowing down. -- Lily Tomlin
22867 A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
22870 Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and
22871 I notice it's the rich people who keep saying it.
22874 Whatever you are, be a good one. -- Abraham Lincoln
22876 Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
22879 Never spend your money before you have it. -- Thomas Jefferson
22881 Confusion is always the most honest response. -- Marty Indik
22883 Doing nothing is very hard to do... you never know when you're finished.
22886 Free advice is worth the price. -- Robert Half
22888 A person who trusts no one can't be trusted. -- Jerome Blattner
22890 There is nobody so irritating as somebody with
22891 less intelligence and more sense than we have.
22894 He that plants trees loves others besides himself. -- Dr. Thomas Fuller
22896 To find something you can enjoy is far better
22897 than finding something you can possess.
22900 An intellectual is a man who takes more words than
22901 necessary to tell more than he knows.
22902 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
22904 Not everything that can be counted counts, and not
22905 everything that counts can be counted.
22908 Brain, n.: an apparatus with which we think we think.
22909 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911
22911 There is always some madness in love.
22912 But there is always some reason in madness.
22913 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
22915 We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
22916 -- Martin Luther King Jr.
22918 Good resolutions are simply checks that men
22919 draw on a bank where they have no account.
22922 The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in mueseums.
22925 Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
22928 Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. -- Thomas Jones
22930 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
22931 -- Margaret Bonnano
22933 Yesterday is history.
22934 Tomorrow is a mystery.
22936 That's why it's called the present.
22939 Money is in abundance, where are you? -- Reverend Ike
22941 Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit everyone once a year.
22944 Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
22947 You cannot fix what you will not face. -- James Baldwin
22949 There are too many people, and too few human beings. -- Robert Zend
22951 Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
22954 A good listener is usually thinking about something else. -- Kin Hubbard
22956 If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't
22957 know what a millionaire looked like.
22960 Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
22961 -- George Bernard Shaw
22963 Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money. -- Arthur Miller
22965 Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off
22966 their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
22969 If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
22972 If computers get too organized, we can organize
22973 them into a committee--that will do them in.
22974 -- Bradley's Bromide
22976 It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
22979 If we stand tall it is because we stand
22980 on the backs of those who came before us.
22983 The trouble with jogging is that, by the time you realize
22984 you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back.
22985 -- Franklin P. Jones
22987 I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
22990 By the time we've made it, we've had it. -- Malcolm Forbes
22992 It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
22993 -- W. Somerset Maugham
22995 It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
22996 -- Henry David Thoreau
22998 Accomplishing the impossible means only that
22999 the boss will add it to your regular duties.
23002 Government big enough to supply everything you need
23003 is big enough to take everything you have...
23004 The course of history shows that as a government grows,
23006 -- Thomas Jefferson
23008 Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except
23009 the things in the world that just don't add up.
23012 Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
23015 The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
23016 -- Flora Whittemore
23018 When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
23019 -- Marquis de la Grange
23021 If more of us valued food and cheer and song
23022 above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
23025 While I was in Malaysia, I saw a T-shirt depicting a surfboard aloft huge
23026 waves. Sitting on the surfboard was a figure meditating cross-legged. The
23027 slogan read, "Riding the waves of life, be mindful, be happy." That's it.
23028 Awareness. Being present. Knowing thoughts as thoughts, emotions as
23029 emotions. It's just like riding a surfboard. You gradually develop the
23030 poise to cruise along on the roughest seas until, no longer immersed in
23031 the waves, you are riding on top of them. Of course you have to start
23032 with small waves until you get your balance. Then the higher the wave, the
23033 better! Likewise, when we begin to train in awareness, it is better if we
23034 have an atmosphere which is nonthreatening and peaceful. That's why people
23035 go on retreat. That's also a reason why people set aside regular sitting
23036 periods. But once we learn how to be balanced, we become like a surfer who
23037 finds that the bigger the wave, the greater the fun.
23038 -- Ani Tenzin Palmo, in "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on
23039 Practical Buddhism", Snow Lion Publications
23041 The word "mantra" means "mind-protection". It protects the mind from ordinary
23042 appearances and conceptions. "Mind" here refers to all six consciousnesses--
23043 eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mental consciousnesses--which are to be
23044 freed, or protected, from the ordinary world. There are two factors in mantra
23045 training, pride in oneself as a deity and vivid appearance of that deity.
23046 Divine pride protects one from the pride of being ordinary, and divine vivid
23047 appearance protects one from ordinary appearances. Whatever appears to the
23048 senses is viewed as the sport of a deity; for instance, whatever forms are
23049 seen are viewed as the emanations of a deity and whatever sounds are heard are
23050 viewed as the mantras of a deity. One is thereby protected from ordinary
23051 appearances, and through this transformation of attitude, the pride of being a
23052 deity emerges. Such protection of mind together with its attendant pledges
23053 and vows is called the practice of mantra.
23054 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins in "Tantra in Tibet",
23055 published by Snow Lion Publications
23057 There is nothing new under the sun, but there are
23058 lots of old things we don't know.
23061 Win hearts, and you have all men's hands and purses. -- William Cecil Burleigh
23063 Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world.
23064 Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
23067 He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. -- M. C. Escher
23069 Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn,
23070 whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
23073 Training in compassion has the capacity to be both profound and vast--both
23074 absolute and relative. Compassion has the quality of being approachable and
23075 at the same time ungraspable. It manifests both the quality of shunyata,
23076 emptiness, or egolessness, as well as the qualities of kindness and joyfulness.
23077 Therefore, from the Mahayana point of view, compassion is the most important
23078 practice we could ever engage in. It can lead us to the full realization of
23079 enlightenment without any need for other practices.
23080 -- from "Trainings in Compassion: Manuals on the Meditation of
23081 Avalokiteshvara", translated by Tyler Dewar under the guidance of The
23082 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
23084 Question: If the root of all suffering is attachment, are the desire to have a
23085 family and the desire for liberation from suffering contradictory?
23087 Answer: I think that a distinction should be made between desires that are due
23088 to ignorance and desires that are reasoned. In Tibetan, a difference can be
23089 made between "wish" and "desire"; for instance a Bodhisattva is reborn through
23090 his or her own wishes, not out of desire. Similarly, it is suitable to aspire
23091 toward liberation. Also, persons, such as Foe Destroyers, who have completely
23092 overcome all of the afflictive emotions, have thoughts such as, "Such and such
23093 is good; I need it." Merely such thoughts are not afflictive consciousnesses.
23094 Similarly, if we consider the desire for a family, there are persons practicing
23095 the Bodhisattva path who have families; also, in the scriptures of discipline,
23096 Buddha himself set forth vows for lay persons and vows for monks. Hence, there
23097 is no general prohibition of the wish to have a family.
23098 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
23099 Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
23100 Snow Lion Publications
23102 In general, most non-Buddhist religions meditate on the deity as being outside
23103 the physical body. In these cases the deity takes the form of a refuge, or of
23104 a protector or messenger. Thus do they meditate, and of course this is fine.
23105 In the Buddhist tradition, however, the deity is not meditated on as being
23106 outside of the physical body. One meditates on the deity as being one's own
23107 essence expressing itself through oneself arising as the deity. One therefore
23108 thinks, "I am the deity," and with this conviction one meditates. Why is it
23109 justifiable to meditate in this manner? ...our own mind is in essence exactly
23110 the same as the mind of a Buddha. In the philosophical treatises this is
23111 sometimes referred to as "sugatagarbha" or "buddha-nature".
23112 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, in "Everyday Consciousness and Buddha-
23113 Awakening", translated and edited by Susanne Schefczyk, published by
23114 Snow Lion Publications
23116 If things did in fact exist the way they appear--if things did exist so
23117 concretely--then when one looked into and investigated them, this inherent
23118 existence should become even clearer, more obvious. However, when you seek
23119 for the object designated, you cannot find it under analysis.
23120 ...[That] which gives rise to the appearance of I is mind and body, but when
23121 you divide this into mind and body and look for the I, you cannot find it.
23122 Also the whole, body, is designated in dependence upon the collection of parts
23123 of the body; if you divide this into its parts and look for the body, you
23124 cannot find it either. Even the most subtle particles in the body have sides
23125 and hence parts. Were there something partless, it might be independent, but
23126 there is nothing that is partless. Rather, everything exists in dependence on
23127 its parts... There is no whole which is separate from its parts.
23128 ...No matter what the phenomenon is, internal or external, whether it be
23129 one's own body or any other type of phenomenon, when we search to discover
23130 what this phenomenon is that is designated, we cannot find anything that is it.
23131 ...However, these things appear to us as if they do exist objectively and in
23132 their own right, and thus there is a difference between the way things appear
23133 to our minds and the way they actually exist... Since phenomena appear to us
23134 in a way that is different from what we discover when analysing, this proves
23135 that their concrete appearance is due to a fault of our minds.
23136 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, translated and
23137 edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, from "Kindness,
23138 Clarity, and Insight" published by Snow Lion Publications
23140 The Buddhist notion of diligence is to delight in positive deeds. Its
23141 opposite, called "le lo" in Tibetan, has three aspects. Le lo is usually
23142 translated as "laziness," though only its first aspect refers to laziness as
23143 we usually understand it. The first aspect is not doing something because of
23144 indolence, even though we know that it is good and ought to be done. The
23145 second aspect is faintheartedness. This comes about when we underestimate our
23146 qualities and abilities, thinking, "I'm so incompetent and weak. It would be
23147 good to do that, but I could never accomplish it." Not having the confidence
23148 of thinking, "I can do it," we end up doing nothing. The third aspect refers
23149 to being very busy and seeming diligent, but wasting time and energy on
23150 meaningless activities that will not accomplish anything in the long run.
23151 When we do many things for no real purpose, we fail to focus on what is truly
23152 worthwhile and our path has no clear direction. When we refrain from these
23153 three aspects of laziness, we are diligent.
23154 -- Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, in "Daring Steps Toward Fearlessness: The Three
23155 Vehicles of Buddhism", edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs,
23156 published by Snow Lion Publications
23158 All events and incidents in life are so intimately linked with the fate of
23159 others that a single person on his or her own cannot even begin to act. Many
23160 ordinary human activities, both positive and negative, cannot even be
23161 conceived of apart from the existence of other people. Even the committing of
23162 harmful actions depends on the existence of others. Because of others, we
23163 have the opportunity to earn money if that is what we desire in life.
23164 Similarly, in reliance upon the existence of others it becomes possible for
23165 the media to create fame or disrepute for someone. On your own you cannot
23166 create any fame or disrepute no matter how loud you might shout. The closest
23167 you can get is to create an echo of your own voice.
23168 Thus interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms
23169 of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without
23170 any religion, law, or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an
23171 innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of
23172 material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from
23173 the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers that
23174 surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without
23175 their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.
23176 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, in "The Compassionate Life"
23178 Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels
23179 ...a buddha is someone who has attained full enlightenment through the
23180 cultivation of compassion and the wisdom of no-self, the absence of self-
23181 existence. From our discussion we also saw how the Dharma jewel is to be
23182 understood as the path by which we can gradually accomplish the same result as
23183 the fully awakened Buddha. Likewise, the Sangha jewel is the community of
23184 sincere practitioners who have directly realised emptiness, the ultimate
23186 For those of us who consider ourselves to be practising Buddhists, it is
23187 crucial to have this kind of deeper understanding of the Three Jewels when we
23188 go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
23189 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Lighting the Way", published by Snow Lion
23191 Being Mindful of Impermanence
23193 Loved ones who have long kept company will part.
23194 Wealth created with difficulty will be left behind.
23195 Consciousness, the guest, will leave the guest house of the body.
23196 Let go of this life--
23197 This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.
23199 Although we have this human life with freedom and richness, which is so
23200 valuable and difficult to get, it cannot last forever. This is because it is
23201 not permanent and is subject to decay moment by moment. This life will
23202 eventually become non-existent because our body and mind will separate.
23203 Although death meditation involves reflecting on the moment by moment changing
23204 nature of our life, it principally entails recognizing that one day it will
23205 come to a complete stop and our mind will leave our body behind. Therefore,
23206 we must take the essence from this life each day and try to fulfill a great
23207 Dharma purpose because we will not have this opportunity for long.
23208 -- from "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage: An Explanation of
23209 'The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas' ", by Geshe Jampa Tegchok,
23210 edited by Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
23212 What do we mean when we speak of a truly compassionate kindness? Compassion
23213 is essentially concern for others' welfare--their happiness and their
23214 suffering. Others wish to avoid misery as much as we do. So a compassionate
23215 person feels concerned when others are miserable and develops a positive
23216 intention to free them from it. As ordinary beings, our feeling of closeness
23217 to our friends and relatives is little more than an expression of clinging
23218 desire. It needs to be tempered, not enhanced. It is important not to
23219 confuse attachment and compassion.... A compassionate thought is motivated by
23220 a wish to help release beings from their misery.
23221 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Stages of Meditation", translated by Venerable
23222 Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell,
23223 published by Snow Lion Publications
23225 Tantric yogis succeed in their cultivation of wisdom more quickly than do
23226 practitioners of the Perfection Vehicle because the tantric yogi, employing
23227 deity yoga, can achieve a mind that is a union of calm abiding and special
23228 insight--a mind of alert one-pointedness that realizes emptiness--in far
23229 less time than the period of countless great aeons required for those who
23230 practice sutra paths alone. Tantric yogis use deity yoga to enhance
23231 meditation on emptiness; their use of deity yoga brings them more quickly to
23232 an initial direct cognition of emptiness by enhancing their ability to combine
23233 meditative stability with analysis.... Also, in Highest Yoga Tantra,
23234 powerful, subtle consciousnesses that realize emptiness are manifested,
23235 whereby the obstructions to liberation and omniscience are quickly overcome.
23236 -- Daniel Cozort, in "Highest Yoga Tantra", Snow Lion Publications
23238 Howard C. Cutler, MD:
23239 Is happiness a reasonable goal for most of us? Is it really possible?
23242 Yes. I believe that happiness can be achieved through training the mind.
23243 When I say "training the mind," in this context I'm not referring to "mind"
23244 merely as one's cognitive ability or intellect. Rather, I'm using the term
23245 in the sense of the Tibetan word Sem, which has a much broader meaning,
23246 closer to "psyche" or "spirit"; it includes intellect and feeling, heart
23247 and mind. By bringing about a certain inner discipline, we can undergo a
23248 transformation of our attitude, our entire outlook and approach to living.
23249 When we speak of this inner discipline, it can of course involve many things,
23250 many methods. But generally speaking, one begins by identifying those factors
23251 which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having
23252 done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead
23253 to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.
23254 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, MD, in "The Art of Happiness:
23255 A Handbook for Living", published by Snow Lion Publications
23257 It can be difficult to accept others and to accept ourselves. "I should be
23258 better. I should be something different. I should have more." All of this
23259 is conception; it's all mental fabrication. It's just the mind churning up
23260 "shoulds," "ought tos," and "supposed tos." All this is conceptual rubbish,
23261 and yet we believe it. Part of the solution is to recognize that these
23262 thoughts are conceptual rubbish and not reality; this gives us the mental
23263 space not to believe them. When we stop believing them, it becomes much
23264 easier to accept what we are at any given moment, knowing we will change in
23265 the next moment. We'll be able to accept what others are in one moment,
23266 knowing that they will be different in the next moment. This is good stuff
23267 for everyday practice; it's very practical.
23268 -- Thubten Chodron, in "How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator",
23269 published by Snow Lion Publications
23271 The nature of samsaric evolution is not such that death is followed by
23272 nothingness, nor that humans are always reborn as humans and insects as
23273 insects. On the contrary, we all carry within us the karmic potencies of all
23274 realms of cyclic existence. Many beings transmigrate from higher to lower
23275 realms, others from lower to higher. The selection of a place of rebirth is
23276 not directly in our own hands but is conditioned by our karma and delusions.
23277 They who possess spiritual understanding can control their destiny at the time
23278 of death, but for ordinary beings the process is very much an automatic chain
23279 reaction of karmic seeds and habitual psychic response patterns....
23280 Our repeated experience of frustration, dissatisfaction and misery does not
23281 have external conditions as its root cause. The problem is mainly our lack of
23282 spiritual development. As a result of this handicap, the mind is controlled
23283 principally by afflicted emotions and illusions. Attachment, aversion and
23284 ignorance rather than a free spirit, love and wisdom are the guiding forces.
23285 Recognizing this simple truth is the beginning of the spiritual path.
23286 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, edited and translated by Glenn H. Mullin, in
23287 "The Path to Enlightenment", published by Snow Lion Publications
23289 If persons who have attained calm abiding keep their minds in calm abiding,
23290 not only does the force of their meditative stabilization remain but their
23291 other good qualities increase and do not degenerate. Similarly, persons who
23292 have achieved special insight have clear perception not only with respect to
23293 the object of observation on which they have been meditating but also with
23294 respect to any other object to which they turn their minds. Persons who
23295 cultivate calm abiding but not special insight will gain the factor of
23296 stability but not that of an intense clarity; they will not be able to
23297 manifest any antidote to the afflictive emotions. One must achieve an
23298 intensity of clarity in order for anything to serve as an antidote to
23299 ignorance, and to achieve that clarity one must cultivate special insight.
23300 -- Geshe Gedun Lodro, in "Calm Abiding and Special Insight: Achieving
23301 Spiritual Transformation through Meditation", translated and edited
23302 by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Anne C. Klein and Leah Zahler,
23303 published by Snow Lion Publications
23305 If you haven't found something strange during the day,
23306 it hasn't been much of a day.
23309 Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
23312 It is hypocrisy to say that all religions are the same. Different religions
23313 have different views and fundamental differences. But it does not matter, as
23314 all religions are meant to help in bringing about a better world with better
23315 and happier human beings. On this level, I think that through different
23316 philosophical explanations and approaches, all religions have the same goal
23317 and the same potential. Take the concept[s] of the creator and self-creation
23318 for instance. There are big differences between the two, but I feel they have
23319 the same purpose. To some people, the concept of the creator is very powerful
23320 in inspiring the development of self-discipline, becoming a good person with a
23321 sense of love, forgiveness and devotion to the ultimate truth--the Creator or
23323 The other concept is self-creation: if one wants to be good, then it is one's
23324 own responsibility to be so. Without one's own efforts one cannot expect
23325 something good to come about. One's future is entirely dependent on oneself:
23326 it is self-created. This concept is very powerful in encouraging an
23327 individual to be a good and honest person. So you see, the two are different
23328 approaches but have the same goal.
23329 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Live in a Better Way: Reflections on Truth, Love
23330 and Happiness", compiled and edited by Renuka Singh, published by Snow
23333 The wise perceive that all things--persons and phenomena--arise in reliance
23334 upon their own causes and conditions, and that based on this process we impute
23335 mental labels upon things. The phenomena themselves have no true or inherent
23336 existence from their own side. They have no self-nature whatsoever.
23337 Were persons or phenomena to have a self-presence, there would be no need
23338 for them to rely upon causes and conditions. Therefore one can be certain
23339 that even the smallest speck of matter has no true, inherent existence from
23341 Although all things lack even the smallest speck of true existence,
23342 nonetheless conventionally the laws of causes and conditions operate through
23343 them, and conventionally all the phenomena in samsara and nirvana seem to
23344 exist, arising in the same manner as do illusions, dreams and a reflected
23346 -- Glenn H. Mullin, in "The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's commentary
23347 entitled 'A Book of Three Inspirations: A Treatise on the Stages of
23348 Training in the Profound Path of Naro's Six Dharmas' commonly referred
23349 to as 'The Three Inspirations' ", published by Snow Lion Publications
23351 | George of the Bungle |
23353 And finally, new rule: America must recall the president. That's what this
23354 country needs. A good old-fashioned, California-style, recall election!
23355 Complete with Gary Coleman, porno actresses and action film stars. And just
23356 like Schwarzenegger's predecessor here in California, George Bush is now so
23357 unpopular he must defend his job against... Russell Crowe. Because at this
23358 point I want a leader who will throw a phone at somebody. In fact, let's have
23359 only phone throwers--Naomi Campbell can be the vice-president!
23361 Now I kid, but seriously Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you
23362 anymore. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't
23363 start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck,
23364 the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor
23365 people. Yeah, listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's
23366 maxed out, and no one's speaking to you: mission accomplished. Now it's time
23367 to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did
23368 with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team.
23369 It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy
23372 Now I know what you're saying; you're saying that there's so many other
23373 things that you as President could involve yourself in... Please don't. I
23374 know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela... and
23375 eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the
23376 church... and Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.
23378 But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern
23379 like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't
23380 given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert
23381 Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis
23382 to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our
23383 allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the
23384 Pentagon, and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky!
23386 I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much
23387 worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to
23388 you... and what he is saying is: "Take a hint."
23390 -- Bill Maher on Real Time, October 2005
23392 We have the ability and the responsibility to choose to direct our actions
23393 on a virtuous path.
23394 When we weigh a particular act, to determine whether it is moral or
23395 spiritual, our criterion should be the quality of our motivation. When someone
23396 deliberately makes a resolution not to steal, if he or she is simply motivated
23397 by the fear of getting caught and being punished by the law, it is doubtful
23398 whether engaging in that resolution is a moral act, since moral considerations
23399 have not dictated his or her choice.
23400 In another instance, the resolution not to steal may be motivated by fear of
23401 public opinion: "What would my friends and neighbors think? All would scorn
23402 me. I would become an outcast." Though the act of making a resolution may be
23403 positive, whether it is a moral act is again doubtful.
23404 Now, the same resolution may be taken with the thought "If I steal, I am
23405 acting against the divine law of God." Someone else may think, "Stealing is
23406 nonvirtuous; it causes others to suffer." When such considerations motivate
23407 one, the resolution is moral or ethical; it is also spiritual. In the
23408 practice of Buddha's doctrine, if your underlying consideration in avoiding a
23409 nonvirtuous act is that it would thwart your attainment of a state
23410 transcending sorrow, such restraint is a moral act.
23411 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday
23412 Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland
23414 A conventional enemy may harm us, but patience and a refusal to retaliate
23415 can bring us benefit both in this life and in the future. However, tolerance
23416 towards [our own] hostile disturbing emotions and attempts at peaceful
23417 coexistence with them will never bring us any reward. They will do us nothing
23418 but harm if we don't take steps to drive them out. No conventional enemy can
23419 do us such harm. The most an ordinary enemy can do is to defeat us for a
23420 short space of time or destroy us in this life, but the disturbing emotions
23421 will insure our misery for many lifetimes to come.
23423 All other foes that I appease and wait upon
23424 Will show me favors, give me every aid,
23425 But should I serve my dark defiled emotions,
23426 They will only harm me, draw me down to grief.
23427 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, in "Eight Verses for Training the Mind: An Oral
23428 Teaching", translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion
23431 There is a story about a princess who had a small eye problem that she felt
23432 was really bad. Being the king's daughter, she was rather spoiled and kept
23433 crying all the time. When the doctors wanted to apply medicine, she would
23434 invariably refuse any medical treatment and kept touching the sore spot on her
23435 eye. In this way it became worse and worse, until finally the king proclaimed
23436 a large reward for whoever could cure his daughter. After some time, a man
23437 arrived who claimed to be a famous physician, but actually was not even a
23439 He declared that he could definitely cure the princess and was admitted to
23440 her chamber. After he had examined her, he exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so sorry!"
23441 "What is it?" the princess inquired. The doctor said, "There is nothing much
23442 wrong with your eye, but there is something else that is really serious." The
23443 princess was alarmed and asked, "What on earth is so serious?" He hesitated
23444 and said, "It is really bad. I shouldn't tell you about it." No matter how
23445 much she insisted, he refused to tell her, saying that he could not speak
23446 without the king's permission.
23447 When the king arrived, the doctor was still reluctant to reveal his findings.
23448 Finally the king commanded, "Tell us what is wrong. Whatever it is, you have
23449 to tell us!" At last the doctor said, "Well, the eye will get better within a
23450 few days--that is no problem. The big problem is that the princess will grow
23451 a tail, which will become at least nine fathoms long. It may start growing
23452 very soon. If she can detect the first moment it appears, I might be able to
23453 prevent it from growing." At this news everyone was deeply concerned. And the
23454 princess, what did she do? She stayed in bed, day and night, directing all
23455 her attention to detecting when the tail might appear. Thus, after a few
23456 days, her eye got well.
23457 This shows how we usually react. We focus on our little problem and it
23458 becomes the center around which everything else revolves. So far, we have
23459 done this repeatedly, life after life. We think, "My wishes, my interests, my
23460 likes and dislikes come first!" As long as we function on this basis, we will
23461 remain unchanged. Driven by impulses of desire and rejection, we will travel
23462 the roads of samsara without finding a way out. As long as attachment and
23463 aversion are our sources of living and drive us onward, we cannot rest.
23464 -- Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, in "Daring Steps toward Fearlessness: The Three
23465 Vehicles of Buddhism", edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs, published
23466 by Snow Lion Publications
23468 buddha mind listens
23469 sound waves crashing over head
23472 time god shits in hand
23473 catapults distraction dung
23474 unstained mind abides
23476 Dr. Cutler: "... one of the reasons I brought up the topic of challenge at
23477 work," I said to the Dalai Lama, "is because it relates to a concept that
23478 seems to come up frequently these days in psychological literature, the
23479 concept of flow.* This concept is increasingly mentioned in articles on human
23480 happiness, and this state can commonly occur at work... while engaged in
23481 activity, there's a feeling of effortlessness, a sense of total control over
23482 what one is doing.... Although flow can occur in any activity, some
23483 investigators have found that Americans experience more flow at work than they
23484 do in their leisure time."
23486 The Dalai Lama: "You really like this flow, Howard!" the Dalai Lama exclaimed
23487 with an amused chuckle. "... no matter how nice that state may be, I don't
23488 think it is the most important source of satisfaction, fulfillment, or
23489 happiness.... For one thing, you can't be in that state at all times.... So
23490 through this flow, even if you get some temporary kind of happiness, it will
23491 not be an ongoing thing. I think this flow state is not reliable or
23492 sustainable, and I think it's much more important to develop other sources of
23493 satisfaction through one's work that are brought about by training one's mind,
23494 shaping one's outlook and attitude, integrating basic human values in the
23495 workplace. For example, dealing with one's destructive emotions while at
23496 work, reducing anger, jealousy, greed, and so on, and practicing relating to
23497 others with kindness, compassion, tolerance, these are much more important and
23498 stable sources of satisfaction than simply trying to create flow as much as
23501 Dr. Cutler: "...To the Dalai Lama, true happiness is associated with a sense
23502 of meaning, and arises on the basis of deliberately cultivating certain
23503 attitudes and outlooks. True happiness may take longer to generate, and
23504 requires some effort, but it is this lasting happiness that can sustain us
23505 even under the most trying conditions of everyday life."
23507 * flow is defined here as [people] being so completely absorbed in their work
23508 that they lose track of time.
23510 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., in "The Art of
23513 Dzogchen could be defined as a way to relax completely. This can be clearly
23514 understood from the terms used to denote the state of contemplation, such as
23515 "leave it just as it is" (cog bzhag), "cutting loose one's tension" (khregs
23516 chod), "beyond effort" (rtsol bral), and so on. Some scholars have classified
23517 Dzogchen as a "direct path," comparing it to teachings such as Zen, where this
23518 expression is often used. In Dzogchen texts, however, the phrases "direct
23519 path" and "nongradual path" (cig car) are never used, because the concept of a
23520 "direct path" implies necessarily that there must be, on the one hand, a place
23521 from which one departs, and on the other, a place where one arrives. But in
23522 Dzogchen there is a single principle of the state of knowledge, and if one
23523 possesses this state one discovers that right from the beginning one is
23524 already there where one wants to arrive. For this reason the state is said to
23525 be "self-perfected" (lhun grub).
23526 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, in "Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State", edited by
23527 Adriano Clemente, translated from the Italian by John Shane, published by
23528 Snow Lion Publications
23530 Since the situation in which we live is much changed but the attitude of
23531 people who are in that situation is at variance with the times, this is one of
23532 the causes of unnecessary pain, unnecessary problems. Therefore, education is
23533 needed to communicate that the concept of violence is counterproductive, that
23534 it is not a realistic way to solve problems, and that compromise is the only
23535 realistic way to solve problems. Right from the beginning, we have to make
23536 this reality clear to a child's mind--the new generation. In this way, the
23537 whole attitude towards oneself, towards the world, towards others, can become
23538 more healthy. I usually call this "inner disarmament." Without inner
23539 disarmament, it is very difficult to achieve genuine, lasting world peace.
23540 ...Through inner disarmament we can develop a healthy mental attitude, which
23541 also is very beneficial for physical health. With peace of mind, a calm mind,
23542 your body elements become more balanced. Constant worry, constant fear,
23543 agitation of mind, are very bad for health. Therefore, peace of mind not only
23544 brings tranquility in our mind but also has good effects on our body.
23545 With inner disarmament, now we need external disarmament. As I mentioned
23546 earlier, according to today's reality, there no longer is room for war, for
23547 destruction. From a compassionate viewpoint, destruction, killing others, and
23548 discriminating even against one's enemy are counterproductive. Today's enemy,
23549 if you treat them well, may become a good friend even the next day.
23550 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama in "The Art of Peace: Nobel Peace Laureates Discuss
23551 Human Rights, Conflict and Reconciliation", edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
23552 published by Snow Lion Publications
23554 What we do for ourselves dies with us.
23555 What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
23558 Q: Where does hatred come from?
23560 A: That is a question which requires long hours of discussion. From the
23561 Buddhist viewpoint, the simple answer is that it is beginningless. As a
23562 further explanation, Buddhists believe that there are many different levels of
23563 consciousness. The most subtle consciousness is what we consider the basis of
23564 the previous life, this life and future lives. This subtle consciousness is
23565 a transient phenomenon which comes about as a consequence of causes and
23566 conditions. Buddhists have concluded that consciousness itself cannot be
23567 produced by matter. Therefore, the only alternative is to accept the
23568 continuation of consciousness. So that is the basis of the theory of rebirth.
23570 Where there is consciousness, ignorance and hatred also arise naturally.
23571 These negative emotions, as well as the positive emotions, occur right from
23572 beginningless time. All these are a part of our mind. However, these
23573 negative emotions actually are based on ignorance, which has no valid
23574 foundation. None of the negative emotions, no matter how powerful, have a
23575 solid foundation. On the other hand, the positive emotions, such as
23576 compassion or wisdom, have a solid basis: there is a kind of grounding and
23577 rootedness in reason and understanding, which is not the case with afflictive
23578 emotions like anger and hatred.
23580 The basic nature of the subtle consciousness itself is something neutral. So
23581 it is possible to purify or eliminate all of these negative emotions. That
23582 basic nature we call Buddha-nature. Hatred and negative emotions are
23583 beginningless; they have no beginning, but there is an end. Consciousness
23584 itself has no beginning and no end; of this we are certain.
23586 -- H.H. 14th Dalai Lama, in "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
23587 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by
23588 Snow Lion Publications
23590 When the sun is freed from clouds, the sun becomes clear and bright.
23591 Similarly, when obstructions to omniscience are abandoned, wisdom becomes
23593 How does wisdom that is like the sun in a sky free from clouds dawn? It
23594 is described as yogic direct perception. Between ordinary beings--those born
23595 in dependence upon their individual karma--and yogins, here we are considering
23596 yogins. Their wisdom is not speculation from an inferential point of view, as
23597 is the case with ordinary beings. Neither is it pensive and lacking in
23598 clarity. Rather, it sees directly, for which reason it is called yogic direct
23599 perception. When we ordinary beings think about a thing, there is something
23600 in the way, obstruction, due to which we do not see clearly and directly.
23601 When those obstructions--the afflictive obstructions and the obstructions to
23602 omniscience--have been dispelled, then knowledge arises as yogic direct
23604 When yogic direct perception arises, how does it see? It sees phenomena
23605 in a conventional context and it also sees reality in an ultimate context. In
23606 the conventional context, wisdom sees the shapes, colors, and defining
23607 characteristics of whatever things exist in worldly realms, individually and
23608 without mixing them, just as they are. This wisdom knows the varieties of
23609 phenomena. Similarly, in the context of reality, wisdom sees the meaning of
23610 emptiness directly; this wisdom knows the mode of all phenomena. In
23611 dependence upon release from the afflictive obstruction and the obstruction to
23612 omniscience, the wisdoms knowing the modes and the varieties actually arise.
23613 Someone in whom those two wisdoms are present is a buddha.
23615 -- Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, in "Essential Practice: Lectures on
23616 Kamalashila's 'Stages of Meditation in the Middle Way School' ",
23617 translated by Jules B. Levinson, published by Snow Lion Publications
23619 Sometimes people mistakenly look on vows and pledges as if these were a
23620 type of punishment, but this is not at all the case. For example, just as
23621 we follow certain methods of eating and drinking to improve our health and
23622 certainly not to punish ourselves, so the rules the Shakymuni Buddha
23623 formulated are for controlling counter-productive ill-deeds and ultimately for
23624 overcoming afflictive emotions, because these are self-ruinous. Thus, to
23625 relieve oneself from suffering, one controls the motivations and deeds
23626 producing suffering for one's own sake. Realizing from his own experience
23627 that suffering stems from one's own afflictive emotions as well as actions
23628 contaminated with them, he sets forth styles of behavior to reduce the problem
23629 for our own profit, certainly not to give us a hard time. Hence, these rules
23630 are for the sake of controlling sources of harm.
23631 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba, and Jeffrey Hopkins, in "Yoga Tantra:
23632 Paths to Magical Feats, published by Snow Lion Publications
23634 Giving with an open heart brings us joy and directly benefits others. Goods
23635 are then shared more equitably within our society and among nations, soothing
23636 the ill-feeling of social inequity and promoting world peace. Sharing is a
23637 source of our continued existence as a species. As His Holiness the Dalai
23638 Lama says, it is not survival of the fittest, but survival of those who
23639 cooperate the most, that makes a species prosper. None of us exists
23640 independently; we have to depend on others simply to stay alive. Thus,
23641 helping others and sharing wealth benefits both self and others. Generosity
23642 makes us happy now, enables our species to continue to prosper, and creates
23643 positive karma that brings us prosperity in the future. In addition, it is an
23644 essential trait of an enlightened being. Who ever heard of a stingy Buddha?
23645 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, in "How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator",
23646 published by Snow Lion Publications
23648 I have made the point in the past that it is not necessary to consider
23649 someone one's guru from the very outset simply because one has heard the
23650 explanation of the Buddha's teachings from that person. At first, it is much
23651 better if one does not have that kind of attitude toward them, simply
23652 regarding them as a Dharma-friend. One gets teachings, and time goes by.
23653 Then, when one feels that one knows that person quite well, and can take them
23654 as one's guru without any danger of transgressing the commitments that
23655 accompany such a relationship, when one has that kind of confidence, then one
23656 can go ahead and take him or her as one's guru. The Lord Buddha himself made
23657 it quite clear in both the Vinaya sutras and in the Mahayana scriptures, and
23658 even in the Tantrayana, in a very detailed fashion, what the qualities of a
23659 teacher should be. This is why I often criticize the Tibetan attitude of
23660 seeing whatever the guru does as good, of respecting everything that the guru
23661 does right from the start without the initial period of examination. Of
23662 course, if the guru is really qualified, then to have such an attitude is
23664 Take the cases of Naropa and Marpa, for example. Sometimes it appears as
23665 though some of the things Tilopa asked of Naropa, or Naropa of Marpa, were
23666 unreasonable. Deep down, however, these requests had great meaning. Because
23667 of their great faith in their gurus, Naropa and Marpa did as instructed.
23668 Despite the fact that they appeared to be unreasonable, because the teachers
23669 were qualified, their actions had some meaning. In such situations, it is
23670 necessary that from the disciple's side all of the actions of the teacher be
23671 respected. But this cannot be compared to the case of ordinary people.
23672 Broadly speaking, I feel that the Buddha gave us complete freedom of choice to
23673 thoroughly examine the person who is to be our guru. This is very important.
23674 Unless one is definite, one should not take them as a guru. This preliminary
23675 examination is a kind of precautionary measure.
23676 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists", edited
23677 by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
23679 13. Transforming suffering into the path
23680 Even if someone tries to cut off your head
23681 When you haven't done the slightest thing wrong,
23682 Out of compassion take all his misdeeds
23684 This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.
23685 -- from "The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas"
23686 by Gyelsay Togme Sangpo
23687 Although we have done nothing to deserve it, someone may attack us, beat
23688 us, or perpetrate other forms of violence on us. Certainly it is tempting to
23689 get angry in such a situation, but our anger will do no good. In fact, this
23690 person is creating the cause for his own unfortunate rebirth by attacking us,
23691 and the karma he creates is even heavier if we hold any of the three sets of
23692 vows: pratimoksha, Bodhisattva, or tantric. Thus, we cultivate compassion,
23693 and wish to take the person's karma and resultant suffering on ourselves. For
23694 example, if a crazy person attacks a person who is sane, the latter will not
23695 only not fight back but try to help, by giving him medicine and wanting him to
23696 get well. The sane person sees that the crazy person does not know what he is
23697 doing. He is out of control.
23698 Similarly, when someone harms us, we should recognize that he too is out
23699 of control and is being led by his three poisonous attitudes. Similarly, we
23700 can remember that we are experiencing the ripening result of harmful actions
23701 we did in past lives, so why blame the other person? In addition, that person
23702 is causing our negative karma to be exhausted now, rather than later when the
23703 result could be much more difficult to bear. In this way, we will not be
23704 angry or retaliate, but will pray for and try to help the other. In "The
23705 Eight Verses of Thought Transformation," it says, "Whenever I meet a person of
23706 bad nature who is overwhelmed by negative energy and intense suffering, I will
23707 hold such a rare one dear, as if I had found a precious treasure." People like
23708 this suffer greatly because they think only of themselves, not of others, and
23709 thus they are worthy of compassion, the wish that they be free from suffering
23711 Being patient when harmed by others does not mean that we take no action
23712 to prevent harm from occurring. Rather, patience frees our mind from the fog
23713 of anger and gives us the clarity and kindness to respond to a situation in a
23714 helpful way. Free of anger, we look for ways to resolve conflict other than
23716 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, in "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage:
23717 An Explanation of 'The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas' ", edited
23718 by Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
23720 Some people run a race to see who is the fastest.
23721 I run a race to see who has the most guts.
23722 -- Steve Prefontaine
23724 Shantideva expresses tremendous courage, which transcends all boundaries
23725 of space and time, in a verse of his "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life"
23726 (Bodhicaryavatara). He writes:
23727 As long as space endures,
23728 As long as sentient beings remain,
23729 Until then, may I too remain
23730 And dispel the miseries of the world.
23731 When the altruistic intention is supported by insight into emptiness, and
23732 particularly by the direct realization of emptiness, one is said to have
23733 attained the two dimensions of bodhichitta which are known as conventional and
23734 ultimate bodhichitta. With both these practices of compassion and wisdom, the
23735 practitioner has within his or her hands the complete method for attaining the
23736 highest spiritual goal. Such a person is truly great and worthy of
23738 If one is able to cultivate these spiritual qualities within oneself then,
23739 as Chandrakirti writes very poetically in his Entry to the Middle Way
23740 (Madhyamakavatara), with one wing of altruistic intention and another wing of
23741 insight into emptiness, one can traverse the whole of space and soar beyond
23742 the state of existence to the shores of fully enlightened buddhahood.
23743 ...make an effort to contemplate, study and meditate, but without any
23744 shortsighted expectations. You should have the same attitude as Shantideva --
23745 that as long as space exists you will remain to dispel suffering in the world.
23746 When you have that kind of determination and courage to develop your capacity,
23747 then a hundred years, an aeon, a million years are nothing to you.
23748 Furthermore, you will not consider that the different human problems we have
23749 here and there are in any way insurmountable. Such an attitude and vision
23750 bring some kind of real inner strength.
23751 -- H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama, in "Transforming the Mind: Teachings on
23752 Generating Compassion", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, edited by
23753 Dominique Side and Geshe Thupten Jinpa.
23755 The Tantric Way of Purifying One's Views
23756 The second important attitude is the Tantric way of purifying one's views,
23757 which means to transform one's ordinary and dualistic views and conceptions
23758 into a higher spiritual vision.
23759 For instance, you transform the place where teachings are received from an
23760 ordinary classroom into a complete and perfected mandala of the deities. You
23761 view the teacher as a pure form of Shen Lha Okar, the Buddha of Compassion, by
23762 mentally transforming him from an ordinary person into an enlightened one who
23763 has manifested in a human body to guide all sentient beings. You transform
23764 your companions and classmates from ordinary beings into deities and
23765 goddesses, and believe that they all have love, compassion, and care for all
23767 The purpose of transforming your views into pure visions toward these
23768 objects is to realize the extraordinary nature of this experience. This gives
23769 you a special reason to receive blessings and powers from the teacher (lama),
23770 the enlightened ones (Sangye), the deities (yidam), and the female
23771 manifestations of the enlightened ones (khadro), in order to develop your
23772 wisdom and stability. This is the essence of the practice of purifying one's
23773 view according to the Tantric ways.
23774 -- Latri Khenpo and Geshe Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche, in "Opening the Door to
23775 Bon", published by Snow Lion Publications
23777 MENSA: My Ego Never Stops Aching
23779 ...more people are driven insane through religious hysteria
23780 than by drinking alcohol.
23783 Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will
23784 satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.
23787 Desire is the source of endless problems. The more desires we have, the more
23788 we have to plan and work hard to realize them. Some time ago a businessman
23789 told me that the more he developed his company, the more he felt like making
23790 it even bigger. And the more he tried to make it bigger, the more he found he
23791 had to lie and fight mercilessly against his competitors. He had come to
23792 realize that wanting more and more made no sense, and that he only had to
23793 reduce the size of his business for competition to become less fierce so he
23794 would be able to carry out his work honestly. I found his testimony very
23796 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "365 Dalai Lama: Daily Advice from the Heart",
23797 edited by Matthieu Ricard, translated by Christian Bruyat and Dominique
23800 I--What Is a Treasure?
23801 According to the Nyingma School, the Treasures are most often comprised of
23802 spiritual instructions concealed by enlightened beings for the purpose of
23803 discovery at a later predestined time when their message will invigorate the
23804 Buddhist teaching and deepen spiritual understanding. Central to this process
23805 is the figure of the Treasure revealer (gter ston)--the person who acts as a
23806 medium for the re-emergence of this inspired material into the human world.
23807 Accordingly, beginning in the eleventh century and continuing into the
23808 present, the Nyingma School identifies a large number of Treasure revealers
23809 and grants authoritative status to their discoveries.
23810 The idea that religious truth lies concealed within the world of phenomena
23811 awaiting discovery by spiritually gifted people is by no means a concept
23812 exclusive to the Nyingma School or Tibetan Buddhism as a whole. Throughout
23813 Buddhist literature there are numerous descriptions of teachings being
23814 inherently present in the phenomenal world ready to be perceived by
23815 individuals possessing inspired levels of consciousness and, accordingly,
23816 spiritual revelations have surfaced on numerous occasions throughout the
23817 course of Buddhist history.
23818 -- Andreas Doctor, in "Tibetan Treasure Literature: Revelation, Tradition,
23819 and Accomplishment in Visionary Buddhism", Snow Lion Publications
23821 Patricia Churchland: But do you think that there is something, I am not sure
23822 what to call it--a kind of awareness that can exist independently of the
23823 brain? For example, something that survives death?
23825 Dalai Lama: Generally speaking, awareness, in the sense of our familiar, day-
23826 to-day mental processes, does not exist apart from or independent of the
23827 brain, according to the Buddhist view. But Buddhism holds that the cause of
23828 this awareness is to be found in a preceding continuum of awareness, and that
23829 is why one speaks of a stream of awareness from one life to another. Whence
23830 does this awareness arise initially? It must arise fundamentally not from a
23831 physical base but from a preceding continuum of awareness.
23833 The continuum of awareness that conjoins with the fetus does not depend upon
23834 the brain. There are some documented cases of advanced practitioners whose
23835 bodies, after death, escape what happens to everyone else and do not decompose
23836 for some time--for two or three weeks or even longer. The awareness that
23837 finally leaves their body is a primordial awareness that is not dependent upon
23838 the body. There have been many accounts in the past of advanced practitioners
23839 remaining in meditation in this subtle state of consciousness when they died,
23840 and decomposition of their body was postponed although the body remained at
23842 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
23843 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara
23844 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, Snow Lion
23847 The real source of my suffering is self-centeredness: my car, my possession,
23848 my well-being. Without the self-centeredness, the suffering would not arise.
23849 What would happen instead? It is important to imagine this fully and to focus
23850 on examples of your own. Think of some misfortune that makes you want to lash
23851 out, that gives rise to anger or misery. Then imagine how you might respond
23852 without suffering. Recognize that we need not experience the misery, let
23853 alone the anger, resentment, and hostility. The choice is ours.
23855 Let's continue with the previous example. You see that there is a dent in the
23856 car. What needs to be done? Get the other driver's license number, notify
23857 the police, contact the insurance agency, deal with all the details. Simply
23858 do it and accept it. Accept it gladly as a way to strengthen your mind
23859 further, to develop patience and the armor of forbearance. There is no way to
23860 become a Buddha and remain a vulnerable wimp. Patience does not suddenly
23861 appear as a bonus after full enlightenment. Part of the whole process of
23862 awakening is to develop greater forbearance and equanimity in adversity.
23863 Santideva, in the sixth chapter of his Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life,
23864 eloquently points out that there is no way to develop patience without
23865 encountering adversity, and patience is indispensable for our own growth on
23866 the path to awakening.
23867 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
23868 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
23870 In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. -- Aristotle
23872 Now the kilt was only for day-to-day wear. In battle, we donned a full-length
23873 ball gown covered in sequins. The idea was to blind your opponent with luxury.
23874 -- Groundskeeper Willie
23876 Dayata (Om) Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha.
23878 A mantra is that which protects the mind. Through this mantra, which is the
23879 perfection of wisdom itself, we can overcome the demon of ignorance that
23880 possesses us and find unsurpassable happiness. It protects the minds of those
23881 who practice it from all fears and describes how to make the transition from
23882 worldly existence to the supreme state beyond sorrow. It is a mantra of great
23883 knowledge because it saves us from the poison of ignorance and its imprints.
23884 It is an unsurpassable mantra because it frees us from suffering and its
23885 causes as no other path of insight can. The incomparable is the state beyond
23886 suffering. Since it helps us to attain that state, it is comparable to the
23887 incomparable. It totally pacifies suffering because it rids us of all the
23888 troubles of the world and their causes. The world here refers to ordinary
23889 beings like us. Our troubles are many but foremost are birth, aging,
23890 sickness, and death. This mantra does not deceive us and it is true because
23891 wisdom sees things as they actually are without any error or deception. It is
23892 therefore transcendent.
23893 -- from "The Heart Sutra: An Oral Teaching by Geshe Sonam Rinchen",
23894 translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
23896 I am interested not in converting other people to Buddhism but in how we
23897 Buddhists can contribute to human society, according to our own ideas. I
23898 believe that other religious faiths also think in a similar way, seeking to
23899 contribute to the common aim....
23901 Just as Buddha showed an example of contentment, tolerance, and serving others
23902 without selfish motivation, so did Jesus Christ. Almost all of the great
23903 teachers lived a saintly life--not luxuriously like kings or emperors but as
23904 simple human beings. Their inner strength was tremendous, limitless, but the
23905 external appearance was of contentment with a simple way of life.
23907 ...the motivation of all religious practice is similar--love, sincerity,
23908 honesty. The way of life of practically all religious persons is contentment.
23909 The teachings of tolerance, love, and compassion are the same. A basic goal
23910 is the benefit of humankind--each type of system seeking in its own unique
23911 ways to improve human beings. If we put too much emphasis on our own
23912 philosophy, religion, or theory, are too attached to it, and try to impose it
23913 on other people, it makes trouble. Basically all the great teachers, such as
23914 Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, or Mohammed, founded their new teachings with a
23915 motivation of helping their fellow humans. They did not mean to gain anything
23916 for themselves nor to create more trouble or unrest in the world.
23918 Most important is that we respect each other and learn from each other those
23919 things that will enrich our own practice. Ever if all the systems are
23920 separate, since they each have the same goal, the study of each other is
23922 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness", compiled
23923 and edited by Sidney Piburn, published by Snow Lion Publications
23925 Our teacher, Sakyamuni Buddha, is one among the thousand Buddhas of this
23926 aeon. These Buddhas were not Buddhas from the beginning, but were once
23927 sentient beings like ourselves. How they came to be Buddhas is this.
23928 Of body and mind, mind is predominant, for body and speech are under the
23929 influence of the mind. Afflictions such as desire do not contaminate the
23930 nature of the mind, for the nature of the mind is pure, uncontaminated by any
23931 taint. Afflictions are peripheral factors of a mind, and through gradually
23932 transforming all types of defects, such as these afflictions, the adventitious
23933 taints can be completely removed. This state of complete purification is
23934 Buddhahood; therefore, Buddhists do not assert that there is any Buddha who
23935 has been enlightened from the beginning.
23936 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Buddhism of Tibet: The Dalai Lama",
23937 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion
23940 ...everbody thinks that compassion is important, and everyone has
23941 compassion. True enough, but the Buddha gave uncommon quintessential
23942 instructions when he taught the methods for cultivating compassion, and the
23943 differences are extraordinarily important.
23944 Generally, everyone feels compassion, but the compassion is flawed. In
23945 what way? We measure it out. For instance, some feel compassion for human
23946 beings but not for animals and other types of sentient beings. Others feel
23947 compassion for animals and some other types of sentient beings but not for
23948 humans. Others, who feel compassion for human beings, feel compassion for the
23949 human beings of their own country but not for the human beings of other
23950 countries. Then, some feel compassion for their friends but not for anyone
23951 else. Thus, it seems that we draw a line somewhere. We feel compassion for
23952 those on one side of the line but not for those on the other side of the line.
23953 We feel compassion for one group but not for another. That is where our
23954 compassion is flawed. What did the Buddha say about that? It is not
23955 necessary to draw that line. Nor is it suitable. Everyone wants compassion,
23956 and we can extend our compassion to everyone.
23957 -- Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, in "Lectures on Kamalashila's 'Stages of
23958 Meditation in the Middle Way School' ", translated by Jules B. Levinson,
23959 published by Snow Lion Publications
23961 4. Seven-Limbed Practice
23963 The seven parts of the practice are encompassed by two practices--the
23964 purification of negativities and the enhancing of the store of merit. When
23965 you engage in the practice, it is very important to understand that each and
23966 every one of the seven limbs has its individual purpose and significance, and
23967 only with such knowledge can you engage properly in the practice. The seven
23968 limbs are: prostration, offering, confession, rejoicing, requesting to turn
23969 the wheel of the dharma, entreating not to enter into nirvana, and dedication
23971 ...For the practice of confession, which is the third of the seven limbs,
23972 it is very important to have the factor of regret; without this factor there
23973 is no possibility of purifying the negativities.... The great yogi Milarepa
23974 said: "When I examined whether or not confession could purify the
23975 negativities, I found that it is regret that cleanses them." In order to
23976 generate regret, it is important to see the destructive nature of negative
23977 actions and also to understand the law of causality.
23978 Based on a disciplined mind, we experience happiness; based on an
23979 undisciplined, untamed mind, we undergo suffering. We should think that if we
23980 are not able to make any progress from our present state of mind, which always
23981 indulges in negative thoughts, there is not much hope for us. So, if we are
23982 able to think in such terms, we will be able to really see the destructive
23983 nature of negative actions, and also that the store of negative actions that
23984 we have is inexhaustible, like a rich person's bank balance. Without the
23985 recognition of the destructive nature of the negative forces, we will never be
23986 able to develop the deep factor of regret from the depth of our hearts.
23987 If we do not engage in a proper practice of dharma, it seems that we may
23988 expend all our store of merit in mundane pleasures. It is very important to
23989 have this faculty of regret in our practice of purification and confession.
23990 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), in "The Path to Bliss: A Practical
23991 Guide to Stages of Meditation", translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa,
23992 edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
23994 9. Glorious Lama (excerpt)
23996 ...Those with faith have a refuge.
23997 Those with compassion have an altruistic attitude.
23998 Those with incisive knowledge have realization.
23999 Those with respect and devotion have blessings.
24001 Those with shame avoid carelessness.
24002 Those who avoid carelessness have a guarded mind.
24003 Those who have a guarded mind have vows and samaya.
24004 Those who have vows and samaya have spiritual attainments.
24006 Calm and self-control are signs of listening to the Dharma;
24007 Few passions, signs of meditation;
24008 Harmony with everyone is the sign of a practitioner;
24009 Your mind at ease, the sign of accomplishment.
24011 The root of phenomena is your own mind.
24012 If you tame your mind, you are a practitioner.
24013 If you are a practitioner, your mind is tamed.
24014 When your mind is tamed, that is liberation.
24015 -- Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, in "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart
24016 Advice", translated by Ron Garry, published by Snow Lion Publications
24018 The Special Features of Dzogchen
24020 In the early translation school of the Nyingma, a system of nine yanas is
24021 taught. Three of these--the paths of the Sravaka, pratyekabuddha, and
24022 bodhisattva--constitute the sutra tradition, while the tantric tradition
24023 consists of six levels--the three outer tantras and the three inner tantras.
24024 The tradition of Dzogchen, or Atiyoga, is considered to be the pinnacle of
24025 these nine yanas. The other, lower, yanas are said to be philosophical
24026 systems that depend on ordinary consciousness, and so the path is based on
24027 that ordinary consciousness. Here the distinction being made is between
24028 ordinary mind--sem--and pure awareness--rigpa. The ninth yana, the most
24029 majestic, is beyond ordinary consciousness, for its path is based on rigpa,
24030 not on the ordinary mind.
24031 Throughout beginningless time, there has always been present, within us
24032 all, a pure awareness--that in-dwelling rigpa which in Atiyoga is evoked in
24033 all its nakedness, and which constitutes the practice.
24034 ...The ground for all the phenomena of samsara and nirvana is the
24035 fundamental innate mind of clear light, and these phenomena are its radiance
24036 or display. While we are following the path, in order for all the impure
24037 aspects of our experience to be purified on the basis of that rigpa--or, you
24038 can say, that fundamental innate mind of clear light--there is no other means
24039 apart from that fundamental and innate state itself, which is therefore the
24040 very essence of the path. Finally, when the fruition is made fully evident,
24041 it is just this fundamental innate mind of clear light itself, free from
24042 obscuration, that constitutes the attainment of fruition.
24043 ...Any given state of consciousness is permeated by the clear light of
24044 rigpa's pure awareness. However solid ice may be, it never loses its true
24045 nature, which is water. In the same way, even very obvious concepts... arise
24046 within the expanse of rigpa and that is where they dissolve. On this point,
24047 Dodrupchen Jikme Tenpe Nyima says that all objects of knowledge are permeated
24048 by clear light, just as a sesame seed is permeated by its oil. Therefore,
24049 even while the coarser states of the six consciousnesses are functioning,
24050 their subtle aspect--that of clear light--can be directly introduced by means
24051 of those states themselves, through blessings and through pith instructions.
24052 Here lies the extraordinary and profound implication of the Dzogchen
24053 teachings. When you are basing your path on the fundamental innate mind of
24054 clear light, you will employ skilful means to block the coarse and subtle
24055 states of energy and mind, as a result of which the state of clear light
24056 becomes evident, and on this you base your path. But in Dzogchen, even while
24057 the six consciousnesses are fully functioning, by means of those very states
24058 you can be directly introduced to their subtle aspect of clear light in your
24059 immediate experience, and you then meditate by focusing one-pointedly on that
24060 aspect. As you meditate in this way, resting in this non-conceptual state,
24061 gradually your experience of clear light becomes increasingly profound, while
24062 coarser thoughts and concepts dwindle away.
24063 The most difficult task is to differentiate between ordinary mind and
24064 rigpa. It is easy enough to talk about it. You can say, for example, that
24065 rigpa has never been confused, while ordinary mind has fallen under the
24066 influence of concepts and is mired in confusion. But to be introduced to the
24067 direct experience of the essence of rigpa is far from being easy. And so
24068 Dodrupchen says that although your arrogance might be such that you assume you
24069 are meditating on the ultimate meaning of rigpa, there is a danger that "you
24070 could end up meditating on the clear, empty qualities of your ordinary mind,
24071 which even non-Buddhist practitioners are capable of doing." He is warning us
24073 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
24074 Perfection", translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa and Richard Barron
24075 (Chokyi Nyima), edited by Patrick Gaffney, pub. by Snow Lion Publications
24077 Patience is like a beautiful ornament. When you become a person with
24078 great patience, it brings a certain element of charm to your life. You are
24079 loved by others, and you give no problems to your friends. You bring an
24080 element of joy, happiness, and calmness to other people's lives--your friends,
24081 your family, and the community. You do not have to ask to be accepted;
24082 everyone longs for your presence. Everyone looks up to you and respects you,
24083 not because you have worked for that or expected it, not because you were
24084 competing for their favor, but simply because of the nature of patience. You
24085 are respected and trusted, and you acquire dignity with the practice of
24086 patience. When you are honored, it is with sincerity, and it is something you
24088 ...Just hearing about patience does not mean you are experiencing it now
24089 or will easily develop it. To lay the ground for training the mind, you must
24090 first tame the mind. To tame the mind, it is extremely important to do the
24091 basic shamata [tranquility meditation, calm abiding] practice, which develops
24092 calmness and tranquility. Then you can add the practice of patience,
24093 understanding the benefits of patience and reminding yourself to take
24094 advantage of the available antidotes.
24095 -- Ven. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, in "Dharma Paths", translated by Ngodup
24096 Burkhar and Chojor Radha, edited by Laura M. Roth, published by Snow Lion
24099 No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of
24100 policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
24103 We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
24104 -- Winston Churchill
24106 If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good
24107 education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave
24108 to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content
24109 itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children,
24110 and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay
24114 First, God created idiots.
24115 That was just for practice.
24116 Then He created school boards.
24119 Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right course,
24120 we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our time in
24121 training up children to things, for which, by their natural constitution,
24122 they are totally unfit.
24125 There are two types of education...
24126 One should teach us how to make a living,
24127 And the other how to live.
24130 We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or
24131 fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly full of words and
24132 do not know a thing.
24133 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
24135 The Sanskrit word for compassion, karuna, has the implication of "that
24136 which blocks or prevents bliss." In general, when we develop compassion, we
24137 develop very strongly the attitude that cannot bear the suffering of other
24138 beings. We wish for it to end and for them to become free. Although we do
24139 not actually experience others' suffering at that time, the strength of the
24140 attitude that cannot bear their suffering causes our mind also to become
24141 unhappy. This is the general sense in which compassion blocks bliss....
24142 Only the power of a union of method and wisdom--namely the union of
24143 compassion, as a greatly blissful awareness, and the discriminating awareness
24144 of voidness--allows us to attain the total release of supreme nirvana, namely
24146 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra", with
24147 Alexander Berzin, published by Snow Lion Publications
24149 There is a tradition of reciting prayers of request to the spiritual
24150 teachers of the lineage at the beginning of each study session, starting with
24151 the Buddha Shakyamuni and ending with our own personal teachers. What do we
24152 request? As we chant each verse, we take to mind the inspiring qualities of
24153 the great masters mentioned in it and ask them to bless us to develop
24154 compassion, wisdom and power similar to their own. Blessings are experienced
24155 in the form of a transformation which affects our body, speech and mind. Our
24156 mind becomes more serviceable and flexible, our way of speaking and acting
24157 more constructive. We become more open to the message of how to bring about
24158 inner transformation that has been handed down through this long line of
24159 spiritual teachers.
24160 Our teachers pass on the instructions they have received from their own
24161 teachers, the knowledge they have culled from their reading and everything
24162 they have understood and experienced as a result of their personal practice,
24163 without holding anything back. They are motivated by compassion and their
24164 deep wish to help us. To communicate it to us they choose whatever means are
24165 most effective--sometimes stern, sometimes gentle. This process must take
24166 place in an atmosphere of mutual trust, something very rare in relationships
24167 today. In the past the relationship between students and teachers was even
24168 closer and more trusting than that between siblings--and in Tibet brothers and
24169 sisters generally enjoyed a close and loving bond. Today this is a dying
24170 tradition, yet a good relationship between student and teacher is vital even
24171 for the communication of secular knowledge, let alone where spiritual wisdom
24173 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, in "Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment: An
24174 Oral Teaching", translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow
24177 We have happiness of mind and freedom from anxiety to just the degree that
24178 our minds are tamed.... Once we want happiness and do not want suffering, we
24179 should engage in the means to achieve happiness and eliminate suffering.
24180 Practice is based on reasoning, not force; it is up to oneself.
24181 The time for engaging in these techniques is now. Some feel, "I did not
24182 succeed in this lifetime; I will ask a lama for help in my future life." To
24183 think that we will practise in the future is only a hope. It is foolish to
24184 feel that the next life will be as suitable as this. No matter how bad our
24185 condition is now, since we have a human brain, we can think; since we have a
24186 mouth, we can recite mantra. No matter how old one may be, there is time for
24187 practice. However, when we die and are reborn, we are unable even to recite
24188 om mani padme hum. Thus, it is important to make all effort possible at this
24189 time when we have obtained the precious physical life-support of a human.
24190 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Hopkins, in "Deity Yoga: In Action and
24191 Performance Tantra by Tsong-ka-pa", published by Snow Lion Publications
24193 How would we feel if one of our children was overpowered by a serious disease
24194 and did some terrible things without knowing what he or she was doing? We
24195 should try to view someone dear who suddenly hurts us in the same light. If
24196 we can see that person is out of control and sick with negative emotions, we
24197 will not feel so much hatred and disgust. There may be resentment, and we may
24198 not be able to love that person more than before, but almost automatically
24199 there will be a certain sympathy that will lessen or end our hatred and allow
24201 -- Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, in "Daring Steps Toward Fearlessness: The Three
24202 Vehicles of Buddhism", edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs, published
24203 by Snow Lion Publications
24205 Compassion is a theme the Dalai Lama returns to over and over again. I
24206 also know he has meditated on compassion every morning without fail for the
24207 past half century. In an interview, I asked the Dalai Lama to give me his
24208 take on compassion. Lhakdor [his translator], as usual, was by his side.
24209 "Compassion is something like a sense of caring, a sense of concern for
24210 others' difficulties and pain," the Dalai Lama said. "Not only family and
24211 friends, but all other people. Enemies also. Now, if we really analyze our
24212 feelings, one thing becomes clear. If we think only of ourselves, forget
24213 about other people, then our minds occupy a very small area. Inside that
24214 small area, even a tiny problem appears very big. But the moment you develop
24215 a sense of concern for others, you realize that, just like ourselves, they
24216 also want happiness; they also want satisfaction. When you have this sense of
24217 concern, your mind automatically widens. At this point, your own problems,
24218 even big problems, will not be so significant. The result? Big increase in
24219 peace of mind. So, if you think only of yourself, only your own happiness,
24220 the result is actually less happiness. You get more anxiety, more fear."
24221 "I was thirty-two years old when I developed a strong experience of
24222 compassion," he told me.... "Often when I reflect on the meaning and benefits
24223 of altruistic mind, tears came." Lhakdor translated: "...When he meditated on
24224 compassion, he would sometimes be filled with joy and appreciation. And there
24225 is a strong sense of concern for others accompanied by a feeling of
24226 sadness.... And when His Holiness reflected on certain profound explanations
24227 on emptiness, this would also trigger a strong emotion."
24228 "I think that strong conviction or strong emotions actually give more
24229 inner strength," the Dalai Lama explained. "So when I face some problems or
24230 criticism, for example, criticism from the Chinese, of course, little
24231 irritation sometimes..." "But then he'll have this feeling of compassion for
24232 them," Lhakdor translated. "He'll regret they're not making positive
24233 connection with him. But his sentiment is, although there is this negativity,
24234 may it also give positive fruit."
24235 "Now, the understanding of emptiness helps a lot toward developing
24236 compassion. There's no doubt it reinforces compassion," the Dalai Lama said.
24237 Lhakdor elaborated: "Emptiness allows us to have an understanding about
24238 ultimate reality. It helps us to appreciate the wisdom of interdependence--a
24239 fundamental law of nature. We gain an appreciation that we are all basically
24240 related. It is because of this interrelatedness that we are able to empathize
24241 with the suffering of others. With empathy, compassion flows naturally. We
24242 develop genuine sympathy for others' suffering and the will to help remove
24243 their pain. Emptiness thus strengthens positive emotions like compassion."
24244 Emptiness and compassion. Wisdom and method. These are the twin pillars
24245 of the Dalai Lama's practice--everything we need to know about spiritual
24246 practice. Both qualities are needed; they strengthen each other. Once we
24247 realize we are all interconnected, it is difficut not to feel some of
24248 compassion for the problems of our fellow human beings. And once we come by
24249 a feeling of compassion, we start to get a glimpse of the timeless truth of
24250 interdependence, of emptiness.
24251 The Dalai Lama looked thoughtful. After some time, he turned to me, "I
24252 think one thing I'm quite sure," he said. "I can tell you, the twin practice
24253 of emptiness and compassion is... effective." Then he lapsed into Tibetan
24254 again. Lhakdor translated. "His Holiness can say with conviction: if you
24255 meditate on emptiness and compassion, so long as you make the effort, then His
24256 Holiness is sure that, day in and day out, you will get tangible benefit.
24257 Your whole attitude will change." "....These things about compassion are
24258 something living--according to my own experience," the Dalai Lama went on. "I
24259 tell some of my experiences to other people, share some of my feelings, then
24260 other people understand: there is something real, something living."
24261 -- from "The Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys by"
24262 His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, published by Snow Lion
24265 ...it is difficult to recognize an authentic teacher, because these
24266 qualities are internal. We can not depend upon external factors, but external
24267 factors are what we see. It is very difficult to see the inner qualities of
24268 another person. A businessman might be friendlier to us than our best friend,
24269 while his unseen motivation is merely to make a sale. Likewise, if a
24270 "teacher" acts in a very kind and loving manner towards us it does not
24271 necessarily mean that he is compassionate and selfless, because we cannot see
24272 his motivation. We also cannot determine a teacher's qualifications based
24273 upon her fame, or whether she has thousands of students. So the seeker is
24274 left with this paradox.
24275 There is no simple solution, but there are things we can do. First, it is
24276 important that we familiarize ourselves with the characteristics* discussed by
24277 Kongtrul Rinpoche. Second, we must maintain awareness of our own motivation
24278 during the process of finding a teacher. Am I seeking a teacher in order to
24279 attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, or am I seeking
24280 to fulfill my need to acquire the prestige associated with a famous teacher,
24281 or am I merely attracted to a lama's beautiful retreat land or the social
24282 scene of a hip sangha, and so on.
24283 These motivations need to be acknowledged if we are to recognize an
24284 authentic wisdom teacher, because the teacher you find is related to your
24285 karma, and your karma is intimately connected to your motivation.
24286 Fortunately, there are methods that help us purify our motivation and create
24287 the proper conditions for finding a wisdom teacher, such as bringing our
24288 awareness to our motivations as much as possible, doing daily meditation
24289 practice, and praying to the Triple Gem [Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha] that we
24290 will meet and recognize an authentic wisdom teacher.
24291 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, in "The Teacher-Student Relationship: A
24292 Translation of 'The Explanation of the Master and Student Relationship,
24293 How to Follow the Master, and How to Teach and Listen to the Dharma' ",
24294 translated and introduced by Ron Garry, published by Snow Lion Pub.
24296 * "Whatever lama is followed must definitely have these qualities: He holds a
24297 pure lineage since he has not contradicted the commitments and prohibitions of
24298 the three vows.... He should be very learned... clear about the sutras,
24299 tantras, and shastras. His mind-stream should be so saturated with compassion
24300 that he loves all the limitless sentient beings as his only child. He should
24301 be expert in the outer tripitakas and on the inner level he should be expert
24302 in the ritual of the four classes of tantras of the secret mantra. He should
24303 have manifested the outstanding noble qualities of abandomnent and realization
24304 in his mind-stream by having relied upon practicing the meaning of this. He
24305 gathers fortunate disciples by the four ways of attracting: generosity,
24306 pleasant speech, his conduct should benefit others, and he should act in
24307 accord with the dharma."
24310 ...when we talk about the notion of self in Buddhism, it is important to bear
24311 in mind that there are different degrees or types. There are some types of
24312 sense of self which are not only to be cultivated but also to be reinforced
24313 and enhanced. For instance, in order to have a strong determination to seek
24314 Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, one needs a very strong
24315 sense of confidence, which is based upon a sense of commitment and courage.
24316 This requires a strong sense of self. Unless one has that identity or sense
24317 of self, one will not be able to develop the confidence and courage to
24318 strongly seek this aim. In addition, the doctrine of Buddha-nature gives us a
24319 lot of encouragement and confidence because we realize that there is this
24320 potential within us which will allow us to attain the perfection that we are
24321 seeking. However, there are different types of sense of self which are rooted
24322 in a belief in a permanent, solid, indivisible entity called "self" or "I."
24323 There is the belief that there is something very concrete or objective about
24324 this entity. This is a false notion of self which must be overcome.
24325 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience
24326 from a Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa,
24327 published by Snow Lion Publications
24329 ...by respecting and serving your teachers you exhaust karma whose effects you
24330 would otherwise experience in the miserable realms. Your action of serving
24331 the teacher expends these miserable effects and replaces them with only slight
24332 harm to your body and mind in this lifetime, either in actuality or in dreams.
24333 In addition, the benefits of respecting and serving your teachers are
24334 tremendous, such as a collection of virtue which surpasses even the roots of
24335 virtue that you derive from making offerings to limitless buddhas, and so
24336 forth. As the Sutra of Ksitigarbha says:
24337 "Those whom the teachers care for will purify the karma that would
24338 otherwise cause them to wander through the miserable realms for ten million
24339 limitless eons. They purify this karma with harm to their bodies and minds in
24340 this lifetime. This harm includes sickness such as an infectious disease with
24341 fever and calamities such as famine. They may purify their karma by merely
24342 undergoing something as little as a dream or a scolding. They produce more
24343 roots of virtue in one morning than those who give gifts to, worship, or
24344 observe precepts from limitless tens of millions of buddhas. Those who
24345 respect and serve their gurus are endowed with unimaginable good qualities."
24346 -- Tsong-kha-pa, in "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to
24347 Enlightenment: Lam Rim Chen Mo", translated by the Lamrim Chenmo
24348 Translation Committee under editorial guidance of Joshua Cutler and Guy
24349 Newland, foreword by Robert A.F. Thurman, Snow Lion Publications
24351 ...if we remain clinging to this life even for one day, we are misusing
24352 our time. In this way, we can waste months and years on end. Because we
24353 don't know when our lives will finish, we should remain mindful and well
24354 prepared. Then, even if we die tonight, we will do so without regret. If we
24355 die tonight, the purpose of being well prepared is borne out; if we don't die
24356 tonight, there is no harm in being well prepared, because it will still
24358 But when we leave the world of humans, we do so without a protector or
24359 supporter and the total responsibility falls on us. We only have our own
24360 intelligence to rely on at that time, so we must expend our own effort in
24361 order to protect ourselves. As the Buddha said, "I have shown you the path to
24362 liberation; know that liberation depends on you." We must put strenuous effort
24363 into gaining freedom from the lower migrations, liberation from samsara,
24364 freedom from conventional existence and solitary salvation.
24365 The body is compared to a guest house; it is a place to stay for just a
24366 short time and not permanently. At present, the guest of consciousness is
24367 staying in the guest house of the body, like renting a place to stay. When
24368 the day comes for consciousness to leave, the guest house of the body must be
24369 left behind. Not being attached to friends, the body, wealth and possessions
24370 is the practice of the Bodhisattvas.
24371 -- His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, in "The Heart of Compassion: A Practical
24372 Approach to a Meaningful Life"
24374 ...the Transcendent Conqueror presented the two truths with respect to all
24375 inner and outer things, like sprouts and everything else. Genuine truth is
24376 described as being simply the authentic object of the noble ones' original
24377 wisdom that sees what is authentic and true; there is no identity actually
24378 established there for conceptual mind to find. Relative truth is the false
24379 object seen from the perspective of the conceptual mind whose eye of wisdom is
24380 completely covered by the cataract of ignorance, as is the case with ordinary
24381 beings. It is therefore posited as being this conceptual mind. The object
24382 perceived does not exist in the way that this mind perceives it to be.
24383 Thus, the Teacher explained that every thing found holds two natures
24384 within: a genuine nature and a relative one. From among these two, the object
24385 of the noble ones' authentic vision is the precise nature of reality, genuine
24386 truth, and the object of false seeing is relative truth.
24387 -- Chandrakirti, in "The Moon of Wisdom: Chapter Six of Chandrakirti's
24388 'Entering the Middle Way' with Commentary from the Eighth Karmapa Mikyo
24389 Dorje's 'Chariot of the Dagpo Kagyu Siddhas', translated by Ari Goldfield,
24390 Jules Levinson, Jim Scott and Birgit Scott under guidance of Khenpo
24391 Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
24393 ...we find Agastya, born to a family of Brahmans so illustrious as to be
24394 called "an ornament of the earth," living as an ascetic on the island of Kara
24395 in the Indian Ocean.... "On what accomplishment have you set your hopes?"
24396 Indra asked Agastya the Bodhisattva. "What is the object of your wishes that
24397 has led you to leave your sorrowful friends and relatives, desert a household
24398 and possessions that had been your happiness, and enter this way of life that
24399 destroys all pleasures?"
24400 The Bodhisattva replied according to the Dharma, in a way that immediately
24401 laid Indra's anxiety to rest. "Repeated births tend to great sorrow," he
24402 said. "So do the calamities of old age, sickness and death. All are just a
24403 disturbance to the mind. My vow is to save all sentient beings from these
24405 Relieved, Indra immediately offered, in return for such candid truth, the
24406 fulfillment of any desire Agastya might name. "May the fire of covetousness
24407 that burns insatiably even after obtaining a beloved wife, children, power and
24408 riches never enter my heart," Agastya said. "Excellent, excellent," applauded
24409 Indra and urged Agastya to request the fulfillment of still another desire.
24410 "May the fire of hatred burn far from me," Agastya said. Pleased by this
24411 game, in which Agastya so ingeniously taught the Dharma while appearing to
24412 request the fulfillment of his desires, Indra urged him to go on. But this
24413 time he was startled to hear Agastya's words. "May I never hear, see, speak
24414 to, nor endure the annoyance and pain of staying with a fool," Agastya said.
24415 "What do you mean?" Indra asked. "Those in distress deserve sympathy; the
24416 root of distress is foolishness. How can you claim to be compassionate when
24417 you abhor the very presence of those most due sympathy?"
24418 Then Agastya reasoned in this way, to prove to Indra that one should
24419 associate not with the foolish but with men of wisdom. "A fool cannot be
24420 cured even by medical treatment," he said. "Habituated to wrong conduct
24421 because of a deficiency in moral education, he urges his neighbors to follow
24422 his impetuous way, inflamed by self-conceit and the affectation of wisdom.
24423 When reprimanded, he becomes angry. There is no help for him." "How true,"
24424 Indra said. "Let me hear more jewellike, well spoken sentences."
24425 "May I see, hear, live with and converse with a wise man," Agastya said,
24426 "for these reasons: because the wise man, walking the path of virtue, draws
24427 others along with him, and is never roused to impatience by harsh words spoken
24428 for his own good." Again Indra was delighted.
24429 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries by His Holiness the
24430 Dalai Lama XIV on the Jatakamala Garland of Birth Stories", translated by
24433 (2) What one has to abandon: how to get rid of arrogance by means of an
24435 "I'm not beyond my karma, the deeds I've done;
24436 I'll still fall ill, age, die, and leave my friends."
24437 Think like this again and yet again
24438 And with this remedy avoid all arrogance.
24439 "I will be sick, I will grow old, I will die, I will be separated from those
24440 I love, my relations and so forth. In such manner, the fully ripened effect
24441 of my actions will come to me and to no one else, and I am therefore not above
24442 depending on what I did in former lives." To think like this again and again
24443 is the antidote to such things as arrogance: make every effort not to become
24444 arrogant by meditating on this antidote.
24445 -- "Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche
24446 by Nagarjuna", translated by the Padmakara Translation Group, published
24447 by Snow Lion Publications
24449 For every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness.
24450 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
24452 Inwardly, we defend against death by the very structure of our ego. Our ego
24453 claims to have the ability to provide us with happiness based on its belief in
24454 its own permanent existence. On the one hand, to believe in ego results in
24455 denying death. On the other, to accept death is to question the very nature
24456 of ego as a permanent, on-going structure and to confront very strong defense
24457 mechanisms. As a result, we have strong resistance to contemplating death.
24458 This resistance is also the same resistance that comes up when we meditate.
24459 Please recognize it for what it is and move on.
24460 -- Bruce Newman, in "A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism: Notes from a
24461 Practitioner's Journey", published by Snow Lion Publications
24463 Question: Could you please say something on the three kinds of suffering?
24465 His Holiness: One kind of suffering is like a headache or like yesterday's
24466 flu: discomfort in the nose, watery eyes, and so forth. In short, it includes
24467 all of those kinds of gross physical and mental sufferings that in ordinary
24468 parlance we usually call "suffering." This is the first category.
24470 Then the second category is as follows. When we feel hungry and begin to take
24471 food, at first we feel very happy. We take one mouthful, then two, three,
24472 four, five... eventually, though it is the same person, the same food, and
24473 the same time period, we begin to find the food objectionable and reject it.
24474 This is what is meant by the "suffering of change." Practically every worldly
24475 happiness and pleasure is in this second category. Compared to other forms of
24476 suffering, at the beginning these more subtle forms of suffering seem
24477 pleasurable; they seem to afford us some happiness, but this is not true or
24478 lasting happiness, for the more we become acquainted with them, the more
24479 involved we become with them, the more suffering and trouble they bring us.
24480 That is the second category.
24482 Now as for the third category, I think it is fair to say that it is one's own
24483 body. Roughly speaking, this is what it is. It is the body which is the
24484 fruit of afflictions, a body originally created by afflictions. Because the
24485 body is created by such causes, it is of the very nature of suffering. It
24486 comes to act as the basis of suffering. This, then, is the third category.
24487 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
24488 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications.
24490 One point I should make here is that some people, especially those who see
24491 themselves as very realistic and practical, are sometimes too realistic and
24492 obsessed with practicality. They may think, "The idea of wishing for the
24493 happiness of all beings, of wanting what is best for every single one, is
24494 unrealistic and too idealistic. Such an unrealistic idea cannot contribute in
24495 any way to transforming the mind or to attaining some kind of mental
24496 discipline, because it is completely unachievable."
24497 ...They feel there is simply no point in thinking about all beings since
24498 there is an infinite number of them. They may conceivably be able to feel
24499 some kind of connection with some fellow human beings on this planet, but they
24500 feel that the infinite number of beings throughout the universe has nothing to
24501 do with their own experience as individuals.
24502 ...What is important here, however, is to grasp the impact of cultivating
24503 such altruistic sentiments. The point is to try to develop the scope of our
24504 empathy in such a way that we can extend it to any form of life with the
24505 capacity to feel pain and experience happiness. It is a matter of recognizing
24506 living organisms as sentient, and therefore subject to pain and capable of
24508 ...Such a universal sentiment of compassion is very powerful, and there is
24509 no need to be able to identify, in specific terms, with every single living
24510 being in order for it to be effective.
24511 ...Given patience and time, it is within our power to develop this kind of
24512 universal compassion.
24513 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, in "The Compassionate Life",
24514 edited by David Kittelstrom, sponsored by Richard Gere and the Gere
24518 Different body postures open or compress particular energetic channels and
24519 influence the flow of subtle energy. We use this understanding to aid
24520 specific processes in the practice. The Tibetan tradition considers the
24521 negative emotions to be more closely associated with the primary channel on
24522 the right side of the body in men and on the left in women. When a man sleeps
24523 on his right side, the channel that carries mostly negative prana is forced a
24524 little closed and the left channel opens. Also the lung, the physical organ,
24525 on that side is a bit compressed so the opposite lung is a little more
24526 responsible for the breath. You are probably already familiar with effects
24527 from lying on your side: when you lie on your right side you find it easier to
24528 breathe through your left nostril. For men, we consider this position
24529 beneficial to the movement of the positive wisdom prana through the left
24530 channel. Women benefit from the reverse, opening the wisdom channel that is
24531 on their right side by sleeping on their left. This affects dreams in a
24532 positive fashion and makes the dream practice easier. Opening the flow of the
24533 wisdom prana is a provisional expedient, as ultimately we want the balanced
24534 prana to move into the central channel.
24535 Furthermore, by paying attention to posture, awareness is kept more stable
24536 during sleep. Where I come from, most people sleep on a three-foot by six-
24537 foot Tibetan carpet. If one moves too much, one falls out of bed. But that
24538 does not usually happen, because when one sleeps on something small, the
24539 position of the body is held in the sleeping mind throughout the night....
24540 Here, in the big beds of the West, the sleeper can rotate like the hands of a
24541 clock and not fall, but holding the position anyway will help maintain
24543 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep",
24544 edited by Mark Dahlby, published by Snow Lion Publications
24546 The term emptiness does not carry here any connotation of void or of absolute
24547 nothingness. It should be understood as the naturally open and serene state
24548 of the mind. Thus, to affirm the emptiness of phenomena does not in any way
24549 mean that they do not exist in the way that the horn of a hare or skyflowers
24550 do not exist. Instead, emptiness refers to the insight that, at the ultimate
24551 level, both interior phenomena--sensations, perceptions and the "I"--and
24552 exterior phenomena--all the appearances of the phenomenal world--have no real
24553 existence, although they do appear in different forms. The Heart Sutra
24554 summarizes this as follows:
24555 Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,
24556 Emptiness is not other than form,
24557 Form is not other than emptiness.
24558 -- Jerome Edou in "Machig Labdron and the Foundations of Chod", published
24559 by Snow Lion Publications
24561 Nonviolence does not mean that we remain indifferent to a problem. On the
24562 contrary, it is important to be fully engaged. However, we must behave in a
24563 way that does not benefit us alone. We must not harm the interests of others.
24564 Nonviolence therefore is not merely the absence of violence. It involves a
24565 sense of compassion and caring. It is almost a manifestation of compassion.
24566 I strongly believe that we must promote such a concept of nonviolence at the
24567 level of the family as well as at the national and international levels. Each
24568 individual has the ability to contribute to such compassionate nonviolence.
24569 How should we go about this? We can start with ourselves. We must try to
24570 develop greater perspective, looking at situations from all angles. Usually
24571 when we face problems, we look at them from our own point of view. We even
24572 sometimes deliberately ignore other aspects of a situation. This often leads
24573 to negative consequences. However, it is very important for us to have a
24574 broader perspective.
24575 We must come to realize that others are also part of our society. We can
24576 think of our society as a body, with arms and legs as parts of it. Of course,
24577 the arm is different from the leg; however, if something happens to the foot,
24578 the hand should reach down to help. Similarly, when something is wrong within
24579 our society, we must help.
24580 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday
24581 Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Khyongla Rato and
24584 According to Highest Yoga Tantra, some persons attain Buddhahood in one
24585 lifetime, and because these persons are not born with a body adorned with the
24586 major and minor marks they must achieve such a body through the practice of
24588 Meditation on oneself as undifferentiable from a deity is the special
24589 cause... for attaining Buddhahood. If one meditated only on emptiness and
24590 did not cultivate any method--either that of the Perfection or that of the
24591 Mantra Vehicle--one would fall to the fruit of a Hinayana Foe Destroyer. In
24592 order to attain the definite goodness of the highest achievement, Buddhahood,
24593 deity yoga is needed. Also, ...one must view one's body clearly as a divine
24594 body and train in the pride of being a deity. Without deity yoga the Mantra
24595 path is impossible; deity yoga is the essence of Mantra.
24596 -- H.H. Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, in "Tantra in Tibet",
24597 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Snow Lion Publications
24599 Often we see other sentient beings as hassles: "This mosquito is
24600 disturbing me. Those politicians are corrupt. Why can't my colleagues do
24601 their work correctly?" and so on. But when we see sentient beings as being
24602 more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel, our perspective completely
24603 changes. For example, when we look at a fly buzzing around, we train
24604 ourselves to think, "My enlightenment depends on that fly." This isn't
24605 fanciful thinking because, in fact, our enlightenment does depend on that fly.
24606 If that fly isn't included in our bodhicitta, then we don't have bodhicitta,
24607 and we won't receive the wonderful results of generating bodhicitta--the
24608 tremendous purification and creation of positive potential.
24609 Imagine training your mind so that when you look at every single living
24610 being, you think, "My enlightenment depends on that being. The drunk who just
24611 got on the bus--my enlightenment depends on him. The soldier in Iraq--my
24612 enlightenment depends on him. My brothers and sisters, the teller at the
24613 bank, the janitor at my workplace, the president of the United States, the
24614 suicide bombers in the Middle East, the slug in my garden, my eighth-grade
24615 boyfriend, the babysitter when I was a kid--my enlightenment depends on each
24616 of them." All sentient beings are actually that precious to us.
24617 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, in "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The
24618 Yoga Method of Chenrezig", published by Snow Lion Publications
24620 We think of ourselves as being the child of specific parents, as belonging
24621 to a certain gender and race, as a citizen of a specific nation, and as a
24622 member of a caste, class and community within that country, etc. Our
24623 identification with these transient reference points, be they racial,
24624 linguistic, cultural, conceptual, or gender-specific, can become lifelong love
24625 affairs, hate affairs, or guilt affairs. What Guru Rinpoche's birth
24626 symbolizes for me is the fact that, from the first moment, he recognized the
24627 unborn and undying nature of his mind, primordially pure awareness. He
24628 identified with that, rather than with his body, wherever it may have come
24629 from, be it a womb, a lotus, a stork, or a cabbage patch. Whatever physical,
24630 linguistic, or conceptual worlds he adopted, he wore as ephemeral ornaments on
24631 the infinite expanse of timeless awareness.
24632 ...Guru Rinpoche was not an individual who followed a spiritual path until
24633 illumination. He was an enlightened being who appeared in different guises
24634 entirely as a manifestation to help others, including the guise of an
24635 individual who followed the spiritual path.
24636 -- Ngawang Zangpo, in "Guru Rinpoche: His Life and Times", published by
24637 Snow Lion Publications
24639 ...if a person is experiencing some kind of mental dysfunction, it is
24640 frequently understood that the mind itself has become too withdrawn in upon
24641 itself, and that there is a corresponding physiological process involving the
24642 energies themselves, which are closely associated with consciousness, also
24643 entering into a dysfunctional state.
24644 So, in the Buddhist view, it can happen, for example, that one's mind will
24645 become depressed because of some environmental event. As a result of the mind
24646 becoming depressed, there is a chemical, maybe an electrochemical,
24647 transformation in the brain that has now occurred. The mental dysfunction
24648 will then be aggravated. When that happens, there is a further chemical
24649 response, which then avalanches upon itself.
24650 ...on occasion, without any special external event taking place, there can
24651 simply be a dysfunction or disruption in the balance of the elements within
24652 the body. In that event, the internal circumstances are the dominant,
24654 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, from "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
24655 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism," edited by Zara
24656 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, published by
24657 Snow Lion Publications
24659 We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.
24662 You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
24664 Enlightenment is not only... devoid of various types of contaminations,
24665 pollutions, suffering, and afflictive emotions... but is also free from
24666 various dualistic appearances. When you achieve such a state, you are
24667 unfettered from all elaborations in the form of subject-object duality and
24668 appearances of conventionality.
24669 You are free not because the subject-object duality or conventional
24670 appearances are objects of elimination in the sense that they are negative
24671 emotions. Rather, you are free because these elaborations cease to exist when
24672 you reach the state of enlightenment. In such a state, the mind of
24673 enlightenment or omniscience is such that it is totally merged with emptiness.
24674 To such a mind, no elaborations exist.
24675 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Many Ways to Nirvana: Reflections and
24676 Advice on Right Living", edited by Renuka Singh
24679 When we meditate, things from the past come up, and we have to work with
24680 them. We may remember times when we treated others horribly--hurting their
24681 feelings, deceiving them, repaying their kindness with spite, manipulating
24682 them, cheating them. While regret for these actions is appropriate and
24683 necessary to purify these karmas, we often fall into guilt and shame instead.
24684 Guilt and shame are obstacles to overcome on the path, because they keep us
24685 trapped in our self-centered melodrama entitled "How Bad I Am." Regret, on the
24686 other hand, realizes that we erred, leads us to purify, and motivates us to
24687 refrain from acting like that in the future.
24688 How do we counteract guilt and shame? One way is to recognize that the
24689 person who did that action no longer exists. You are different now. Is the
24690 person who did that action five years ago the same person you are now? If she
24691 were exactly the same person, you would still be doing the same action. The
24692 present "you" exists in a continuum from that person, but is not exactly the
24693 same as her. Look back at the person you were with compassion. You can
24694 understand the suffering and confusion she was experiencing that made her act
24696 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga
24697 Method of Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by
24698 Snow Lion Publications
24700 Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted,
24701 the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the
24702 voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil
24706 If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever
24707 that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered
24708 on a ten-foot chain.
24709 -- Adlai E. Stevenson
24711 Our relationship with our practice must be based on reason and common sense.
24712 The principal subject to be learned is the nature of the two levels of reality
24713 [conventional and ultimate], the stages of which can be approached through a
24714 combination of hearing, contemplation and meditation. It is very important
24715 always to remember contemplation, which is the analysis and investigation of
24716 the teachings through the use of reason. The two truths are speaking about
24717 reality, not some intellectual fabrication. To investigate the teaching
24718 critically is fully encouraged in the same way that medical students are
24719 encouraged to apply their theories to real life and thus to witness their
24720 validity.... Time may flow on, but the essential nature of the deeper
24721 problems and mysteries that human beings encounter in the course of their
24722 lives remains the same. Contemplation of the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni
24723 is merely contemplation of certain facets of reality, and it will cause to
24724 unfold within us a deeper understanding of ourselves, our minds, and the
24725 nature of our sense of being. As the teachings are merely pointing out key
24726 facts of life, facts that, if realized, cause one to evolve in wholesome
24727 directions, a critical investigation of them will only inspire trainees with
24728 confidence. Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any
24729 need to look back with confusion and doubt.
24730 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, in "The Path to Enlightenment", published by
24731 Snow Lion Publications
24733 b. Keeping bounteousness in mind
24735 Possessions are ephemeral and essenceless
24736 Know this and give them generously to monks,
24737 To brahmins, to the poor, and to your friends:
24738 Beyond there is no greater friend than gift.
24740 Having realized that possessions such as food are inconstant and fluctuate,
24741 that in changing and transforming they are devoid of essence, in order to make
24742 them meaningful try to use them properly, giving to those with good qualities
24743 (monks and brahmins), to those who suffer (the poor, the sick, and so forth),
24744 to those who help you (friends) and to those you venerate (spiritual teachers
24745 and parents). Even beyond the world there is no friend more sublime, more
24746 beneficial, than giving, because it gives rise directly and indirectly to
24747 ripened effects that are inexhaustible.
24749 -- Nagarjuna, "Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kangyur
24750 Rinpoche", translated by the Padmakara Translation Group, published by
24751 Snow Lion Publications
24753 A goloptious full-up pot, too,
24754 And I don't know where it's got to,
24755 No, I don't know where it's gone--
24757 -- A.A. Milne, "In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump"
24759 With a determination to accomplish
24760 The highest welfare for all sentient beings
24761 Who surpass even a wish-granting jewel
24762 I will learn to hold them supremely dear.
24764 Never mind neglecting other sentient beings, you should take them as a
24765 treasure through which temporary and final aims can be achieved and should
24766 cherish them one-pointedly. Others should be considered more dear, more
24767 important than yourself. Initially, it is in dependence upon sentient
24768 beings--others--that you generate the altruistic aspiration to highest
24769 enlightenment. In the middle, it is in relation to sentient beings that you
24770 increase this good mind higher and higher and practice the deeds of the path
24771 in order to achieve enlightenment. Finally, in the end, it is for the sake of
24772 sentient beings that you achieve Buddhahood. Since sentient beings are the
24773 aim and basis of all of this marvelous development, they are more important
24774 than even a wish-granting jewel, and should always be treated with respect,
24775 kindness, and love.
24777 You might think, "My mind is so full of the afflictive emotions. How
24778 could I possibly do this?" However, the mind does what it is used to. What
24779 we are not used to, we find difficult, but with familiarity, previously
24780 difficult things become easy. Thus Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva
24783 "There is nothing which, with time, you cannot get used to."
24785 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness,
24786 Clarity, and Insight," edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins,
24787 co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
24789 Eventually, through the power of stabilizing meditation in which the
24790 mind is set one-pointedly on its object of observation, an initial mental
24791 pliancy--a serviceability of mind--is generated. As a sign that mental
24792 pliancy is about to be generated, a tingly sensation is felt at the top of the
24793 head. This pleasant feeling is compared to that of a warm hand placed on top
24794 of the head after it has been shaved. When mental pliancy has been generated,
24795 a favorable wind, or energy, circulates in the body, engendering physical
24796 pliancy. Through this wind, or air, pervading the entire body, the
24797 unserviceability of the body such that it cannot be directed to virtuous
24798 activities in accordance with your wishes is removed. The generation of
24799 physical pliancy, in turn, engenders a bliss of physical pliancy, a sense of
24800 comfort throughout the body due to the power of meditative stabilization.
24801 The bliss of physical pliancy induces a bliss of mental pliancy, making
24802 the mind blissful. At first, this joyous mental bliss is a little too
24803 buoyant, but then gradually it becomes more steady; at this point, one attains
24804 an unfluctuating pliancy. This marks attainment of a fully qualified
24805 meditative stabilization of calm abiding.
24806 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, in "Yoga
24807 Tantra: Paths to Magical Feats", published by Snow Lion Publications
24809 The more we generate an attitude of contentment in our lives, the happier
24810 we will be and the more open we will be to engage in genuine Dharma practice.
24811 Letting go of the eight worldly concerns brings mental peace right now.
24812 The defining characteristic of a thought or action being Dharma is whether
24813 or not we're attached to the happiness of this life. The eight worldly
24814 concerns are completely involved with attachment to the happiness of this
24815 life. How can we practice genuine Dharma when our self-centered mind is
24816 fixated on getting our own way and making everyone and everything around us
24817 suit our preferences and needs?
24818 That doesn't mean the happiness of this life is bad or wrong. The Buddha
24819 did not say that we should suffer in this life so that we'll get our reward in
24820 heaven. The objects we're attached to and have aversion for aren't the
24821 problem; there's nothing wrong with experiencing pleasure and happiness.
24822 Those aren't the issue. Rather, attachment to pleasant feelings and to the
24823 people, objects, and situations that cause them, and aversion to unpleasant
24824 ones--it is these emotions that create trouble. They make us unhappy and
24825 propel us to harm others in order to get what we want. The troublemakers of
24826 attachment and hostility are what we want to abandon, not people and things.
24827 There is nothing wrong with being happy. But when we're attached to it, we
24828 actually create more unhappiness for ourselves.
24829 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator",
24830 published by Snow Lion Publications
24832 When engaging in hearing, it is important to mix the mind, to familiarize the
24833 mind, with what is being heard. The study of religion is not like learning
24834 about history. It must be mixed with your mental continuum; your mind should
24835 be suffused with it. A sutra says that the practices are like a mirror; your
24836 actions of body, speech, and mind are like a face to be seen in the mirror;
24837 and through the practices you should recognize faults and gradually get rid of
24838 them. As it is said in the oral transmission, "If there is enough space
24839 between yourself and the practices for someone else to walk through, then you
24840 are not implementing them properly."
24841 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, in "Kindness,
24842 Clarity, and Insight", edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins,
24843 co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
24845 Question: What is the relationship of the mind and afflictive emotions?
24847 DL: The very entity of the mind, its nature of mere luminosity and knowing, is
24848 not polluted by defilements; they do not abide in the entity of the mind.
24849 Even when we generate afflictive emotions, the very entity or nature of the
24850 mind is still mere luminosity and knowing, and because of this we are able to
24851 remove the afflictive emotions. If you agitate the water in a pond, it
24852 becomes cloudy with mud; yet the very nature of the water itself is not dirty.
24853 When you allow it to become still again, the mud will settle, leaving the
24854 water pure. How are defilements removed? They are not removed by outside
24855 action, nor by leaving them as they are; they are removed by the power of
24856 antidotes, meditative antidotes.
24857 -- The Dalai Lama, "A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
24858 About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, published
24859 by Snow Lion Publications
24861 Every single sentient being wishes to be happy and free of suffering. By
24862 no means does Buddhism say this is wrong; rather, this is where we start from.
24863 The very root of this yearning for happiness, this yearning to be free of
24864 suffering, is the fundamental expression of the buddha-nature. If for the
24865 time being we turn our gaze away from the myriad ways that we can stray from
24866 the agenda--trying to find happiness by buying a more luxurious car, or a
24867 bigger house, or getting a better job--and just come back to the primary
24868 desire of wishing to be happy, we find at the very source of our yearning for
24869 happiness the buddha-nature wanting to realize itself. It's like a seed that
24870 wants to spring into the sunlight. Sometimes it gets terribly contorted, when
24871 we want to injure somebody else for the sake of our own happiness, but the
24872 fundamental yearning is something to be embraced.
24873 -- B. Alan Wallace, in "The Four Immeasurables: Cultivating a Boundless
24874 Heart", edited by Zara Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
24876 No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it
24877 by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
24878 -- George S. Patton
24880 When you meditate with concentration, there are three particular
24881 experiences that arise: bliss, clarity, and nonthought. Sometimes you feel
24882 great joy, sometimes your mind is very clear, and sometimes there is complete
24883 equanimity. To experience these you do not need to meditate for a long time,
24884 although for a beginner these experiences will not last long because of the
24885 limited ability of a beginner's meditation.
24886 The experience of meditative bliss is greater than ordinary worldly
24887 happiness. Sometimes when you are meditating, a feeling of blissfulness
24888 suddenly arises from the subtle state of your mind and pervades your entire
24889 body. This bliss is healthy and brings out your inner qualities. Some people
24890 use drugs to induce blissfulness and visions, but drugs are external supports
24891 that cannot bring lasting happiness. The bliss experienced in meditation can
24892 last for many days, according to your ability to meditate. When you
24893 experience this kind of bliss, on the outside you might look very poor, but
24894 inside you remain very joyful.
24895 The second main experience in meditation is clarity. Sometimes while
24896 meditating you can suddenly feel that your mind is very clear and bright.
24897 Even if you are meditating in the dark, you do not feel heavy or tired.
24898 Sometimes your body feels very light and your mind is very clear, and many
24899 kinds of reflections appear. Clarity brings great wisdom and the ability to
24900 read other people's minds, as well as to see your own past and future lives.
24901 The third main experience is nonthought, or a state of equanimity without
24902 distractions. Beginners can also experience this. Nonthought is more settled
24903 than the experiences of bliss and clarity. If you have thoughts, they
24904 suddenly dissolve and you can remain continuously in meditation. As your
24905 ability to meditate develops, your mind becomes more and more settled, so that
24906 you can meditate for one hour or one week or one month without being
24907 distracted by thoughts. You simply remain in the natural state for as long as
24909 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, in "Opening to Our
24910 Primordial Nature", edited by Ann Helm and Michael White, published by
24911 Snow Lion Publications
24913 ...when you probe deeply you will find that no matter how high an
24914 existence a realm may be, even though it may be the highest state of
24915 existence, as long as it is in this cycle of existence the beings there are in
24916 the nature of sufferings, because they have the sufferings of pervasive
24917 conditioning and are therefore under the influence or command of contaminated
24918 actions and delusions. As long as one is not able to be free from such an
24919 influence, there is no place for permanent peace or happiness.
24920 Generally, the experiences that you normally regard as pleasurable and
24921 happy, such as having the physical comfort of good facilities and so forth, if
24922 they are examined at a deeper level, will be revealed to be changeable and
24923 therefore in the nature of suffering. They provide you with temporary
24924 satisfaction; because of that temporary satisfaction you regard them as
24925 experiences of happiness. But if you keep on pursuing them, they will again
24926 lead to the experience of suffering. Most of these pleasurable experiences
24927 are not really happiness in the true sense of the word, but only appear as
24928 pleasure and happiness in comparison to the obvious sufferings that you have.
24929 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, in "Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide
24930 to Stages of Meditation", translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa, edited by
24931 Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
24933 Once the conventional nature of the mind has been identified, then,
24934 through analysing its nature, finally we will gradually be able to identify
24935 the ultimate nature of the mind. If that is done, there is great progress
24936 unlike anything else.
24937 At the beginning we should meditate for half an hour. When we rise from
24938 the session and various good and bad objects appear, benefit and harm are
24939 manifestly experienced. Therefore, we should develop as much as we can the
24940 realisation that these phenomena do not exist objectively and are mere
24941 dependent-arisings of appearances, like illusions [in that they only seem to
24942 be inherently existent]. We should meditate in this way in four formal
24943 sessions: at sunrise, in the morning, afternoon, and evening.
24944 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
24945 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
24947 Bodhichitta is the one practice we cannot do without. Even if we have been
24948 given the precious oral instructions on realizing the nature of mind, they
24949 will not be the sufficient cause for realization if we have not learned to
24950 generate Bodhichitta. The great Dzogchen yogi Patrul Rinpoche said,
24951 If we have only one thing, the precious Bodhichitta is enough.
24952 If we have nothing else, we must have the method of the precious
24954 We should learn to develop Bodhichitta in a twofold way: through our
24955 aspirations and through our actions. Aspiration Bodhichitta is our initial
24956 wish that all sentient beings be liberated from the vast ocean of samsara's
24957 suffering. Action Bodhichitta requires that we first generate aspiration
24958 Bodhichitta, and practice the Six Paramitas as the method to establish the two
24959 benefits of 1) attaining Buddhahood oneself to 2) be of ultimate benefit to
24960 others. The way to practice aspiration and action Bodhichitta was taught by
24961 the omniscient Patrul Rinpoche, who said,
24962 The instructions for aspiration [Bodhichitta] are to practice the
24963 Four Immeasurables;
24964 The instructions for action [Bodhichitta] are to practice the Paramitas.
24965 -- Anyen Rinpoche, "The Union of Dzogchen and Bodhichitta", translated by
24966 Allison Graboski, published by Snow Lion Publications
24968 What are the techniques for heightening or lowering the mind? To heighten
24969 the mind, you think about something that enlivens it, but not an object that
24970 would generate desire. For instance, you could reflect on the value of
24971 developing the meditative stabilization of calm abiding or on the value of
24972 having attained a life as a human or on the value of having human
24973 intelligence. Through such reflection, your mind will gain courage, thereby
24974 causing its mode of apprehension to become heightened.
24975 If, despite such a technique, laxity is not cleared away, it is better to
24976 end the session and go to a place that is bright or that is high with a vast
24977 view where you can see a great distance. Or, expose yourself to fresh air, or
24978 throw cold water on your face. Then, return to the session.
24979 When the mind becomes too heightened and thus scattered, what will lower
24980 its mode of apprehension? As a technique to withdraw the mind inside, you
24981 should reflect on a topic that sobers the mind, such as the suffering of
24982 cyclic existence, or think "In the past I have been ruined by distraction, and
24983 again now I will be ruined by distraction. If I do not take care now, it will
24984 not be good." This will lower the mode of apprehension of the mind.
24985 Since this is the case, a person who is cultivating calm abiding needs to
24986 be in a state where such reflections will move the mind immediately.
24987 Therefore, prior to working at achieving calm abiding, it is necessary to have
24988 become convinced about many topics--such as those involved in the four
24989 establishments in mindfulness--through a considerable amount of analysis. In
24990 an actual session of cultivating calm abiding one is performing stabilizing
24991 meditation, not analytical meditation, but if one has engaged in considerable
24992 analysis of these topics previously, the force of the previous reflection
24993 remains with the mind and can be recalled. Thus, when you switch to such
24994 topics in order either to elevate or lower the mind, the mind will be
24995 immediately affected. In this way, if ascertainment has been generated
24996 previously, then reflecting on the value of meditative stabilization or the
24997 value of a human lifetime will immediately heighten the mind, and reflection
24998 on sobering topics such as the nature of the body or the ugliness of objects
24999 of desire will immediately lower its mode of apprehension.
25000 ...recognize when laxity and excitement arise and know the techniques for
25002 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
25003 Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
25004 published by Snow Lion Publications
25006 How is it that mistaken mind overwhelms the unmistaken mind, unmistaken
25007 reality? To give an example, during the day when the sun is shining one does
25008 not see any stars and thus one would think that there are no stars at all,
25009 that they just plain do not exist. Just so, afflictive emotions shine so
25010 brightly and are so powerful that it is as if unmistaken reality, unmistaken
25011 mind, does not exist at all. When you seek out this unmistaken mind from
25012 within, you come to understand that there is an unmistaken mind--a reality of
25013 the mind--that does not die, that does not scurry after pleasure and pain.
25014 This mind that does not follow after pleasure and pain has a mode of being
25015 that is emptiness--but not an emptiness in the sense of an empty house or an
25016 empty vessel; rather, it is endowed with the inconceivable self-effulgence of
25017 unmistaken reality, of pristine wisdom.
25018 When you search for this that is beyond mistaken mind, mistaken mind just
25019 stops; gradually like dawn there comes to be a time when pristine wisdom
25020 manifests a little. With the beginning of dawn there is not just darkness but
25021 some light, and so it is when the self-effulgence, the self-color, the self-
25022 nature of the pristine wisdom shows itself a little; one generates a suspicion
25023 that there is wisdom beyond mistaken mind. As Aryadeva says, "When you
25024 generate doubt thinking that there might be such a reality, cyclic existence
25025 is torn to tatters." How does cyclic existence come to be torn to tatters, or
25026 wrecked, made into a mess by doubt? For instance, if a table is wrecked,
25027 broken up, it cannot perform the function of a table; just so, when the self-
25028 effulgence of unmistaken pristine wisdom begins to dawn with this state of
25029 doubt, cyclic existence is wrecked and torn to tatters.
25030 -- Mi-pam-gya-tso, in "Fundamental Mind: The Nyingma View of the Great
25031 Completeness", practical commentary by Khetsun Sangpo Rinbochay,
25032 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion
25035 The Jewel in the Crown Sutra states, "Donning the armor of loving-
25036 kindness, while abiding in the state of great compassion, practice
25037 meditative stabilization that actualizes the emptiness possessing
25038 the best of all qualities. What is the emptiness possessing the
25039 best of all qualities? It is that which is not divorced from
25040 generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditative stabilization,
25041 wisdom, or skillful means." Bodhisattvas must rely on virtuous
25042 practices like generosity as means to thoroughly ripen all sentient
25043 beings and in order to perfect the place, body, and manifold retinue.
25044 -- from "Stages of Meditation" by Kamalashila
25046 ...Note that practice of generosity and the other perfections is essential.
25047 This is because the fully enlightened state of Buddhahood is produced by the
25048 realization of favorable causes and conditions. There is no causeless
25049 production and nothing is produced by contrary causes. A Bodhisattva has many
25050 wonderful advantages to help enhance the welfare of sentient beings; every
25051 virtue performed by such a noble being is very powerful and effective.
25052 Therefore, Bodhisattvas earnestly engage in the practice of the method aspects
25053 of the path, including the six perfections, in order to swiftly actualize the
25054 state of Buddhahood.
25055 -- The Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", translated by Venerable Geshe
25056 Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell,
25057 published by Snow Lion Publications
25059 Of the three kayas, the Dharmakaya is linked to our mind, Sambhogakaya to
25060 our speech, or communicative principle, and the Nirmanakaya to our ordinary
25062 The process of the three blendings in brief is as follows.
25063 We experience the clear light of the waking state naturally during cIimax,
25064 and it can also be induced with yogic methods. Moreover, we naturally
25065 experience it at the moment of going to sleep, and at the moment of death.
25066 The principle here is that this clear light mind as experienced in each of the
25067 three occasions (waking, sleep and death) is the highest experience of our
25068 consciousness, and in it we dwell in a mental state of blissful, formless non-
25069 duality similar to that of the Dharmakaya wisdom of a buddha. Thus when we
25070 experience the clear light mind in any of these three occasions we should
25071 blend it with the Dharmakaya.
25072 The first movement from this clear light mind is likened to the
25073 Sambhogakaya experience. In the waking state this occurs in our meditation
25074 when we fall out of the clear light that is induced with yogic techniques and
25075 the conceptual mind is aroused. In sleep it occurs after the clear light of
25076 the moment of entering sleep passes and we begin to dream. At death it occurs
25077 when the clear light flash at the moment of death passes and we leave our body
25078 and enter the bardo realm.
25079 A buddha's Sambhogakaya is only visible to an arya, or saint, and not to
25080 an ordinary being; in the same way our thoughts, dreams, and bardo visions are
25081 not visible to ordinary beings but nonetheless are experiences of form. These
25082 subtle form experiences are to be linked to the natural realization of the
25083 illusory, blissful, and perfect nature of being; they are to be seen as an
25084 illusory theater made manifest for the benefit of the world. In other words,
25085 they are to be blended with the Sambhogakaya. This is the second set of three
25087 The third blending is that of blending rebirth with the Nirmanakaya.
25088 Rebirth from the bardo of the waking state occurs every time that we arise
25089 from a meditation session and once more go about our ordinary life; rebirth
25090 from the bardo of the sleep / dream state occurs when we wake up and once more
25091 enter the work-a-day world; and rebirth from the bardo of becoming, or death
25092 bardo, occurs when we complete the unwinding process of the afterlife state
25093 and once again are ready to enter into a new body.
25094 The basic principle underlying these three blendings is that what occurs
25095 to us at the time of death also occurs to us in miniature form at the time of
25096 going to sleep and can be induced in the waking state by means of the inner
25098 -- "Readings on the Six Yogas of Naropa," translated, edited and introduced
25099 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
25101 If you want to tell people the truth,
25103 otherwise they'll kill you.
25106 In the beginning there was nothing.
25107 God said, "Let there be light!"
25108 And there was light.
25109 There was still nothing,
25110 but you could see it a whole lot better.
25113 Now, as [in the past], the concept of a transcendent god as creator has a
25114 powerful and inspiring impact on the lives of those who believe in it. The
25115 sense that their entire destiny lies in the hands of an all-powerful,
25116 omniscient and compassionate being leads them to try to understand the
25117 workings and key message of this transcendent being. Then, when they come to
25118 realise that this transcendent being embodies love and infinite compassion,
25119 they try to cultivate love and compassion towards their fellow beings as the
25120 qualities through which to express love for their creator. They also gain
25121 confidence and inspiration through a sense of intimacy or connectedness to
25122 this loving, transcendent being.
25123 Although, metaphysically speaking, Buddhists reject any notion of a
25124 transcendent creator or god, some individual Buddhists do relate to certain
25125 higher beings, such as the goddess Tara, as an independent and real being with
25126 power over their destiny. For these practitioners Tara is their sole refuge,
25127 their greatest object of veneration and their trusted guardian and protector.
25128 What this suggests is that the inclination to seek refuge in an external
25129 source is something deeply natural for us as human beings.
25130 But it is also clear that for other people the metaphysical concept of a
25131 transcendent being is unacceptable. Questions form in their minds, such as:
25132 who created the creator--in other words--where does the transcendent being
25133 come from? And how can we posit a true beginning? People with this type of
25134 mental disposition look elsewhere for explanations.
25135 -- The Dalai Lama, in "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
25136 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
25138 Due to misunderstanding each other's needs and concerns, miscommunication
25139 occurs on the international level as well [as the personal level]. In all
25140 these situations--personal and international--freeing ourselves from our
25141 narrow understanding of a situation by seeing it from the other's viewpoint is
25142 an effective remedy for anger. We can ask ourselves, "If I had grown up in
25143 that person's family, society, time in history, and cultural conditions, what
25144 would my needs and concerns be in this situation?"
25145 When we look at the situation from the other person's viewpoint, sometimes
25146 we see that she perceives it differently than we thought she did. Other
25147 times, we realize that we have little idea of how a situation appears to
25148 another person or what her needs and concerns are. Therefore, we need to ask
25149 her; and when she responds, we need to listen, without interrupting. It is
25150 all too easy, when someone explains her view to us, to correct her or tell her
25151 that she should not feel the way she does. This only inflames the other
25152 person, and convinces her, with good reason, that we don't understand.
25153 Rather, we need to listen from our heart to what she says. After she has
25154 fully expressed herself, we can share our perspectives, and generally, a
25155 productive discussion will ensue.
25156 -- Thubten Chodron, in "Working with Anger", published by Snow Lion
25159 ...it is extremely important to look inward and try to promote the right
25160 kind of attitude, which is based on awareness of reality. A sense of caring
25161 for others is crucial. And it is actually the best way of caring for oneself.
25162 ...the moment you think of others, this automatically opens our inner door--
25163 you can communicate with other people easily, without any difficulties. The
25164 moment you think just of yourself and disregard others, then because of your
25165 own attitude, you also get the feeling that other people also have a similar
25166 attitude toward you. That brings suspicion, fear. Result? You yourself lose
25167 inner calmness. Therefore, I usually say that although a certain kind of
25168 selfishness is basically right--self and the happiness of that self are our
25169 original right, and we have every right to overcome suffering--but selfishness
25170 that leads to no hesitation to harm another, to exploit another, that kind of
25171 selfishness is blind. Therefore, I sometimes jokingly describe it this way:
25172 if we are going to be selfish, we should be wisely selfish rather than
25174 I feel that the moment you adopt a sense of caring for others, that brings
25175 inner strength. Inner strength brings us inner tranquility, more self-
25176 confidence. Through these attitudes, even though your surroundings may not be
25177 friendly or may not be positive, still you can sustain peace of mind.
25178 -- "The Art of Peace: Nobel Peace Laureates Discuss Human Rights,
25179 Conflict and Reconciliation", by the Dalai Lama and other Nobel
25180 Laureates, edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion
25182 If we do not uncover [our] problems--and I saw this in myself--we risk
25183 placing a veneer of spirituality over deeply buried emotional wounds from
25184 childhood that do not simply go away.
25185 ...When this happens there is greater potential for our spirituality to
25186 become simply another expression of our personal pathology. We can falsify
25187 the qualities valued in the path without realizing it. Renunciation can
25188 become another level of denial and avoidance; compassion can become a sickly
25189 sentimentality that has no substance to it. Our desire to help others can
25190 come from "compulsive caring," or a compulsion to sacrifice ourselves because
25191 we feel worthless. The Buddhist idea of emptiness can likewise be falsified
25192 by the desire to disappear psychologically and merge or lose ego boundaries.
25193 Lack of identity, formless vagueness, and absence of boundaries do not
25194 exemplify the Buddhist idea of emptiness. My own version of this
25195 misconception was to try to live an ideal of the pure and pious only to find
25196 it was a form of repression I could not ultimately sustain.
25197 At the heart of Buddhist practice is the search for a solution to our
25198 fundamental wounds. Healing the emotional damage we often carry within is
25199 truly the object of this practice. If we wish to resolve these problems, we
25200 need to be open and honest about their reality within us. Only when we do
25201 will any spiritual practice address what we need. The aim of Buddhist
25202 practice is not a spiritual transcendence that dissociates from our suffering.
25203 Nor is it the search for salvation in some form of external divine being that
25204 we hope will save us in our distress. As one of my teachers, Lama Thubten
25205 Yeshe, once said, "Buddhism is very practical; you just have to recognize that
25206 your mind is the cause of suffering. If you change your mind, you can find
25207 liberation." This message is very simple but by no means easy to follow. In
25208 order to do so, however, we must begin to recognize where we are
25209 psychologically wounded.
25210 -- Rob Preece, in "The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of
25211 Individuation in Buddhist Life", published by Snow Lion Publications
25214 In the Dzogchen teachings, a teacher explains methods that you can apply
25215 for discovering that state. When you say that you are practicing or following
25216 Dzogchen teachings, it doesn't mean that you are reciting some prayers or
25217 mantras, or doing some visualization. It means that, following a teacher and
25218 using methods, you discover that state. When you have discovered that state,
25219 then you still need many kinds of methods for realizing it. Discovering the
25220 state of your real nature and realizing it are completely different things.
25221 Many people have the idea that when they have had some experience or
25222 discovery, they are enlightened; however, this discovery does not mean they
25223 are enlightened. The state of enlightenment means you have direct knowledge
25224 of what the state of rigpa is, and you are not just learning through
25225 intellectual study. When you follow a teaching in an intellectual way, you
25226 have many ideas at first--thinking, judging, and making analysis. You can
25227 follow or reject these ideas; but when you have many problems, you discover
25228 that perhaps this is not real knowledge. It is like following something
25229 blindly because you haven't had any direct experience. Direct introduction
25230 and discovering our real nature mean we have direct experience through our
25231 senses, and that through these experiences we discover our real nature.
25232 For example, if I show you an object, you can look at it and know its form
25233 and color. Now if I ask you to forget about it, you can't. If I ask you to
25234 change your idea about that object, you can't. Why? Because seeing that
25235 object is your direct experience. Discovering your real nature is similar to
25237 When you are studying in an intellectual way, you are following another
25238 person's idea. For example, you can believe your teacher today, but maybe
25239 what your teacher says will not be true for you tomorrow. You can always
25240 change your ideas. You have this problem because you have not discovered your
25241 state. This is the weak point of intellectual study.
25242 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "Dzogchen Teachings", edited by Jim Valby and
25243 Adriano Clemente, published by Snow Lion Publications
25245 Howard Cutler: "Have there been situations in your life that you've
25247 Dalai Lama: "Oh, yes. Now for instance there was one older monk who lived
25248 as a hermit. He used to come to see me to receive teachings, although I think
25249 he was actually more accomplished than I and came to me as a sort of
25250 formality. Anyway, he came to me one day and asked me about doing a certain
25251 high-level esoteric practice. I remarked in a casual way that this would be a
25252 difficult practice and perhaps would be better undertaken by someone who was
25253 younger, that traditionally it was a practice that should be started in one's
25254 midteens. I later found out that the monk had killed himself in order to be
25255 reborn in a younger body to more effectively undertake the practice..."
25256 Surprised by this story, I remarked, "Oh, that's terrible! That must have
25257 been hard on you when you heard..." The Dalai Lama nodded sadly. "How did
25258 you deal with that feeling of regret? How did you eventually get rid of it?"
25259 The Dalai Lama silently considered for quite a while before replying, "I
25260 didn't get rid of it. It's still there. But even though that feeling of
25261 regret is still there, it isn't associated with a feeling of heaviness or a
25262 quality of pulling me back. It would not be helpful to anyone if I let that
25263 feeling of regret weigh me down, be simply a source of discouragement and
25264 depression with no purpose, or interfere with going on with my life to the
25265 best of my ability."
25266 At that moment, in a very visceral way, I was struck once again by the
25267 very real possibility of a human being's fully facing life's tragedies and
25268 responding emotionally, even with deep regret, but without indulging in
25269 excessive guilt or self-contempt. The possibility of a human being's wholly
25270 accepting herself or himself, complete with limitations, foibles, and lapses
25271 of judgment. The possibility of recognizing a bad situation for what it is
25272 and responding emotionally, but without overresponding. The Dalai Lama
25273 sincerely felt regret over the incident he described but carried his regret
25274 with dignity and grace. And while carrying this regret, he has not allowed it
25275 to weigh him down, choosing instead to move ahead and focus on helping others
25276 to the best of his ability.
25277 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., in "The Art of
25278 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
25280 Train yourself in three hard disciplines.
25281 These are the difficult practices of mindfulness, of expulsion and of
25282 'interrupting the flow.'
25283 As for the first of these, the difficult practice of mindfulness, it is
25284 necessary to recognize afflictive emotions as soon as they arise and it is
25285 hard, at first, to remain sufficiently aware to be able to do this. However,
25286 when negative emotions arise, we should identify them as anger, desire or
25287 stupidity. Even when emotions have been recognized, it is not easy to drive
25288 them out with the antidote. If, for instance, an uncontrollably strong
25289 emotion comes over us, so that we feel helplessly in its power, we should
25290 nevertheless confront it and question it. Where are its weapons? Where are
25291 its muscles? Where is its great army and its political strength? We will see
25292 that emotions are just insubstantial thoughts, by nature empty: they come from
25293 nowhere, they go nowhere, they remain nowhere. When we are able to repel our
25294 defiled emotions, there comes the difficult practice of 'interrupting the
25295 flow.' This means that, on the basis of the antidote described, defiled
25296 emotions are eliminated just like a bird flying through the air: no trace is
25297 left behind. These are practices in which we should really strive.
25298 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, in "Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the
25299 Seven-Point Mind Training", translated by The Padmakara Translation
25300 Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
25302 Howard Cutler: "...am I right in assuming that you would consider solitary
25303 meditation to be a productive activity? Would you consider to be productive
25304 our example of a monk who is a hermit, who has little contact with anybody
25305 else and spends his or her life just in meditation, trying to achieve
25307 Dalai Lama: "Not necessarily. From my viewpoint, there can be both
25308 productive meditation and unproductive meditation."
25309 HC: "What's the difference?"
25310 DL: "[Some] practitioners and other kinds of meditators practice different
25311 techniques, some with closed eyes, sometimes open eyes, but the very nature of
25312 that meditation is to become thoughtless, in a state free of thoughts. But in
25313 a way, this is a kind of retreat, like they are running away from trouble.
25314 When they actually face trouble, carry on their daily life and face some real
25315 life problems, nothing has changed. Their attitudes and reactions remain the
25316 same. So that kind of meditation is just avoiding the problem, like going on
25317 a picnic, or taking a painkiller. It's not actually solving the problem.
25318 Some people may spend many years doing these practices, but their actual
25319 progress is zero. That's not productive meditation. Genuine progress occurs
25320 when the individual not only sees some results in achieving higher levels of
25321 meditative states but also when their meditation has at least some influence
25322 on how they interact with others, some impact from that meditation in their
25323 daily life--more patience, less irritation, more compassion. That's
25324 productive meditation. Something that can bring benefit to others in some
25326 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
25329 As human beings, we are all the same. So there is no need to build some
25330 kind of artificial barrier between us. At least my own experience is that if
25331 you have this kind of attitude, there is no barrier. Whatever I feel, I can
25332 express; I can call you "my old friend". There is nothing to hide, and no
25333 need to say things in a way that is not straightforward. So this gives me a
25334 kind of space in my mind, with the result that I do not have to be suspicious
25335 of others all the time. And this really gives me inner satisfaction, and
25337 So I call this feeling a "genuine realization of the oneness of the whole
25338 of humanity". We are all members of one human family. I think that this
25339 understanding is very important, especially now that the world is becoming
25340 smaller and smaller. In ancient times, even in a small village, people were
25341 able to exist more or less independently. There was not so much need for
25342 others' co-operation. These days, the economic structure has completely
25343 changed.... We are heavily dependent on one another, and also as a result of
25344 mass communication, the barriers of the past are greatly reduced. Today,
25345 because of the complexity of interdependence, every crisis on this planet is
25346 essentially related with every other, like a chain reaction. Consequently it
25347 is worthwhile taking every crisis as a global one. Here barriers such as
25348 "this nation" or "that nation", "this continent", or "that continent" are
25349 simply obstacles. Therefore today, for the future of the human race, it is
25350 more important than ever before that we develop a genuine sense of brotherhood
25351 and sisterhood. I usually call this a sense of "universal responsibility".
25352 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the
25353 Great Perfection", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron
25354 (Chokyi Nyima), edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion
25357 ...several great Kagyu and Sakya masters... have expressed the stages [of
25358 sutra and tantra paths] in terms of the tradition known as "parting ourselves
25359 from the four forms of clinging."
25360 First we part from clinging to this life. Instead of total involvement
25361 with affairs of this life, we involve ourselves with future lives. We
25362 accomplish this by thinking about our precious human life with all its
25363 freedoms and endowments for spiritual growth, how we lose it because of death
25364 and impermanence, and then the karmic laws of behavioral cause and effect that
25365 shape our future lives. Next we part from clinging to future lives and
25366 involve ourselves, instead, in the quest for liberation. By thinking about
25367 all the suffering of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, or samsara, we generate
25368 sincere renunciation of it--the strong determination to be free and attain the
25369 total liberation that is nirvana.
25370 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, in "The Gelug/Kagyu
25371 Tradition of Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
25374 When we say that we have knowledge, or that we have discovered our real
25375 nature and we are in this nature, that means that we are "being the mirror."
25376 You see, "being the mirror" or "looking in the mirror" are two completely
25377 different things. If we "are the mirror," then we have no concept of
25379 If a reflection manifests in the mirror, why is it manifesting? There are
25380 two reasons. One is because the mirror has the capacity to manifest infinite
25381 reflections. This is the mirror's quality. If there is an object in front of
25382 the mirror, whose capacity it is to reflect, naturally a reflection will
25383 appear in the mirror. Furthermore, the mirror has no idea of checking or
25384 accepting the object it is reflecting. The mirror doesn't need any program
25385 for that. This is what is called its qualification, or infinite potentiality.
25386 In the same way, when we have infinite potentiality, but we are ignorant
25387 of our real nature, then we always conceive that "I am here" and "the object
25388 is there," "I am looking and seeing an object," and so on. We do not discover
25389 that we are like a mirror, and if we never discover this, then of course there
25390 is no way that we can function like the mirror. When you discover that you
25391 are like the mirror, then there is a possibility that you will be the mirror.
25392 When you are the mirror, then you have no problems with reflections--they
25393 can be big, small, nice, ugly, any kind. For you, the reflections are only a
25394 manifestation of your quality, which is like that of a mirror. When you have
25395 no problems with reflections, then you understand self-liberation. You are
25396 not changing or transforming something. You are only being in your real
25398 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, from "Dzogchen Teachings", edited by Jim Valby
25399 and Adriano Clemente, published by Snow Lion Publications
25401 It is important to recognize the difference between an enlightened
25402 experience and the state of enlightenment. To penetrate the veil is to see
25403 the nature of reality for the first time. This enlightened experience in the
25404 Zen tradition might be called a satori. This is a powerful shift of insight
25405 that shakes our reality. No longer can we live with the delusion we may have
25406 once held. Our solidly held concepts about reality begin to crumble. Samsara
25407 shakes, as Lama Yeshe once put it. This experience may not be comfortable.
25408 To come so close to this existential threshold challenges our secure sense of
25409 identity and can be frightening. Indeed, as a Tibetan lama once said, this
25410 fear is a sign that we are close to the edge. We are beginning to recognize
25411 the lack of substance of our ego-identity. Our "wisdom eye" has opened to a
25412 new truth--an ultimate truth, as opposed to relative truth.
25413 When we penetrate the veil, however, the work is not yet done. We may
25414 have had an enlightened experience, but there is further to travel. As Gen
25415 Jhampa Wangdu once said while I was in retreat, it is not difficult to
25416 experience emptiness; the problem is holding it. For this insight to have its
25417 full effect, the mind needs to be able to sustain awareness for prolonged
25418 periods of time. Tibetan teachers will sometimes say we may hit the nail, but
25419 only with a quality of focused attention can we repeatedly do so. With the
25420 development of tranquil abiding, the veil can be cleared completely in the way
25421 the red ring of fire created by the incense burn[ing] slowly expands and
25422 consumes the entire film of tissue paper. The mind is gradually cleansed of
25423 the emotional turmoil and confusion that is generated by the misconceptions we
25424 have about reality.
25425 -- Rob Preece, in "The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of
25426 Individuation in Buddhist Life", published by Snow Lion Publications
25428 ...if we see others in trouble, although we cannot immediately take their
25429 suffering upon ourselves, we should make the wish to be able to relieve them
25430 from their misfortunes. Prayers like this will bear fruit eventually. Again,
25431 if others have very strong afflictive emotions, we should think, "May all
25432 their emotions be concentrated in me." With fervent conviction, we should
25433 persist in thinking like this until we have some sign or feeling that we have
25434 been able to take upon ourselves the suffering and emotions of others. This
25435 might take the form of an increase in our own emotions or of the actual
25436 experience of the suffering and pain of others.
25437 This is how to bring hardships onto the path in order to free ourselves
25438 from hopes and fears--hopes, for instance, that we will not get ill, or fears
25439 that we might do so. They will thus be pacified in the equal taste of
25440 happiness and suffering. Eventually, through the power of Bodhichitta, we
25441 will reach the point where we are free even from the hope of accomplishing
25442 Bodhichitta and the fear of not doing so. Therefore we should have love for
25443 our enemies and try as much as possible to avoid getting angry with them, or
25444 harbouring any negative thoughts towards them. We should also try as much as
25445 possible to overcome our biased attachment to family and relatives. If you
25446 bind a crooked tree to a large wooden stake, it will eventually grow straight.
25447 Up to now, our minds have always been crooked, thinking how we might trick and
25448 mislead people, but this [Bodhichitta] practice, as Geshe Langri Tangpa said,
25449 will make our minds straight and true.
25450 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the
25451 Seven Point Mind Training", translated by the Padmakara Translation
25452 Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
25454 Q: ...what is the nature of the mindstream that reincarnates from lifetime to
25457 A: ...If one understands the term "soul" as a continuum of individuality from
25458 moment to moment, from lifetime to lifetime, then one can say that Buddhism
25459 also accepts a concept of soul; there is a kind of continuum of consciousness.
25460 From that point of view, the debate on whether or not there is a soul becomes
25461 strictly semantic. However, in the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness, or "no
25462 soul" theory, the understanding is that there is no eternal, unchanging,
25463 abiding, permanent self called "soul." That is what is being denied in
25466 Buddhism does not deny the continuum of consciousness. Because of this, we
25467 find some Tibetan scholars, such as the Sakya master Rendawa, who accept that
25468 there is such a thing as self or soul, the "kangsak ki dak" (Tib. gang zag gi
25469 bdag). However, the same word, the "kangsak ki dak," the self, or person, or
25470 personal self, or identity, is at the same time denied by many other scholars.
25472 We find diverse opinions, even among Buddhist scholars, as to what exactly the
25473 nature of self is, what exactly that thing or entity is that continues from
25474 one moment to the next moment, from one lifetime to the next lifetime. Some
25475 try to locate it within the aggregates, the composite of body and mind. Some
25476 explain it in terms of a designation based on the body and mind composite, and
25477 so on.... One of the divisions of [the "Mind-Only"] school maintains there is
25478 a special continuum of consciousness called alayavijnana which is the
25479 fundamental consciousness.
25480 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist
25481 Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow Lion
25484 In the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path Je Tsongkhapa says that
25485 when we are training ourselves in any of the perfections, for instance in
25486 generosity, we should make sure that we practice all the other five
25487 perfections--in this case ethical discipline, patience, enthusiastic effort,
25488 concentration, and wisdom--and the six excellent factors. When we perform a
25489 generous action, ethical discipline will be included if we take care to
25490 refrain from doing anything unethical at the same time. In certain
25491 situations, for instance, we may be tempted to speak harshly or
25492 condescendingly as we give.
25493 Generosity gives rise to abundance, and by insuring that our practice is
25494 complete, we create the right environment to use these resources
25495 constructively. Sometimes when we give, people respond ungratefully. If we
25496 can resist getting upset, we are practicing patience. Giving not out of a
25497 sense of obligation or reluctantly nor with a wish to outdo others but with
25498 joy is the practice of enthusiastic effort. Directing our full attention to
25499 an act of generosity is concentration. Discerning and understanding what is
25500 appropriate to give and what is not, and remembering that the giver, the act
25501 of generosity, and the recipient are all interdependent and empty of inherent
25502 existence are the practice of wisdom. Including these different factors in
25503 our actions will bring many excellent results such as a good body and mind,
25504 the resources we need, a pleasant appearance, supportive companions, the
25505 ability to complete what we undertake, and the focus not to be distracted by
25506 the disturbing emotions and so forth. This is how to insure that we will
25507 enjoy many conducive conditions in a future human life. On the other hand,
25508 our miserliness or impatience now could make us face many difficult
25509 circumstances in the future.
25510 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent
25511 Arising", translated by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
25513 Shakyamuni Buddha, even when he was a trainee on the path, was solely
25514 concerned in both thought and action with others' welfare. Whenever he found
25515 an opportunity to work for others, no matter what difficulties he faced, he
25516 was never discouraged. He never hated obstacles and hardships encountered on
25517 the way. Instead, the difficult situations facilitated his being more
25518 courageous and determined to accomplish others' welfare. Just because he was
25519 so determined to work for others in the past, even as a trainee on the path,
25520 it is needless to say how much more it is so with him now as a completely
25521 enlightened person.
25522 As the saying goes, "A past life story of a teacher is an enlightening
25523 practice for posterity."
25524 -- "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries of His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV on
25525 the Jatakamala Garland of Birth Stories," translated by Tenzin Dorjee,
25526 edited by Dexter Roberts
25528 When you get tired, it is appropriate to repeat mantra. However, for a
25529 beginner the main part of the meditation revolves around the six deities*,
25530 which should be cultivated carefully and leisurely. This is because clear
25531 appearance of oneself as a deity must be achieved for the sake of amassing the
25532 two collections of merit and wisdom, achieving firm meditative stabilisation,
25533 and transforming all physical and verbal actions into powerful aids for
25534 others' welfare. Hence, before repeating mantra, the yoga of non-dual
25535 profundity (realisation of emptiness) and manifestation (appearance as a
25536 deity) should be sustained, developing clarity in observing the divine form
25537 and in ascertaining its lack of inherent existence. When, having done this
25538 one-pointedly, you become tired, then for the sake of resting begin repeating
25539 mantra. ...Tsong-ka-pa also says that in the approximation phase meditation
25540 is chief, mantra repetition is secondary.
25541 * ultimate, sound, letter, form, seal, and sign
25542 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Deity Yoga In
25543 Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow Lion Publications
25545 There isn't a single one of us who has never felt hostile and angry, so we
25546 know about the effects of anger. Does it make us feel better or worse? It
25547 stirs us up, makes us miserable and destroys our tranquillity. It is quite
25548 easy to recognize anger as a foe and to see how it harms us because its
25549 destructiveness is apparent. But we find it much harder and are also
25550 reluctant to acknowledge the harm done by attachment because it is a foe
25551 masquerading as a friend. When desire or attachment first arises, it feels
25552 quite pleasurable but eventually it lands us in trouble. It wants to possess
25553 what it has fabricated and we reach out for something which, in fact, does not
25554 exist. Failure to get what we want frustrates us and anger quickly follows.
25555 The third of the poisons, confusion or ignorance, simply stimulates desire and
25556 anger and lies at the root of all the disturbing emotions.
25557 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "Eight Verses for Training the Mind", translated
25558 and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
25560 The Sevenfold Cause-and-Effect Method
25561 If we have been reborn time after time, it is evident that we have needed
25562 many mothers to give birth to us. ...the first cause bringing about
25563 bodhicitta is the recognition that all beings have been our mother.
25564 The love and kindness shown us by our mother in this life would be
25565 difficult to repay. She endured many sleepless nights to care for us when we
25566 were helpless infants. She fed us and would have willingly sacrificed
25567 everything, including her own life, to spare ours. As we contemplate her
25568 example of devoted love, we should consider that each and every being
25569 throughout existence has treated us this way. Each dog, cat, fish, fly, and
25570 human being has at some point in the beginningless past been our mother and
25571 shown us overwhelming love and kindness. Such a thought should bring about
25572 our appreciation. This is the second cause of bodhicitta.
25573 As we envision the present condition of all these beings, we begin to
25574 develop the desire to help them change their lot. This is the third cause,
25575 and out of it comes the fourth, a feeling of love cherishing all beings. This
25576 is an attraction toward all beings, similar to what a child feels upon seeing
25577 his or her mother. This leads us to compassion, which is the fifth cause of
25578 bodhicitta. Compassion is a wish to separate these suffering beings, our
25579 mothers of the past, from their miserable situation. At this point we also
25580 experience loving-kindness, a wish that all beings find happiness. As we
25581 progress through these stages of responsibility, we go from wishing that all
25582 sentient beings find happiness and freedom from suffering to personally
25583 assuming responsibility for helping them enter this state beyond misery. This
25584 is the final cause. As we scrutinize how best to help others, we are drawn to
25585 achieving the fully enlightened and omniscient state of Buddhahood.
25586 -- The Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life",
25587 edited by Nicholas Vreeland
25589 Among the seven branches [qualities of Buddhahood]--complete enjoyment,
25590 union, great bliss, non-inherent existence, compassion, uninterrupted
25591 continuity, and non-cessation--three are found only in tantra--complete
25592 enjoyment, union, and great bliss--and the other four are common to both
25593 sutra and tantra, although non-inherent existence can also be put in the group
25594 specific to tantra when it is considered as the object ascertained by a bliss
25595 consciousness.... In Yoga Tantras the bliss arising from holding hands or
25596 embracing is used in the path; in Performance Tantras, from laughing; and in
25597 Action Tantras, from looking. The four tantras are similar in that they all
25598 use desire for the attributes of the desire realm on the path.
25599 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
25600 published by Snow Lion Publications
25602 How then does the mistaken idea, that things exist from their own side,
25603 operate? Whatever appears to the mind appears as if it existed truly from its
25604 own side. ...Now if the object existed as it appears to you, then, when you
25605 searched for it, you could actually find a real [object]. So, we must ask
25606 ourselves whether or not this object, when searched for, is to be found or
25607 not. If the object is not found when it is searched for, we must conclude
25608 that it does not exist from its own side, that when the label is applied to
25609 its basis, it is not so labeled because the basis somehow bears within it
25610 something which is the object. At this point, one must conclude that the
25611 object does not exist as it appears to, but then, one may wonder whether it
25613 Things, however, are not utterly non-existent. They do exist nominally.
25614 So things do exist, but they do not exist from the side of the basis of the
25615 label. And hence, though they do exist, because they do not exist within the
25616 object itself, they must exist only as they are labeled by the subject (the
25617 conceptual mind, for example). There is no other way for the object to exist
25618 apart from the way it is posited by conceptual thought. This is then what we
25619 mean when we say that all phenomena are merely labeled by conceptual thought.
25620 However, things do not appear to us as if they were mere conceptually labeled
25621 entities. Instead, they appear as if they existed from their own side.
25622 Therefore, it is a mistake to think that things exist as they appear.
25623 -- The Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists", edited
25624 by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
25626 Meditation is hard work, but it is also the most rewarding thing we can do
25627 with our time. As we begin to see the mechanisms we previously took for
25628 granted and start to understand them, the knots inside our minds begin to
25629 loosen. We feel a tremendous sense of freedom, space and release inside us.
25630 As we begin to understand our warped thinking patterns and our neuroses, we
25631 see them directly. We begin to develop compassion for ourselves, for our pain
25632 and confusion. Now that we start to look with clarity, we can see the pain
25633 and confusion in the eyes of other people, and we naturally develop compassion
25634 for them. It doesn't matter how outwardly successful people may appear, we
25635 can see their pain when we look into their eyes. It is very rare to come
25636 across people whose eyes are truly sparkling with joy.
25637 -- Tenzin Palmo, "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical
25638 Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Publications
25640 ...recognizing that we have certain obligations, and recognizing at the
25641 same time that spiritual practice is the core of a meaningful life, what do we
25642 do? There really is an answer. It is not easy, but it is tremendously
25643 fruitful, and it keeps on opening and opening further: transform those actions
25644 that are already obligations by applying Dharma to them.
25645 Take eating, for instance. We have to do it two or three times a day, but
25646 we don't have to wolf down the food. There is no one who cannot sit and pause
25647 first for thirty seconds. Even fast-food is worth the thirty seconds it takes
25648 to recognize the immense number of beings who have provided us with this food.
25649 Pausing like this ties us into the community of life, at least on planet
25650 earth, as we recognize that we are indebted to others. We have received, and
25651 as we take the food, let us do it with the aspiration, "May this be returned.
25652 May I use my abilities to the fullest to serve those who have served me." And
25653 that includes everyone, directly or indirectly. The service may occur on a
25654 very mundane level, but insofar as we mature spiritually, our responsibility
25655 increases according to our abilities. Not because someone tells us, "Now you
25656 have to do this," but simply as we gain insight into the nature and sources of
25657 suffering and of contentment, then we have something all the more valuable to
25659 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
25660 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
25662 The Paramita of Meditative Concentration
25663 It is said in the Teachings that without taking up the Paramita of
25664 Meditative Concentration, it would be impossible to realize the nature of
25665 mind. We should think of meditative concentration as the practice that brings
25666 stability to our minds, and creates the good conditions to practice unfocused
25667 meditation--in other words, resting in the uncontrived natural state.
25668 If we make a quick examination of our own mind, we can see the reason this
25669 kind of stability is so crucial. Although physics has observed light to be
25670 the fastest traveling phenomenon known to man, actually the speed at which our
25671 minds travel is even faster. We can circle the globe in a matter of seconds,
25672 and our minds generate doubts, emotions, and conceptual thoughts at a speed
25673 that defies that of all other phenomena. Because we lack basic mental
25674 stability, conceptual thoughts arise endlessly. So, if our goal is to realize
25675 the nature of mind, we first have to learn to still our minds, and free
25676 ourselves from distraction. The method for quieting the mind is called
25677 "meditative concentration." Once we have gained some initial mind stability,
25678 it is even more important that we continue our training so that this stability
25679 will increase. Without such stability, it is impossible for us to
25680 successfully learn to abide in the uncontrived view.
25681 -- Anyen Rinpoche, "The Union of Dzogchen and Bodhichitta", translated
25682 by Allison Graboski, published by Snow Lion Publications
25684 5. Your present naked awareness
25688 Your present, naked awareness--
25689 Unspoiled by thoughts of past, present, or future,
25690 Not fettered by mind grasping to so-called "meditation"
25691 Nor falling into a pervasive blankness of so-called "non-meditation"--
25692 The natural state nakedly sustained,
25693 Is the practice of Great Perfection.
25695 Regardless of what thoughts arise during that practice,
25696 To reject negative ones or foster positive ones is unnecessary.
25697 Mere recognition liberates them in their own ground.
25698 Take this liberation upon arising as the path's key point.
25700 Destroy whatever meditative experiences arise, and relax.
25701 A tantric practitioner without fixation is deeply content.
25702 You've reached your goal of contentment right now.
25703 What is the use of numerous enumerations of Buddha's teachings
25704 When you discover Buddha Kuntu Zangpo within yourself?
25705 Keep the meaning of these words close to your heart.
25706 -- Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart
25707 Advice", translated by Ron Garry, a Tsadra Foundation Series book
25708 published by Snow Lion Publications
25710 The Buddhist view is that in the external world there are some elements
25711 that are material, and some that are nonmaterial. And the fundamental
25712 substance, the stuff from which the material universe arises, is known as
25713 space particles. A portion of space is quantized, to use a modern term; it is
25714 particulate, not continuous. Before the formation of the physical universe as
25715 we know it, there was only space, but it was quantized. And it was from the
25716 quanta, or particles, in space that the other elements arose. This accounts
25717 for the physical universe.
25718 But what brought about that process? How did it happen? It is believed
25719 that there existed other conditions, or other influences, which were
25720 nonmaterial, and these were of the nature of awareness. The actions of
25721 sentient beings in the preceding universe somehow modify, or influence, the
25722 formation of the natural universe.
25723 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
25724 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara
25725 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by
25726 Snow Lion Publications
25728 ...meditation on emptiness begins with gaining a sense of the inherent
25729 existence of which phenomena are empty, for without understanding what is
25730 negated, you cannot understand its absence, emptiness.
25731 ...Through carefully watching how you conceive your self, or "I," to be
25732 inherently established, you will determine that the "I" appears to be self-
25733 instituting without depending on the collection of the mental and physical
25734 aggregates, which are its basis of designation, or without depending on any of
25735 them individually, even though the "I" appears with those aggregates. Proper
25736 identification of this appearance is the first essential toward realizing
25737 selflessness--ascertaining the object of negation.
25738 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba, and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra:
25739 Paths to Magical Feats", published by Snow Lion Publications
25741 At the moment the world's spiritual traditions have greatly degenerated.
25742 It is very important in such times that the practitioners themselves make
25743 especially strong efforts to gain realization. To permit the lineages of
25744 transmission to disappear is to allow the world to plunge into darkness. The
25745 great Vasubandhu wrote, "Buddha, who is like the eye of the world, is no
25746 longer to be seen. His great successors, who realized the most profound
25747 teachings, also have passed away. Who equals them?" It might be asked, who
25748 is there today to equal the master Vasubandhu? Who practices as well as did
25749 Milarepa? Such people are rare. We should remember that everything but
25750 Dharma is useless at death, and instead of wasting our lives on meaningless
25751 activities, we should blend our mindstreams with the teachings and with
25752 practice. Doing so benefits us as individuals and benefits the world by
25753 strengthening its spiritual basis.
25754 Each of us has to be able to feel the pride that we ourselves can reach
25755 perfection, we ourselves can attain enlightenment. When even one person
25756 indulges in spiritual practice, it gives encouragement to the guardian spirits
25757 of the land, and to the celestial deities who have sworn to uphold goodness.
25758 These forces then have the ability to release waves of beneficial effects upon
25759 humanity. Thus our practice has many direct and indirect benefits. ...If we
25760 practice the teachings and live the ways of Dharma, all the natural forces of
25761 goodness will be behind us.
25762 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
25763 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
25765 Karmic potentials give rise to a broad array of impulses that affect our
25766 lives. Collective karmic potentials from previous actions of a huge number of
25767 beings--including ourselves--give rise, for example, to the impulse for a
25768 universe to evolve with specific environments and life forms into which we and
25769 these beings subsequently take rebirth. These collective potentials also give
25770 rise to the impulses that drive the physical and biological laws that govern
25771 that universe--ranging from the weather patterns of its planets to the life-
25772 cycle habits of each species on them. They also account for the impulses
25773 behind the instinctive daily behavior characteristic of each life form.
25774 -- Alexander Berzin, "Taking the Kalachakra Initiation", published by Snow
25777 Once the body, channels, and wind are balanced, the next step is to keep
25778 your mind in the natural state through meditation. By simply maintaining the
25779 mind as it is, without adding or subtracting anything, one will reach the
25780 inner nature, which is unchanging and indestructible.
25781 The instructions for this type of meditation are very simple. One begins
25782 by sitting with good posture on a cushion, because it is important to stay
25783 straight. Then, one simply maintains the natural clarity of the mind, without
25784 analyzing one's experiences or being disturbed by thoughts. In the dzogchen
25785 style of meditation, there is actually nothing to do except relax in the
25786 mind's nature of clarity and emptiness. Inner awareness is different than
25787 external awareness; it is called clear-light emptiness. It is helpful to use
25788 the sky as an analogy for the true nature of the mind--when you let your mind
25789 mingle with the open space of the sky, you do not need any particular focus.
25790 Simply maintain the mind naturally, without discrimination or judgments, and
25791 experience its nature as being spacious as the sky.
25792 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche,
25793 "Opening the Door to Our Primordial Nature", Snow Lion Publications
25795 Three things in human life are important.
25796 The first is to be kind.
25797 The second is to be kind.
25798 And the third is to be kind.
25801 Question: A person, particularly in the West, must have the foundation of
25802 humility, honesty and an ethical way of life. Once one has this foundation,
25803 what else does Your Holiness suggest that one cultivate in one's life, if
25804 there is the foundation of virtue, ethics and humility?
25805 DL: The next thing to be cultivated is mental stabilization. Ethics is a
25806 method to control oneself--it is a defensive action. Our actual enemy, you
25807 see, is within ourselves. The afflicted emotions (pride, anger, jealousy) are
25808 our real enemies. These are the real trouble makers, and they are to be found
25809 within ourselves. The actual practice of religion consists of fighting
25810 against these inner enemies.
25811 As in any war, first we must have a defensive action, and in our spiritual
25812 fight against the negative emotions, ethics is our defense. Knowing that at
25813 first one is not fully prepared for offensive action, we first resort to
25814 defensive action and that means ethics. But once one has prepared one's
25815 defenses, and has become somewhat accustomed to ethics, then one must launch
25816 one's offensive. Here our main weapon is wisdom. This weapon of wisdom is
25817 like a bullet, or maybe even a rocket, and the rocket launcher is mental
25818 stabilization or calm abiding. In brief, once you have a basis in morality or
25819 ethics, the next step is to train in mental stabilization and eventually in
25821 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology
25822 of Writings", compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, Forword by Sen.
25823 Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
25825 4. The power of abandonment. In this practice what is being abandoned is
25826 self-grasping. We are reminded again that since beginningless time beyond all
25827 imagination, self-grasping has lain at the very core of all mental distortions
25828 and afflictions. It has brought us to unfavorable rebirths and is responsible
25829 for all the undesirable circumstances that we encounter. It is self-
25830 centeredness that obstructs realization and prevents us from deriving the full
25831 benefit from our spiritual practice. Recognize when self-grasping manifests
25832 in daily life. It is important to notice it especially at times of passion,
25833 when we are aroused or irritated, and try not to succumb to it for even a
25835 To be free of self-centeredness continuously for a whole year may be
25836 difficult, but [rejecting it for] a moment is easy. ...the more of these
25837 moments we can saturate with the cherishing of others, the more we are molding
25838 ourselves into the bodhisattvas that we will become.
25839 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
25840 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
25842 As a friend, my request and wish is that... you try to promote a sense of
25843 brotherhood and sisterhood. We must promote compassion and love; this is our
25844 real duty. Government has too much business to have time for these things.
25845 As private persons we have more time to think along these lines--how to make a
25846 contribution to human society by promoting the development of compassion and a
25847 real sense of community.
25848 ...If someone who easily gets angry tries to control his or her anger, in
25849 time it can be controlled. The same is true for a selfish person; first that
25850 person must realize the faults of a selfish motivation and the benefit in
25851 being less selfish. Having realized this, one trains in it, trying to control
25852 the bad side and develop the good. As time goes by, such practice can be
25853 effective. This is the only alternative.
25854 Without love, human society is in a very difficult state; without love,
25855 in the future we will face tremendous problems. Love is the center of human
25857 -- His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness, Clarity & Insight", published by
25858 Snow Lion Publications
25860 Love and Attachment
25862 People often wonder how to reconcile the Buddha's teachings on non-attachment
25863 with those on love. How can we love others without being attached to them?
25864 Non-attachment is a balanced state of mind in which we cease overestimating
25865 others' qualities. By having a more accurate view of others, our unrealistic
25866 expectations fall away, as does our clinging. This leaves us open to loving
25867 others for who they are, instead of for what they do for us. Our hearts can
25868 open to care for everyone impartially, wishing everyone to be happy simply
25869 because he or she is a living being. The feeling of warmth that was
25870 previously reserved for a select few can now be expanded to a great number
25872 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion
25875 According to some scientists, emotion is not necessarily negative. Emotion
25876 is a very strong feeling. While some emotions are destructive, others are
25877 constructive. In a meeting with scientists, we concluded that there are
25878 emotions even in the Buddha's mind. There is a strong sense of caring and
25879 compassion and also the realization of emptiness. In the beginning, there is
25880 just a vague feeling of emptiness. At that level, there is no emotion, but
25881 once you become more familiar with it, then that feeling increases. At a
25882 certain level, the realization of emptiness also becomes a kind of emotion.
25883 Therefore, in the practice of developing wisdom and loving-kindness
25884 / compassion, you strengthen these inner qualities and then reach a state
25885 where you have an upsurge of feeling called emotion. We can clearly see
25886 this link between intellect and emotions. Thus, the brain and heart can go
25887 side by side. I think this is the Buddhist approach.
25888 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Many Ways to Nirvana: Reflections and
25889 Advice on Right Living", edited by Renuka Singh
25891 Both mindfulness and discriminative alertness are needed in responding to
25892 sensory input of the three types--attractive, unattractive and neutral.
25893 Once again, in this tradition mindfulness does not mean simply to witness.
25894 It is a more discriminative kind of thing. You are asking yourself, "What
25895 is my response?" and then actively responding by applying the antidotes to
25896 attachment and hostility. The word mindfulness is a little bit different in
25897 different contexts. Here, Mindfulness refers to the mental faculty of being
25898 able to maintain continuity of awareness of an object. Vigilance is concerned
25899 with the quality of mind, watching to see, for example, if the mind is veering
25900 off to other objects.
25901 -- Gen Lamrimpa (Ven. Jampal Tenzin, "Calming the Mind: Tibetan Buddhist
25902 Teachings on Cultivating Meditative Quiescence", translated by B. Alan
25903 Wallace, edited by Hart Sprager, published by Snow Lion Publications
25905 When we say that the ignorant mind is perverse or wrong, we are talking
25906 about the way it misconceives reality. Now the pertinent questions are: What
25907 is reality? How is this mind mistaken about reality? And in what way does
25908 the mind wrongly apprehend reality? Reality or emptiness of true existence is
25909 something that can be established logically. There are sound, or perfect,
25910 reasons to prove the emptiness of inherent existence, and we can gain
25911 conviction in these reasons. On the other hand, there is no logical way to
25912 prove true existence. True existence is what appears to an ordinary,
25913 untrained consciousness. But when it comes under logical scrutiny, true
25914 existence cannot be found. Even in our everyday life we often find
25915 contradictions between the way certain things appear and their actual mode of
25916 existence; that is, the way things actually exist is different from the way
25917 they appear to exist.
25918 ...Our perception of impermanent things like mountain ranges and houses
25919 does not conform to their actual mode of existence. Some of these things have
25920 existed for many centuries, even thousands of years. And our minds perceive
25921 them in just that way--as lasting and permanent, impervious to momentary
25922 change. Yet when we examine these objects on an atomic level, they
25923 disintegrate every moment; they undergo momentary change. Science also
25924 describes a similar pattern of change. These objects appear solid, stable,
25925 and lasting, but in their true nature, they constantly change, not keeping
25926 still even for a moment.
25927 -- The Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", translated by Geshe Lobsang
25928 Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell, published by
25929 Snow Lion Publications
25931 If there is someone who always harms us, and we discover that this person
25932 lives in our own house, we think, "This is too much!" Once we figure out
25933 that he is causing all our hardships, we kick him out; we do not see it as a
25934 laughing matter at all. Here, it is worse: we have been wandering in the six
25935 realms of cyclic existence since beginningless time, undergoing great pain and
25936 confusion. What is the main cause of all this? Self-centeredness and its
25937 basis, self-grasping ignorance. These two are right inside us, in our own
25938 mindstream. How can we continue to tolerate that? It is just too much! We
25939 definitely must evict these sources of harm. When we know the antidotes to
25940 them, we will use them, just as we would go to any length to evict a
25941 troublemaker from our home. With strong determination, we will find out what
25942 harms self-centeredness and self-grasping and then go ahead and destroy them.
25943 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage: An
25944 Explanation of the Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas", edited by
25945 Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
25947 No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of
25948 policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
25951 There are many types of meditative stabilisation, but let us explain calm
25952 abiding (samatha) here. The nature of calm abiding is the one-pointed abiding
25953 on any object without distraction of a mind conjoined with a bliss of physical
25954 and mental pliancy. If it is supplemented with taking refuge, it is a
25955 Buddhist practice; and if it is supplemented with an aspiration to highest
25956 enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, it is a Mahayana practice.
25957 Its merits are that, if one has achieved calm abiding, one's mind and body are
25958 pervaded by joy and bliss; one can--through the power of its mental and
25959 physical pliancy--set the mind on any virtuous object one chooses; and many
25960 special qualities such as clairvoyance and emanations are attained.
25961 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
25962 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
25965 Apart from the perfection of wisdom,
25966 All virtuous practices such as
25967 The perfection of giving are described
25968 As skillful means by the Victorious Ones.
25970 The first five perfections--giving, ethical discipline, patience, enthusiastic
25971 effort and concentration--as well as meditation on impermanence, on the
25972 connection between actions and their effects and the cultivation of
25973 compassion, love and the altruistic intention are all skillful means. In fact
25974 all positive practices which do not constitute the cultivation of wisdom fall
25975 into the category of skillful means.
25978 Whoever, under the influence of familiarity
25979 With skillful means, cultivates wisdom
25980 Will quickly attain enlightenment--
25981 Not just by meditating on selflessness.
25983 When stability in practices which develop skillful means has been gained, the
25984 Bodhisattva meditates on the selflessness of persons and other phenomena and
25985 thereby overcomes clinging to their true existence. This leads swiftly to
25986 enlightenment. If we confine our efforts only to understanding reality, our
25987 understanding lacks the power to destroy all the obstructions that prevent
25988 omniscience and we may remain locked in a state of solitary peace.
25989 Cultivation of skillful means prevents this and adds such power to our
25990 understanding of reality that, like a blazing fire, it consumes all
25993 -- "Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment", commentary by Geshe Sonam
25994 Rinchen, translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion
25997 As I grow to understand life less and less,
25998 I learn to love it more and more.
26001 The environment where you are doing the meditation should be properly cleaned.
26002 While cleaning, you should cultivate the motivation that since you are engaged
26003 in the task of accumulating great stores of merit by inviting the hosts of
26004 buddhas and bodhisattvas to this environment, it is important to have a clean
26005 place. You should see that all the external dirt and dust around you is
26006 basically a manifestation of the faults and stains within your own mind. You
26007 should see that the most important aim is to purge these stains and faults
26008 from within your mind. Therefore, as you cleanse the environment, think that
26009 you are also purifying your mind. Develop the very strong thought that by
26010 cleaning this place you are inviting the host of buddhas and bodhisattvas who
26011 are the most supreme merit field, and that you will subsequently engage in a
26012 path that will enable you to purge your mind of the stains of delusions.
26013 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, "Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide to
26014 Stages of Meditation", translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa, edited by
26015 Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
26017 The entire environment we perceive around us arises, in part, in
26018 dependence upon our sense faculties. The environment we experience does not
26019 truly exist "out there." Sight is dependent upon visual faculties, hearing
26020 is dependent upon auditory faculties, and tactile sensations depend on nerve
26021 endings. Psychologically, all that we experience is dependent upon ourselves.
26022 We do not experience anything purely objectively. The arising and perceiving
26023 of experience is co-emergent between ourselves and the world around us. Yet,
26024 the deep belief persists that the world really exists "out there" now and eons
26025 before we were born.
26026 The Buddhist hypothesis extends beyond the psychological. The Buddhist
26027 hypothesis is this: that which is perceived arises in dependence upon the
26028 perception of it. Things are empty of independent, inherent existence. What
26029 appears to exist "out there" is empty of objective existence from its own
26030 side. This does not mean that nothing exists apart from our perceptions.
26031 Rather, it means that by probing the nature of existence of anything we
26032 experience perceptually or conceptually, we find that nothing exists by its
26033 own independent nature. Another way of phrasing this is that appearance
26034 extends all the way down to the root and there is nothing beyond the
26035 appearances. Appearances extend down to quarks; nothing is there purely
26036 objectively and nothing is there purely subjectively. This is the Buddhist
26038 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Seven-Point Mind-
26039 Training" , edited by Lynn Quirolo, published by Snow Lion Publications
26041 I consider it very important for religion to have an influence on
26042 politicians. Politicians need religion much more than pious people who have
26043 withdrawn from the world need it. There is a constant increase in the
26044 scandals in politics and business that can be traced back to the lack of self-
26045 discipline on the part of the responsible parties. In India, the minister-
26046 president of West Bengal once said to me with what he considered a humble
26047 attitude that he was a politician and not a religious person. I responded to
26048 him: politicians need religion more than anyone else.
26049 When hermits in solitude are bad persons, the result is that they harm
26050 themselves alone and no one else. But when such influential people as
26051 politicians are full of bad intentions, they can bring misfortune to many.
26052 This is why religion, as continuous work on our inner maturity, is important
26053 for political rulers.
26054 A politician must have moral principles. I am convinced of this. Seen in
26055 this light, politics and religion belong together. In the United States,
26056 church and state may be separate, but when the president takes office, he
26057 makes a vow in the name of God with his hand on the Bible. This means that
26058 God should be the witness that the president will conscientiously fulfill his
26060 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Felizitas Von Schonborn, "Path of Wisdom,
26061 Path of Peace: A Personal Conversation", Foreword by Wei Jingsheng
26063 ...many people, critical of Dzogchen, question why we need to practice at all
26064 if, as according to Dzogchen, the primordial state is already the enlightened
26065 state. If our true nature is already Buddhahood, what is the need to
26066 cultivate enlightenment? We cannot side-step these criticisms since,
26067 according to Dzogchen, Buddhahood is indeed our natural state; we do not
26068 create it, but simply discover it through our meditation. But if we simply
26069 agree with our critics, this would mean there is no need to practice. These
26070 are important things to think about. We must answer that although the natural
26071 state of the mind is primordially pure, there are two ways of being pure.
26072 Defilements, or obscurations, are not in the nature of the mind (sems nyid)
26073 but in the moving mind (sems), so they can be purified. It is as in the
26074 Tibetan story of the old beggar woman who slept on a pillow of gold every
26075 night: she was rich, but since she did not appreciate the value of gold, she
26076 thought she was poor. In the same way, the primordial purity of our mind is
26077 of no use to us if we are not aware of it and do not integrate it with our
26078 moving mind. If we realize our innate purity but only integrate with it from
26079 time to time, we are not totally realized. Being in total integration all the
26080 time is final realization. But many people prefer thinking and speaking about
26081 integration to actualizing it.
26082 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "Wonders of the Natural Mind: The Essence of
26083 Dzogchen in the Native Bon Tradition of Tibet", Foreword by H.H. the
26084 Dalai Lama, edited by Andrew Lukianowicz, published by Snow Lion
26087 External disarmament is very, very important. Already, there is some
26088 movement. My dream is that one day the whole world will be demilitarized, but
26089 we cannot achieve this overnight. Also, we cannot achieve it without a
26090 proper, systematic plan; however, it is important to make the target clear.
26091 Even though it may take one hundred years, or fifty years, that doesn't
26092 matter. Establish a clear idea or clear target; then try to achieve it step
26093 by step. As a first step, we have already started with the elimination of
26094 antipersonnel mines and biological weapons. Also, we are already reducing
26095 nuclear weapons; eventually, there should be a total ban on nuclear weapons.
26096 This is now foreseeable; the idea of its possibility is approaching. These
26097 are great, hopeful signs.
26098 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "The Art of Peace: Nobel Peace Laureates
26099 Discuss Human Rights, Conflict and Reconciliation", edited by Jeffrey
26100 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
26102 Bare awareness is not easy to develop and maintain because of the mind's
26103 disposition to be constantly preoccupied by thoughts. We easily lose
26104 attention because our mind is so busy. When we do, our emotional life can
26105 creep up on us and take us over. Without mindfulness, the capacity to
26106 maintain attention, disidentification is very difficult, and bare awareness
26107 even more so. Through meditation it is possible to cultivate a quiet,
26108 unintrusive awareness that greatly strengthens our capacity to remain with our
26109 feelings. We simply allow their presence without judging them, or needing to
26110 make them different.
26111 The early stage of meditation focuses attention and cultivates
26112 mindfulness. Mindfulness is our capacity to watch and remain conscious as
26113 emotions, feelings, and thoughts arise. We may begin in meditation by
26114 observing the breath and gradually quietening the mind from the constant
26115 discursive chatter that interrupts our attention. In time a quality of bare
26116 awareness is established free from the conceptual confusion that discriminates
26117 and evaluates what arises and parcels it up in conceptual boxes of good or
26118 bad. Furthermore, this quiet awareness does not become pulled into the
26119 contents of mental activity and drown in their confusion.
26120 -- Rob Preece, "The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra", Foreword by Stephen
26121 Batchelor, published by Snow Lion Publications
26123 In the realm of matter, one and the same object can serve as a cause of
26124 happiness for some living beings, and a cause of suffering for others.
26125 Certain plants, for example, function as medicine for some creatures, but for
26126 other species they can be poisonous. From the point of view of the object
26127 itself there is no difference, but because of the physical constitution and
26128 the material state of the particular living being, that single self-same
26129 object can affect them in different ways. Then, in the sphere of our own
26130 experiences, the same holds true. A certain individual may appear to some as
26131 very friendly, kind and gentle, and so gives them feelings of happiness and
26132 pleasure. Yet to others that same person can appear harmful and wicked, and
26133 so cause them discomfort and unhappiness.
26134 What this kind of example points to is that, although external matter
26135 may act as a cause for our experience of pain and pleasure, the principal
26136 cause that determines whether we experience happiness or suffering lies
26137 within. This is the reason why, when Buddha identified the origin of
26138 suffering, he pointed within and not outside, because he knew that the
26139 principal causes of our suffering are our own negative emotions and the
26140 actions they drive us to do.
26141 -- H.H. The Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
26142 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron,
26143 Foreword by Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published
26144 by Snow Lion Publications
26146 When you have many excuses not to do your work, ask yourself what guarantee
26147 you have of another chance to do what needs to be done. Time lost is lost for
26148 good. No matter how much you promise to improve, no matter what good
26149 intentions you have for making it up, the time is gone for good. Feeling
26150 sorry about the situation will not bring it back. You can never buy back that
26151 precious piece of time. You may think, "Well, that piece of time has passed,
26152 but I still have a long stretch of time left." No, you do not! What guarantee
26153 is there that you will have another piece of time like this one? Wake up and
26154 stop the excuses; they never made sense before and do not make sense now.
26155 Laziness and procrastination have never worked in a sound and helpful way. It
26156 is only sound and helpful to get things moving.
26157 -- Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, "Dharma Paths", translated by Ngodup Burkhar
26158 and Chojor Radha, edited by Laura M. Roth, published by Snow Lion
26161 Any sense of conceit or self-importance gets in the way of cultivating the
26162 genuine altruistic intention, and the most effective remedy against this is
26163 the cultivation of humility.
26164 I can tell you a more recent story to illustrate this point. The great
26165 nineteenth-century Tibetan Dzokchen meditator Dza Patrul Rinpoche always
26166 maintained a demeanour of true humility. At one time, when he was giving a
26167 series of teachings to a large crowd of students, he experienced a forceful
26168 yearning for solitude. So one day he quietly left his residence and
26169 disappeared, dressed like an ordinary pilgrim and carrying a walking staff and
26170 very little else. When he reached a nomadic camp he sought shelter for a few
26171 days with one of the families. While he was staying with them, his hostess
26172 asked him to read some texts and, since he looked just like an ordinary
26173 pilgrim, in return for his food and lodging she asked him to help with the
26174 household chores, which included the disposal of the contents of her chamber
26176 One day, while he was away from the camp attending to this task, some of
26177 his well-dressed monk students came looking for him. When his hostess heard
26178 their description of him, she suddenly realised this was the same person she
26179 had asked to throw away the contents of her chamber pot. (It is said she was
26180 so embarrassed that she just ran away!) Such was the humility of this great
26181 teacher, who had many thousands of students.
26182 ...great practitioners of the altruistic intention also possess a
26183 tremendous courage grounded in real inner strength.... This combination of a
26184 total lack of conceit yet possessing great depth of courage is what is
26185 required in a true practitioner of bodhicitta, the altruistic mind of
26187 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
26188 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
26190 Rejoicing in the actions of others is the major antidote to jealousy. When
26191 we admire the virtuous deeds of ourselves and of others, a great increase of
26192 merit is created. Jealousy is very harmful, and must be destroyed by
26193 rejoicing. If we rejoice in the virtue of someone whose understanding is less
26194 than our own, we gain greater merit than that person. If we rejoice in the
26195 merit of someone with understanding equal to ours, we gain equal merit. If we
26196 rejoice in the realization or virtue of someone more highly realized than we
26197 are, we accumulate some fraction of the merit that they do. We must rejoice
26198 in virtue because we have taken bodhisattva vows. If other beings practice
26199 well it helps us; therefore we should rejoice in their positive actions. This
26200 is the easiest way to accumulate merit with little hardship. With consistent
26201 effort the practice of rejoicing becomes very powerful and is greatly praised
26203 -- Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, "Chod on the Ganden Tradition: the Oral
26204 Instructions of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche", edited by David Molk, published
26205 by Snow Lion Publications
26207 If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint,"
26208 then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
26209 -- Vincent Van Gogh
26211 ...there are various factors that contribute to attaining that level of
26212 joy and happiness which we conventionally also recognize as sources of
26213 happiness, such as good physical health, ...the wealth that we accumulate,
26214 ...and a circle of friends we trust and with whom we can relate emotionally.
26215 Now all of these are, in reality, sources of happiness, but in order for
26216 one to be able to fully utilize them with the goal of enjoying a happy and
26217 fulfilled life, one's state of mind is crucial. If one harbors hateful
26218 thoughts within, or strong or intense anger somewhere deep down, then it ruins
26219 one's health, so it destroys one of the factors. Even if one has wonderful
26220 possessions, when one is in an intense moment of anger or hatred, one feels
26221 like throwing them--breaking them or throwing them away. So there is no
26222 guarantee that wealth alone can give one the joy or fulfillment that one
26223 seeks. Similarly, when one is in an intense state of anger or hatred, even
26224 a very close friend appears somehow "frosty," cold and distant, or quite
26226 What this indicates is that our state of mind is crucial in determining
26227 whether or not we gain joy and happiness. So leaving aside the perspective of
26228 Dharma practice, even in worldly terms, in terms of our enjoying a happy day-
26229 to-day existence, the greater the level of calmness of our mind, the greater
26230 our peace of mind, and the greater our ability to enjoy a happy and joyful
26232 -- The Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist
26233 Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow
26236 Question: Is there a buildup of awareness that happens by the practice of
26237 recognizing or looking for your own basic nature so that, over time, it
26238 dispels the fear of these emotions?
26240 Rinpoche: Yes, awareness is developed through the discipline of meditation.
26241 Beginning with shamatha meditation, we develop lots of awareness and
26242 mindfulness on the path. Then, in Mahamudra and Dzogchen, we emphasize a
26243 different aspect of mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness and awareness
26244 come from the discipline of meditation, which continues in our everyday
26245 life. Therefore, formal sitting practice is very important for us. For
26246 that reason, many teachers tell us to sit at least 10-15 minutes every day.
26247 That helps us to generate this continuity of awareness in our everyday life.
26248 There is no easy solution for manifesting awareness or mindfulness in our
26249 everyday life without some discipline in practice. The only problem is
26250 that when a student hears a teacher say that they must sit every day,
26251 that's the time students usually begin to change their guru!
26253 -- Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "Penetrating Wisdom: The Aspiration of
26254 Samantabhadra", published by Snow Lion Publications
26256 We ordinary individuals share the characteristic of having our attempts to
26257 gain happiness thwarted by our own destructive self-centeredness. It is
26258 unsuitable to keep holding onto the self-centered attitude while ignoring
26259 others. If two friends find themselves floundering in a muddy swamp they
26260 should not ridicule each other, but combine their energies to get out. Both
26261 ourselves and others are in the same position of wanting happiness and not
26262 wanting suffering, but we are entangled in a web of ignorance that prevents us
26263 from achieving those goals. Far from regarding it as an "every man for
26264 himself" situation, we should meditate upon the equality of self and others
26265 and the need to be helpful to other beings.
26266 -- Ven. Lobsang Gyatso, "Bodhicitta: Cultivating the Compassionate Mind of
26267 Enlightenment", translated by Ven. Sherab Gyatso, published by Snow Lion
26270 Dalai Lama: "In the traditional [Tibetan] society, most people automatically
26271 did the types of work their families did--nomads, farmers, merchants, and so
26272 on. But some people still engaged in work that was not in keeping with the
26273 principle of nonharm, because there are butchers, metal smiths who make
26274 swords, and so on. But these kinds of work were also generally hereditary."
26276 Howard Cutler: "Speaking of work and the implementation of the concept of
26277 nonharm, ...you mentioned that there was a rule in Tibet that any new
26278 invention had to guarantee that it was beneficial or at least not harmful for
26279 at least seven generations."
26281 DL: "...there do seem to be certain practices and policies that successive
26282 Tibetan governments adopted in Tibet that reflect putting into practice
26283 certain Buddhist ideals, such as the Buddhist principle of respecting the
26284 natural world, particularly the animal world. For example, all the
26285 communities living near the Yamdrok Lake used to rely heavily on fishing in
26286 the past. Recently I heard about a policy that was adopted during the Fifth
26287 Dalai Lama's time where they were discouraged from fishing, and in order to
26288 compensate them, some other communities would band together and provide them
26289 an equivalent value in grain, so that they would be compensated against their
26290 loss. Similarly, in the area near Mount Kailash, around Lake Manasarovar
26291 during a particular season, a lot of waterfowl migrate there. They lay their
26292 eggs on the shores and apparently there was a government policy that during
26293 the egg-laying season, they would appoint people to watch over the eggs to
26294 make sure they were safe. Of course, there might be individuals who in
26295 addition to taking the salary probably ate some of the eggs as well. These
26296 things happen. But overall there is this kind of attitude of nonharm. "So,
26297 even though in Tibet, people didn't always follow the principle of nonharm in
26298 their work ...this principle was still deeply ingrained in the people. "In
26299 general, I think this could be applied in the West. Although not everybody
26300 has options about the work that they do, at least I think it is good to give
26301 serious thought to the kind of work one does, and the impact it has on others.
26302 I think it is best to choose work that does not cause harm to others, that
26303 does not exploit or deceive others, either directly or indirectly. I think
26304 that's the best way."
26305 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art
26306 of Happiness at Work"
26308 If we are feeling very nervous all the time, the first step toward doing
26309 something to remedy the situation is to take ourselves and the quality of our
26310 life seriously. Suppose we are walking down the street and we step on a bug
26311 and partially crush but have not actually killed it. If we continue walking
26312 and ignore the bug's experience of its leg being crushed or severed, we do so
26313 because we do not take the insect and its life seriously. We have no respect
26314 for it. If we treat ourselves no better than we do a bug and ignore our
26315 innermost pains and anguish, that is most unfortunate.
26316 Taking ourselves seriously means actually looking at how we are
26317 experiencing our life and, if there is something unsatisfactory about it,
26318 admitting it to ourselves. Our tension and stress do not go away by denying
26319 them or avoiding taking an honest look. And admitting that something is amiss
26320 is not the same as complaining about it and feeling sorry for ourselves. Nor
26321 does it imply that something is fundamentally wrong with us and we are guilty
26322 of being a bad person because we are nervous. Being objective, not
26323 melodramatic, and remaining non-judgmental are essential for any healing,
26325 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu
26326 Tradition of Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
26328 Wouldn't life be boring without attachment?
26330 No. In fact it's attachment that makes us restless and prevents us from
26331 enjoying things. For example, suppose we're attached to chocolate cake. Even
26332 while we're eating it, we're not tasting it and enjoying it completely. We're
26333 usually either criticizing ourselves for eating something fattening, comparing
26334 the taste of this chocolate cake to other cakes we've eaten in the past, or
26335 planning how to get another piece. In any case, we're not really experiencing
26336 the chocolate cake in the present.
26337 On the other hand, without attachment, we can think clearly about whether
26338 we want to eat the cake, and if we decide to, we can eat it peacefully,
26339 tasting and enjoying every bite without craving for more or being dissatisfied
26340 because it isn't as good as we expected. As we diminish our attachment, life
26341 becomes more interesting because we're able to open up to what's happening in
26343 -- Thubten Chodron, "Buddhism for Beginners", published by Snow Lion
26346 My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses.
26347 Drinks right out of the bottle.
26350 We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident,
26351 bits of a star gone wrong.
26352 -- Sir Arthur Eddington
26354 Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. -- Milton Friedman
26356 I have the worst memory ever so no matter who comes up to me--
26357 they're just, like, "I can't believe you don't remember me!"
26358 I'm like, "Oh Dad I'm sorry!"
26361 Question: When a practitioner of the Great Vehicle vows not to enter into
26362 nirvana until all beings are liberated, how is it possible to fulfill this
26365 Answer: Three modes of generating an altruistic intention to become
26366 enlightened are described--like a king, like a boatman, and like a shepherd.
26367 In the first, that like a king, one first seeks to attain a high state after
26368 which help can be given to others. In the second, like a boatman, one seeks
26369 to cross the river of suffering together with others. In the third, like a
26370 shepherd, one seeks to relieve the flock of suffering beings from pain first,
26371 oneself following afterward. These are indications of the style of the
26372 altruistic motivation for becoming enlightened; in actual fact, there is no
26373 way that a Bodhisattva either would want to or could delay achieving full
26374 enlightenment. As much as the motivation to help others increases, so much
26375 closer does one approach Buddhahood.
26376 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard",
26377 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion
26380 A bodhisattva is someone who says from the depth of his or her heart, "I
26381 want to be liberated and find ways to overcome all the problems of the world.
26382 I want to help all my fellow beings to do likewise. I long to attain the
26383 highest state of everlasting peace and happiness, in which all suffering has
26384 ceased, and I want to do so for myself and for all sentient beings."
26385 According to the Buddha's teaching, anyone who makes this firm and heartfelt
26386 commitment is a bodhisattva. We become bodhisattvas from the moment we have
26387 this vast and open heart, called bodhichitta, the mind bent on bringing
26388 lasting happiness to all sentient beings.
26389 Buddhist literature defines three types of bodhisattvas: the kinglike
26390 bodhisattva, the captainlike bodhisattva, and the shepherdlike bodhisattva. A
26391 kinglike bodhisattva is like a good king who first wants everything luxurious
26392 for himself, like a big palace, a large entourage, a beautiful queen, and so
26393 on. But once his happiness has been achieved, he also wants to help and
26394 support his subjects as much as possible. Accordingly, a kinglike bodhisattva
26395 has the motivation, "First, I want to free myself from samsara and attain
26396 perfect enlightenment. As soon as I have reached buddhahood, I will help all
26397 other sentient beings to become buddhas as well."
26398 A captainlike bodhisattva would say, "I would like to become a buddha, and
26399 I will take all other sentient beings along with me so that we reach
26400 enlightenment together." This is just as the captain of a ship crosses the
26401 sea, he takes his passengers with him, and they reach the far shore
26403 A shepherdlike bodhisattva is inspired by thinking, "I want to help all
26404 sentient beings to reach enlightenment and see the truth. Only when this is
26405 achieved and samsara is emptied will I become a buddha myself." In actual
26406 fact it may not happen this way, but anyone who has this motivation is called
26407 a "shepherdlike bodhisattva." In the old days, sheep were not kept in fenced
26408 pastures, and the shepherds had to bring them down from the mountains to
26409 protect them from wolves. They would follow behind the sheep, guiding them
26410 into their pen and lock them in. A shepherd would take care of his sheep
26411 first, and only then would he go home and eat.
26412 The bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara developed this shepherdlike motivation and
26413 is therefore considered to be the most courageous and compassionate of beings.
26414 He vowed, "I will not attain complete enlightenment until I have led all
26415 sentient beings to liberation without leaving a single one behind."
26416 -- Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, "Daring Steps Toward Fearlessness: The Three
26417 Vehicles of Buddhism", edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs,
26418 published by Snow Lion Publications
26420 The practice of compassion begins at home. We have our parents, our
26421 children, and our brothers and sisters, who perhaps irritate us the most, and
26422 we begin our practice of loving-kindness and compassion with them. Then
26423 gradually we extend our compassion out into our greater community, our
26424 country, neighbouring countries, the world, and finally to all sentient beings
26425 equally without exception.
26426 Extending compassion in this way makes it evident that it is not very easy
26427 to instantly have compassion for "all sentient beings." Theoretically it may
26428 be comfortable to have compassion for "all sentient beings," but through our
26429 practice we realize that "all sentient beings" is a collection of individuals.
26430 When we actually try to generate compassion for each and every individual, it
26431 becomes much more challenging. But if we cannot work with one individual,
26432 then how can we work with all sentient beings? Therefore it is important for
26433 us to reflect more practically, to work with compassion for individuals and
26434 then extend that compassion further.
26435 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Trainings in Compassion", translated by the
26436 Padmakara Translation Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
26438 It wouldn't be bad if you didn't have statues, but it has become indispensable
26439 to have Buddhist texts which deal with the structured path to train our mind.
26440 If you have Buddhist texts, read them for yourselves and to friends who visit.
26441 That way you can help others to understand Buddhist ideas. For instance, it
26442 is interesting to read Milarepa's life story and songs. We find in them many
26443 enlightening lessons. Buddha's image alone will not purify us of karmic
26444 obscuration.... It is very important to study the scriptures. They are not
26445 to be just stacked up on the altar. They must be cultivated in our mind.
26446 ...[we] take great interest in having the symbolic representations of Buddha's
26447 body, speech and mind. I feel it is more important to acquire and read
26448 scriptures, the symbolic representations of his speech. You can pay homage to
26449 them, you can make offerings to them; above all, you should study them.
26450 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries by H.H. the Dalai
26451 Lama XIV on the Jatakamala", translated by Tenzin Dorjee, edited by
26452 Dexter Roberts, Snow Lion Publications
26454 From the Buddhist point of view, being in a depressed state, in a state of
26455 discouragement, is seen as a kind of extreme that can clearly be an obstacle
26456 to taking the steps necessary to accomplish one's goals. A state of self-
26457 hatred is even far more extreme than simply being discouraged, and this can be
26458 very, very dangerous. For those engaged in Buddhist practice, the antidote to
26459 self-hatred would be to reflect upon the fact that all beings, including
26460 oneself, have Buddha Nature--the seed or potential for perfection, full
26461 Enlightenment--no matter how weak or poor or deprived one's present situation
26462 may be. So those people involved in Buddhist practice who suffer from self-
26463 hatred or self-loathing should avoid contemplating the suffering nature of
26464 existence or the underlying unsatisfactory nature of existence, and instead
26465 they should concentrate more on the positive aspects of one's existence, such
26466 as appreciating the tremendous potential that lies within oneself as a human
26467 being. And by reflecting upon these opportunities and potentials, they will
26468 be able to increase their sense of worth and confidence in themselves.
26469 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
26470 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
26472 An instruction that matches examples and their meanings to show how the
26473 absolute nature permeates everything. (*SG)
26475 These various examples give a general idea of the absolute nature. (*DK)
26477 ...there are four examples and their meanings. Take the example of a
26478 Sugata's body: whichever way one looks at it, it is beautiful. (*Z)
26480 Similarly, everything a realized being does, since it is permeated with the
26481 realization of the unborn nature, is bliss, for he does not have ordinary
26482 attachment and aversion. (*Z & SG)
26484 Whether one looks at a Sugata's face or any other part of his body, one never
26485 feels one has looked enough. It is an example of ultimate beauty. Similarly,
26486 those for whom everything is backed by the realization of the unborn nature no
26487 longer have ordinary attachment and aversion, and such persons can therefore
26488 act like enlightened beings: whatever they do is bliss. Since they have fully
26489 realized the absolute nature, there is no question of telling them, "This is
26490 the right thing to do; that is something you should not do." They have no
26491 concepts or limits, so they can act as they wish. Everything they do will be
26492 nothing but bliss. (DK)
26495 Z: Zurchungpa's root text
26496 DK: Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's commentary
26497 SG: Shechen Gyaltsap's notes
26499 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Zurchungpa's Testament: A Commentary on
26500 Zurchung Sherab Trakpa's Eighty Chapters of Personal Advice", translated
26501 by the Padmakara Translation Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
26503 Unless someone like you cares a whole lot,
26504 nothing is going to get better. It's not.
26505 -- The Lorax, Doctor Seuss
26507 We do what we must, and call it by the best names. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
26509 These days an income is something you can't live without--or within.
26512 Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize
26513 until you have tried to make it precise.
26514 -- Bertrand Russell
26516 The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
26517 -- Flannery O'Connor
26519 The initial period of deity yoga is called prior approximation because one is
26520 accustoming to a deity through becoming closer and closer to its state,
26521 whereupon the deity grants the feat, either directly or in the sense of
26522 bestowing a capacity to the mind. Actually effecting the achievement of feats
26523 is done by way of carrying out prescribed burnt offerings or repetition of
26524 mantra, etc., after the approximation has been completed. These feats are
26525 then used for the welfare of others in the third stage, which involves
26526 activities of (1) pacification such as overcoming plague or relieving others
26527 of demons, (2) increase of lifespan, intelligence, wealth, and so forth, (3)
26528 control of resources, persons harmful to others' welfare, etc., and (4)
26529 ferocity, such as expelling or confusing harmful beings.
26530 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Deity Yoga
26531 in Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow Lion Publications
26533 The bodhisattva, as the personification of individuation, discovers a unique
26534 capacity to awaken his or her potential to work for the welfare of others in
26535 whichever way most suits his or her individual disposition. When I consider
26536 my own teachers, one thing I particularly value is their capacity to be
26537 authentically themselves. They each have their unique personality and quality
26538 that is a genuine expression of their individuality. There is no
26539 contradiction between our Western need to be individuals and the Buddhist
26540 path. Buddhism does not demand that we become clones of some ideal. Rather,
26541 it asks us to respond to who we are and awaken our full potential, expressing
26542 it within our particular individual capacity. My Tibetan teachers have
26543 supremely individualistic personalities, something I love and value deeply.
26544 They respond to me as an individual with my own personality, which they would
26545 never ask me to relinquish. The fact that they were each on their own unique
26546 journey within the Buddhist path was, for me, a sublime example of the
26547 bodhisattva as an individuated person who has truly responded to the inner
26549 -- Rob Preece, "The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of Individuation
26550 in Buddhist Life", published by Snow Lion Publications
26552 The view is to believe in and understand the buddha nature, the essence of all
26553 the buddhas. If one knows the buddha nature, then that is to know the
26554 unchanging essence which is free from any limitation, the original primordial
26555 nature of the mind as it is. This is not like a light bulb that suddenly
26556 comes on or something that is newly acquired. It is the nature as it has
26557 always been and always will be: primordially perfect. To recognize the buddha
26558 nature is the view. To fail to recognize the buddha nature is to deviate into
26559 confusion. If you recognize your buddha nature, this is the same as having an
26560 audience with all the buddhas. You will meet face to face with all your root
26562 -- Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche, "Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga",
26563 translated by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro, published by Snow Lion
26566 ...when we ask, what is the substantial cause of the material universe way
26567 back in the early history of the universe, we trace it back to the space
26568 particles which transform into the elements of this manifest universe. And
26569 then we can ask whether those space particles have an ultimate beginning. The
26570 answer is no. They are beginningless. Where other philosophical systems
26571 maintain that the original cause was God, Buddha suggested the alternative
26572 that there aren't any ultimate causes. The world is beginningless. Then the
26573 question would be: Why is it beginningless? And the answer is, it is just
26574 nature. There is no reason. Matter is just matter.
26575 Now we have a problem: What accounts for the evolution of the universe as
26576 we know it? What accounts for the loose particles in space forming into the
26577 universe that is apparent to us? Why did it go through orderly processes of
26578 change? Buddhists would say there is a condition which makes it possible, and
26579 we speak of that condition as the awareness of sentient beings.
26580 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with
26581 the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara Houshmand,
26582 Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion
26585 Q: Certain associates can say things to me that spark an aggressive reaction.
26586 Why is it so easy to spark this feeling of negativity if there is not an
26587 accumulation of energy behind it?
26589 A: This is because of your pattern of clinging to the idea that you should
26590 have all the good things, and nothing that bothers you should ever happen, as
26591 I explained earlier. This is wishful thinking, because the nature of the
26592 world is not like that at all. The ego game you have planned is itself the
26593 explanation for how easily your anger is sparked. Because you have planned
26594 such a delicate, impossible game, and there are many things that can happen,
26595 anything that jeopardizes the plan of your ego upsets you. It is not an
26596 accumulation of energy but the pattern of clinging that is at fault.
26598 -- Venerable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, "Dharma Paths", translated by Ngodup
26599 Burkhar and Chojor Radha, edited by Laura M. Roth, published by Snow
26602 Suppose... you try to convert someone from another religion to the
26603 Buddhist religion, and you argue with them trying to convince them of the
26604 inferiority of their position. And suppose you do not succeed, suppose they
26605 do not become Buddhist. On the one hand, you have failed in your task, and on
26606 the other hand, you may have weakened the trust they have in their own
26607 religion, so that they may come to doubt their own faith. What have you
26608 accomplished by all this? It is of no use. When we come into contact with
26609 the followers of different religions, we should not argue. Instead, we should
26610 advise them to follow their own beliefs as sincerely and as truthfully as
26611 possible. For if they do so, they will no doubt reap certain benefits. Of
26612 this there is no doubt. Even in the immediate future, they will be able to
26613 achieve more happiness and more satisfaction.
26614 ...When I meet the followers of different religions, I always praise them,
26615 for it is enough, it is sufficient, that they are following the moral
26616 teachings that are emphasized in every religion. It is enough, as I mentioned
26617 earlier, that they are trying to become better human beings. This in itself
26618 is very good and worthy of praise.
26619 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
26620 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
26622 Only a Buddha has extinguished all faults and gained all attainments.
26623 Therefore, one should mentally go for refuge to a Buddha, praise him with
26624 speech, and respect him physically. One should enter the teaching of such a
26626 A Buddha's abandonment of defects is of three types: good, complete, and
26627 irreversible. Good abandonment involves overcoming obstructions through their
26628 antidotes, not just through withdrawing from those activities. Complete
26629 abandonment is not trifling, forsaking only some afflictions or just the
26630 manifest afflictions, but forsaking all obstructions. Irreversible
26631 abandonment overcomes the seeds of afflictions and other obstructions in such
26632 a way that defects will never arise again, even when conditions favourable to
26634 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
26635 published by Snow Lion Publications
26637 In commenting on the first instruction spoken by Manjushri, we considered the
26638 question of attachment to this lifetime and the faults that come from this
26639 attachment. However, the question of attachment goes deeper. It is not just
26640 a matter of giving up attachment to this life's rewards but of losing our
26641 taste and affinity for the whole of worldly existence. This is why it is
26642 necessary to contemplate and meditate upon the faults of conditioned
26643 existence. Otherwise, we may imagine that samsara possesses any manner of
26644 attractive qualities. Pondering the shortcomings of samsara should bring
26645 forth in us a tangible sense of disgust, as we are confronted with our own
26646 misguided pursuit of worldly ends.
26647 -- Chogye Trichen Rinpoche, "Parting from the Four Attachments: Jetsun
26648 Drakpa Gyaltsen's Song of Experience on Mind Training and the View",
26649 commentary translated by Thubten Choedak, Root Text and Lineage Prayer
26650 translated by H.H. Sakya Trizin and Jay Goldberg, compiled and edited
26651 by John Deweese, published by Snow Lion Publications
26653 Another problem we face today is the gap between rich and poor. In this
26654 great country of America, your forefathers established the concepts of
26655 democracy, freedom, liberty, equality, and equal opportunity for every
26656 citizen. These are provided for by your wonderful Constitution. However, the
26657 number of billionaires in this country is increasing while the poor remain
26658 poor, in some cases getting even poorer. This is very unfortunate. On the
26659 global level as well, we see rich nations and poor ones. This is also very
26660 unfortunate. It is not just morally wrong, but practically it is a source of
26661 unrest and trouble that will eventually find its way to our door.
26662 ...one of my elder brothers, who is no longer alive, would tell me of his
26663 experiences living in America. He lived a humble life and told me of the
26664 troubles, the fears, the killings, theft, and rape that people endured. These
26665 are, I think, the result of economic inequality in society. It is only
26666 natural that difficulties arise if we must fight day by day in order to
26667 survive while another human being, equal to us, is effortlessly living a
26668 luxurious life. This is an unhealthy situation; as a result, even the
26669 wealthy--the billionaires and millionaires--remain in constant anxiety. I
26670 therefore think that this huge gap between rich and poor is very unfortunate.
26671 ...So, for those of you who are poor, those who come from difficult
26672 situations, I strongly urge you to work hard, with self-confidence, to make
26673 use of your opportunities. The richer people should be more caring toward the
26674 poorer ones, and the poor should make every effort, with self-confidence.
26675 -- The Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life",
26676 edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Khyongla Rato and Richard Gere
26679 Tibetans say that once upon a time all the yaks that live in Tibet were
26680 living in India as water buffalo. It was very, very hot in India so some of
26681 them decided if they were to keep walking to the north they would get to a
26682 place that would be nice and cool. So they climbed up in the mountains, and
26683 as they were climbing their hair started to grow. Because of this the water
26684 buffalo in India often turn their head and look out expectantly and they are
26685 waiting for their brothers who have wandered off. In a similar way at one
26686 time all the buffalo of samsara and nirvana were living together and one day
26687 some of them wandered off and came into samsara. They keep looking around to
26688 see who else is there and where the other half is, because the basic quality
26689 of our ordinary sense of self is that it is very lonely. Something is missing
26690 in our lives and we don't quite know what it is, but we keep looking and
26691 looking to find this missing part. We can look for it in terms of
26692 possessions, we can look for it in terms of the form of our body, trying to
26693 change it through dieting or hair style or whatever. You can look in terms of
26694 friends. Anything. And this keeps us very, very busy. Sometimes the
26695 busyness can be very exhausting, but when we stop then we feel lonely. So we
26696 get busy again. Dharma is very helpful here if you want distraction because
26697 there are many kinds of ways to be busy in the dharma. You can focus on
26698 having lots of dharma possessions. You can focus on learning the text by
26699 heart, on the mantras and mudras, on serving the tsog, on doing meditations.
26700 There is always something to be busy with.
26701 In Tibet many, many people practiced dharma but not so many seem to get
26702 enlightened. There are many kinds of dharma and if we practice in a way that
26703 doesn't focus on the essential point but on secondary and tertiary levels it
26704 is easy to get lost. It is really important, given that we have limited time,
26705 to focus on what is essential. Many people when they get a plate of food will
26706 eat the things they don't like so much first and leave the special thing to
26707 the end. But when when we apply this to life we can make a big mistake. The
26708 time for deep practice is now. You can learn all about Padmasambhava and what
26709 his clothes mean and what his hair style means but if you don't know the
26710 nature of your own mind then knowledge about Padmasambhava is just some more
26712 -- "Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje entitled
26713 'The Mirror of Clear Meaning' ", with commentary by James Low, published
26714 by Snow Lion Publications
26716 Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic
26717 realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers,
26718 philologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and neurologists,
26719 along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians.
26722 What is undistracted calm abiding? It is meditative absorption free of the
26723 six types of distraction. What are these six?
26725 (1) Inherent distraction refers to the eye consciousness and the other
26726 four collections of consciousness. Because they are naturally directed
26727 outward, they [cause one to] emerge from meditative absorption.
26728 (2) External distraction refers to a mental consciousness that reaches out
26729 towards or engages objects.
26730 (3) Internal distraction concerns dullness and agitation, as well as
26731 savoring one's meditative absorption.
26732 (4) The distraction of marks occurs when, trusting in meditative
26733 absorption, one apprehends marks of it and becomes attached.
26734 (5) Distraction brought about by negative tendencies is when directing the
26735 mind involves the apprehending of an ego. This is said to refer to the mental
26736 act of pridefully believing oneself to be superior to others, or [simply any
26737 mental act] that involves apprehending an "I".
26738 (6) The distraction of directing the mind occurs when one is caught up in
26739 the mindset of, and directs the mind in the style of, the Lesser Vehicle.
26741 The undistracted calm abiding that is determined by the elimination of
26742 those six is the unique calm abiding of the Great Vehicle. This is a state of
26743 one-pointed inner rest, a flawless calm abiding. In it, there is no
26744 apprehension of marks, as is the case when inner absorption alone is believed
26745 to bring liberation. Neither does it involve the ego apprehension that occurs
26746 in the concentrations of non-Buddhists. Further, one does not direct the mind
26747 as one would when cultivating the supports for the inferior paths [to
26748 liberation]. This is how the wise should understand the calm abiding of the
26750 -- "Middle Beyond Extremes: Maitreya's 'Madhyantavibhaga' with commentaries
26751 by Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham", translated by the Dharmachakra
26752 Translation Committee, published by Snow Lion Publications
26754 Calm abiding is predominantly stabilizing meditation, in which the mind is
26755 kept on a single object, rather than analytical meditation, in which a topic
26756 such as impermanence or emptiness is analyzed with reasoning. The purpose of
26757 developing calm abiding is that, since a mind that is scattered to external
26758 objects is relatively powerless, the mind needs to be concentrated in order to
26759 become powerful. If you do not have concentration in which the mind is
26760 unfluctuatingly stable and clear, the faculty of wisdom cannot know its
26761 object, just as it is, in all its subtleties. Therefore, it is necessary to
26762 have a highly focused mind.
26763 ...In order to set the mind steadily on an object of observation, it is
26764 necessary initially to use an object of observation suited to counteracting
26765 your own predominant afflictive emotion, since its force remains with your
26766 mind now and can easily interrupt any attempt to concentrate the mind.
26767 Therefore, Buddha described many types of objects for purifying behavior:
26768 + For someone whose predominant afflictive emotion is desire, ugliness is
26769 a helpful object of meditation. Here, "ugliness" does not necessarily refer
26770 to distorted forms; the very nature of our body--composed of blood, flesh,
26771 bone, and so forth--might seem superficially to be very beautiful with a good
26772 color, solid and yet soft to touch, but when it is investigated, you see that
26773 its essence is quite different--substances like bone, blood, urine, feces,
26775 + For someone who has predominantly engaged in hatred, the object of
26776 meditation is love.
26777 + For someone who was predominantly sunk in obscuration, the meditation is
26778 on the twelve links of the dependent-arising of cyclic existence because
26779 contemplating its complexity promotes intelligence.
26780 + For someone whose predominant afflictive emotion is pride, the
26781 meditation could be on the divisions of the constituents because, when
26782 meditating on the many divisions, you get to the point where you realize that
26783 there are many things you do not know, thereby lessening an inflated sense of
26785 + Those dominated by conceptuality can observe the exhalation and
26786 inhalation of the breath because, by tying the mind to the breath,
26787 discursiveness diminishes.
26788 A particularly helpful object for all personality types is a Buddha body,
26789 since concentration on a Buddha's body causes your mind to mix with virtuous
26790 qualities. No matter what the object is, this is not a case of meditating
26791 within, looking at an external object with your eyes, but of causing an image
26792 of it to appear to the mental consciousness.
26793 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
26794 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published
26795 by Snow Lion Publications
26797 ...an understanding of the doctrine of emptiness is fundamental to tantric
26798 practice. Every sadhana begins with, is structured around, and ends with
26799 meditation upon emptiness. To practice Vajrayana without the wisdom of
26800 emptiness can be very dangerous. For example, a main tantric technique is the
26801 cultivation of a subtle divine pride, a confidence that one is an enlightened
26802 tantric deity, the Lord of the Mandala. One's mind is the Wisdom Body of a
26803 Buddha, one's speech is the Beatific Body, one's form is the Perfect Emanation
26804 Body, and the world and its inhabitants are seen as a mandala inhabited by the
26805 various forms of tantric deities. Thus we have to utterly change our sense of
26806 "I." To do so involves the subject of emptiness. To practice the yoga of
26807 divine pride without an understanding of emptiness will not only be useless,
26808 but could lead to identity problems and other undesirable psychological
26809 effects. Therefore it is said that although the Vajrayana is a quick path
26810 when correctly practiced on the proper spiritual basis, it is dangerous for
26811 the spiritually immature. This type of danger area is one of the reasons why
26812 the Vajrayana must be practiced under the supervision of a qualified vajra
26814 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
26815 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
26817 Self-discipline brings us into relationship with one of the six
26818 perfections of the bodhisattva, that of enthusiastic perseverance, which
26819 implies the willingness to engage in a process with effort and enthusiasm over
26820 a prolonged period. No material or spiritual qualities are gained without
26821 some degree of effort. Perseverance enables the practitioner to carry on and
26822 trust in the process, even when it feels hopeless. It makes it possible to
26823 face difficulties and obstacles in the path with confidence and courage,
26824 rather than giving up because it feels too hard. Self-discipline helps us
26825 remain in the vessel and not run away.
26826 My Tibetan retreat guide described the maintenance of self-discipline over
26827 time like keeping a pot heating on a stove. If we continually remove it from
26828 the heat the pot never boils. Similarly he felt that when someone enters into
26829 the discipline of retreat, it should be maintained as rigorously as possible.
26830 In doing so the alchemical vessel will be maintained, and the "cooking" can
26831 take place. Transformation only occurs when the vessel is maintained in this
26833 -- Rob Preece, "The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra", foreword by Stephen
26834 Batchelor, published by Snow Lion Publications
26836 Installation programs are where programming
26837 and the IT department meet... and fight.
26840 Compassion without attachment is possible. Therefore, we need to clarify the
26841 distinctions between compassion and attachment. True compassion is not just
26842 an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Because of
26843 this firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not
26844 change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our
26845 own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other:
26846 irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy, as long
26847 as that person wishes for peace and happiness and wishes to overcome
26848 suffering, then on that basis we develop genuine concern for their problem.
26849 This is genuine compassion. For a Buddhist practitioner, the goal is to
26850 develop this genuine compassion, this genuine wish for the well-being of
26851 another, in fact for every living being throughout the universe.
26852 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, "The Compassionate Life"
26854 Buddha traveled and taught widely for some forty-five years after his
26855 enlightenment, and his audiences were diverse. Even though India at the time
26856 was a highly literate society, nothing of what he said was written down during
26857 his lifetime. Instead, various individuals were entrusted with memorizing the
26858 gist of each discourse. The work of transcribing his words took place only
26859 with the passage of generations.
26860 Tibetans believe that this reluctance on the part of the Buddha and his
26861 immediate followers to commit the enlightenment teachings to paper, and
26862 instead to preserve them as oral traditions, was a purposeful strategy gauged
26863 to maintain the maximum fluidity and living power of the enlightenment
26864 experience. It only became necessary to write things down when the darkness
26865 of the changing times threatened the very survival of the legacy. An oral
26866 tradition becomes lost to history should its holders pass away without first
26867 passing on their lineages.
26868 This intended fluidity, and the according safeguard against the
26869 establishment of an "enlightenment dogma" is perhaps best demonstrated by a
26870 verse that the Buddha himself said shortly before his death:
26871 Do not accept any of my words on faith,
26872 Believing them just because I said them.
26873 Be like an analyst buying gold, who cuts, burns,
26874 And critically examines his product for authenticity.
26875 Only accept what passes the test
26876 By proving useful and beneficial in your life.
26877 This simple statement empowered future generations of Buddhist teachers to
26878 accept and reject at will anything said by Buddha himself as well by his early
26879 disciples. If something that was said by them did not pass the test of
26880 personal analysis, one could simply discard it as being limited in application
26881 to particular times, people, or situations, and therefore as only contextually
26883 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lamas on Tantra", translated, edited and
26884 introduced by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
26886 Many places have been totally changed through the use of police force and
26887 the power of guns--the Soviet Union, China, Burma, the Philippines, many
26888 communist countries, countries in Africa and South America. But eventually,
26889 you see, the power of guns and the power of the will of ordinary human beings
26890 will change places. I am always telling people that our century is very
26891 important historically for the planet. There is a big competition between
26892 world peace and world war, between the force of mind and the force of
26893 materialism, between democracy and totalitarianism. And now within this
26894 century, the force of peace is gaining the upper hand. Still, of course, the
26895 material force is very strong, but there is a kind of dissatisfaction about
26896 materialism and a realization or feeling that something is missing.
26897 ...entering the twenty-first century, I think the basic concerns are human
26898 values and the value of truth. These things have more value, more weight now.
26899 -- "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
26900 About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, Foreword by
26901 Sen. Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
26903 An inexpressible, self-arisen expanse
26904 Without the names "samsara" and "nirvana."
26906 Here, "self-arisen" means the primordial state. It is not something we
26907 can fully express with words or concepts. It's beyond words or concepts. The
26908 nature of all is not biased; it is not restricted to one or another. The
26909 nature of all exists in one identical state. That ground, that nature, does
26910 not have any name such as samsara or nirvana. That is the foundation, that is
26911 the ground. It is beyond samsara and nirvana. Not knowing the ground means
26912 wandering in samsara. If you recognize this ground, if you truly experience
26913 this ground, buddhahood is attained. That is the fruition. That is the
26914 result of our practice and our path.
26915 ...The ground, that fundamental state of simplicity, is the origin of all
26916 elaborations. This pure basic state is like a simple artist's canvas. We
26917 paint different images on this canvas. We can paint the image of a buddha,
26918 and it becomes very pure, beautiful, and inspiring to look at. We can also
26919 paint a devil on the same canvas, which can create our fundamental suffering,
26920 our basic pain. However, the basis of both is the same simple state of canvas
26921 that is completely pure and totally free from the images we project on it. It
26922 is totally free, whether that image is a buddha or a devil. That is the
26924 -- The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "Penetrating Wisdom: The Aspiration of
26925 Samantabhadra", published by Snow Lion Publications
26927 Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
26928 -- Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh
26930 Setting a Specific Intention for Our Practice
26931 We should think about how we can make the best use of our practice so that
26932 we get the most out of it in the short time we have in this life. We do not
26933 have the leisure of wasting our time here by delaying the benefits of our
26934 practice. We have to use these situations as effectively as we can.
26935 Before you begin any practice, first think very carefully about your
26936 motivation. When we are engaged in the threefold process of study,
26937 contemplation and meditation, we should be very specific, very clear about why
26938 we are doing it. We should remind ourselves, "I am doing this to transcend my
26939 negative emotions and my ego-clinging." This is a general example of a
26940 specific intention. However, to be more precise, we need to consider the
26941 unique make-up of our own individual kleshas [intense states of suffering, and
26942 ignorance]. Once we have identified our strongest emotion, then we can focus
26943 on the practices that will alleviate it. We begin with whichever emotion is
26944 strongest for us and then we move on to the next strongest, followed by the
26946 It is important for us to prioritize our practice in this way. We have
26947 to keep our intention very clear in all three phases--in our study, in our
26948 contemplation and in our meditation. During shamatha or other practices, when
26949 thoughts come up, we recall that our purpose is to overcome our disturbing
26950 emotions and kleshas. We have to have a sense of willpower or determination
26951 in our minds. In order for the remedy to work, we must tell ourselves, "Yes,
26952 I am going to transcend this anger. I am going to work with it." Otherwise,
26953 if we do not have a clear idea, if we simply sit there with an indefinite or
26954 vague intention, then the effect also will be vague. We may have sat for one
26955 hour and although that time will not have been wasted, because it was not
26956 directed in an intentional way, the experience will not be so sharp, to the
26957 point or effective.
26958 -- Dzogchen Ponlop, "Mind Beyond Death", published by Snow Lion
26961 ...particularly in Buddhism while we practice we must use the brain as
26962 well as the heart. On the ethical side, we must practice the quality of a
26963 good and warm heart; also, since Buddhism is very much involved in reasoning
26964 and logic--the wisdom side--intelligence is important. Thus, a combination of
26965 mind and heart is needed. Without knowledge, without fully utilized
26966 intelligence, you cannot reach the depths of the Buddhist doctrine; it is
26967 difficult to achieve concrete or fully qualified wisdom. There may be
26968 exceptions, but this is the general rule.
26969 It is necessary to have a combination of hearing, thinking, and
26970 meditating. The Kadampa teacher Dromton ('brom ston pa, 1004-1064) said,
26971 "When I engage in hearing, I also make effort at thinking and meditating.
26972 When I engage in thinking, I also search out more hearing and engage in
26973 meditation. And when I meditate, I don't give up hearing and don't give up
26974 thinking." He said, "I am a balanced Kadampa," meaning that he maintained a
26975 balance of hearing, thinking, and meditating.
26976 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness, Clarity,
26977 and Insight", edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by
26978 Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
26980 If through listening to this explanation of the Seven Point Mind Training we
26981 come to recognise how important Bodhichitta is, this will be an infallible
26982 cause of our enlightenment. Of all the eighty four thousand different
26983 sections of the doctrine, the precious Bodhichitta is the very essence. By
26984 hearing the words of such a teaching, it is impossible even for demons, whose
26985 nature it is to kill and to do harm, not to have positive thoughts! Kham, a
26986 region in East Tibet, was haunted in the past by many ghosts and evil spirits,
26987 and this was one of the reasons why Patrul Rinpoche used to explain the
26988 Bodhicharyavatara continually to his disciples. Before long, there were no
26989 more ghosts--or at least, no one came to any more harm. Such is the hidden
26990 power of Bodhichitta!
26991 --Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven
26992 Point Mind Training", translated by the Padmakara Translation Group,
26993 published by Snow Lion Publications
26995 Sometimes we face certain situations where, although we have done
26996 something good for others, we may not be able to reap the consequences within
26997 this lifetime. When we are talking about the law of causality, we are not
26998 limiting its operation to the confines of this life alone, but rather are
26999 taking into account both this lifetime and the future. Occasionally people
27000 who do not have a proper knowledge of karmic law say that such and such a
27001 person is very kind and religious and so forth, but he always has problems,
27002 whereas so and so is very deceptive and negative, frequently indulging in
27003 negative actions, but always seems very successful. Such people may think
27004 that there is no karmic law at all. There are others who go to the other
27005 extreme and become superstitious, thinking that when someone experiences
27006 illness, it is all due to harmful spirits.... It is also possible for very
27007 negative people to experience their positive karma ripening immaturely due to
27008 the very strong force of negative actions, and thus to exhaust the potentials
27009 of their virtuous actions. They experience a relative success in this life,
27010 while others who are very serious practitioners, as a result of the force of
27011 their practices, bring upon this lifetime the consequences of karmic actions
27012 which might have otherwise thrown them into rebirth in lower realms of
27013 existence in the future. As a result, they experience more problems and
27014 illnesses in this life.
27015 Just resolving not to indulge in a negative action is not enough. It
27016 should be accompanied by the understanding that it is for your own benefit and
27017 sake that you must live with awareness of the law of karma: if you have
27018 accumulated the causes, you will have to face the consequences; if you desire
27019 a particular effect, you can work to produce its causes; and if you do not
27020 desire a certain consequence, you can avoid engaging in actions that will
27021 bring it about. You should reflect upon the law of causality as follows: that
27022 there is a definite relation between causes and effects; that actions not
27023 committed will never produce an effect; and that once committed, actions will
27024 never lose their potentiality simply through the passage of time. So, if you
27025 wish to enjoy desirable fruits, you should work for the accumulation of the
27026 appropriate causes, and if you want to avoid undesirable consequences, you
27027 should not accumulate their causes.... [Karma] is a natural law like any
27029 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, "Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide to
27030 Stages of Meditation", translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa, edited by
27031 Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
27033 Generally speaking, there are two forms of meditation on emptiness. One
27034 is the space-like meditation on emptiness, which is characterised by the total
27035 absence or negation of inherent existence. The other is called the illusion-
27036 like meditation on emptiness. The space-like meditation must come first,
27037 because without the realisation of the total absence of inherent existence,
27038 the illusion-like perception or understanding will not occur.
27039 For the illusion-like understanding of all phenomena to occur, there needs
27040 to be a composite of both the perception or appearance and the negation, so
27041 that when we perceive the world and engage with it we can view all things and
27042 events as resembling illusions. We will recognise that although things appear
27043 to us, they are devoid of objective, independent, intrinsic existence. This
27044 is how the illusion-like understanding arises. The author of the "Eight
27045 Verses for Training the Mind" indicates the experiential result when he
27046 writes: "May I, recognising all things as illusion, devoid of clinging, be
27047 released from bondage."
27048 When we speak of cultivating the illusion-like understanding of the nature
27049 of reality, we need to bear in mind the different interpretations of the term
27050 'illusion-like'.... For example, the Buddhist realist schools explain the
27051 nature of reality to be illusion-like in the sense that, although we tend to
27052 perceive things as having permanence, in reality they are changing moment by
27053 moment and it is this that gives them an illusion-like character.
27054 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
27055 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
27057 Actually, we are all part of the community of humanity. If humanity is
27058 happy, has a successful life, a happy future, automatically, I will benefit.
27059 If humanity suffers, I too will suffer. Humanity is like one body, and we are
27060 part of that body. Once you realize this, once you cultivate this kind of
27061 attitude, you can bring about a change in your way of thinking. A sense of
27062 caring, commitment, discipline, oneness with humanity--these are very relevant
27063 in today's world. I call this secular ethics, and this is the first level to
27064 counter negative emotions.
27065 The second level in this connection is taught by all major religious
27066 traditions, whether Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu. They all carry
27067 the message of love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, and
27068 discipline. These are countermeasures for negative emotions. When anger is
27069 about to surface, when hatred is about to flare up, think of tolerance. It is
27070 important to stop any mental dissatisfaction when we feel it because it leads
27071 to anger and hatred.
27072 Patience is the countermeasure for mental dissatisfaction. Greed and its
27073 self-centeredness bring unhappiness, and also destruction of the environment,
27074 exploitation of others, and increases the gap between the rich and the poor.
27075 The countermeasure is contentment. So practicing contentment is useful in our
27077 ...All religious traditions talk about methods of compassion and
27078 forgiveness. If we accept religion, we should take the religious methods
27079 seriously and sincerely and use them in our daily lives. Then, a meaningful
27081 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Many Ways to Nirvana: Reflections and
27082 Advice on Right Living", edited by Renuka Singh
27084 Actually, if we look around, people whom we don't like and people who harm
27085 us are in the minority. Let's say we're at work, at a social gathering, or at
27086 a Dharma center with thirty people. How many of them do we really dislike?
27087 We may have problems with a few people here and there, but we manage to stay
27088 in a room together, don't we? It's not like we despise them and they hate us.
27089 The number of people we can't stand in this world is actually very small.
27090 These people are rare. To practice patience we need the people that we don't
27091 like. We can't practice patience with our friends or with people who are kind
27092 to us. Finding people that we don't like or who threaten us is not so easy.
27093 So, when we finally find them, they are a precious treasure! They are rare to
27094 find. When we meet them, we can think, "Fantastic, I get to practice patience
27096 They say that high-level bodhisattvas pray to meet disgusting,
27097 uncooperative people because they want to practice patience. Of course, when
27098 you really want to meet obnoxious people, they don't show up! Why don't they
27099 turn up for high-level bodhisattvas? Because high-level bodhisattvas don't
27100 have any anger. We could be sitting in a room with many people whom we
27101 consider unbearable, but high-level bodhisattvas don't see them that way at
27102 all. To them, these people appear lovable. Bodhisattvas have such a hard
27103 time finding detestable people, whereas we come across them so easily! So,
27104 when we find people whom we don't like, feel threatened by, or find
27105 despicable, we should recognize that there aren't so many of them around.
27106 Therefore, we should cherish them and take the opportunity to practice
27107 patience with them.
27108 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga
27109 Method of Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by
27110 Snow Lion Publications
27112 Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
27115 ...to have greater self-awareness or understanding means to have a better
27116 grasp of reality. Now, the opposite of reality is to project onto yourself
27117 qualities that are not there, ascribe to yourself characteristics in contrast
27118 to what is actually the case. For example, when you have a distorted view of
27119 yourself, such as through excessive pride or arrogance, because of these
27120 states of mind, you have an exaggerated sense of your qualities and personal
27121 abilities. Your view of your own abilities goes far beyond your actual
27122 abilities. On the other hand, when you have low self-esteem, then you
27123 underestimate your actual qualities and abilities. You belittle yourself, you
27124 put yourself down. This leads to a complete loss of faith in yourself. So
27125 excess--both in terms of exaggeration and devaluation--are equally
27126 destructive. lt is by addressing these obstacles and by constantly examining
27127 your personal character, qualities, and abilities, that you can learn to have
27128 greater self-understanding. This is the way to become more self-aware.
27129 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
27132 Phowa is a practice which should be done repeatedly, all through our lives so
27133 that we can do it naturally and purposefully at the time of death. I have
27134 heard a story about a Tibetan who was dying and his family called the lama to
27135 be with him. The lama sat beside him and told him to think only of his root
27136 guru and forget everything else. He said, "I can't recall my guru, I can only
27137 think of a sizzling sausage being warmed in the ashes of a fire." The lama was
27138 very skillful: "That is excellent!" he said. "Dewachen, the paradise of the
27139 Amitaba Buddha, is full of sausages; they grow on every tree. You only have
27140 to open your mouth and you will have all the sausages you want. The color of
27141 Amitaba is like the embers of a fire, so think of him and you will go to his
27142 realm." It is said that the man went straight to the pure land of Dewachen.
27143 -- Ringu Tulku, "Mind Training", edited by B.M. Shaughnessy, published
27144 by Snow Lion Publications
27146 "Yogis should at all times avoid fish, meat, and so forth,
27147 should eat with moderation, and avoid foods that are not
27148 conducive to health." --Kamalashila
27150 Meditators need to be physically healthy. Therefore, proper diet is
27151 essential. On the other hand, their minds should be clear and strong and this
27152 will also contribute to physical health. For these reasons, it is recommended
27153 that they give up eating fish, meat, garlic, onions, etc. Appropriate food
27154 should be eaten in moderation, for indigestion can cause havoc with
27155 meditation. What's more, those who overeat can hardly stay awake.
27156 ...If a vegetarian diet does not result in protein deficiency, it is a
27157 wholesome way of living. Even if you cannot be a strict vegetarian, at least
27158 moderating the amount of meat you eat is beneficial. Within the southern
27159 schools of Buddhism eating meat is not strictly prohibited, but the meat of
27160 certain animals, such as those that are not cloven-hoofed or those that have
27161 been slaughtered specifically for your consumption, is forbidden. This means
27162 that meat bought casually in the market is acceptable.... However, certain
27163 scriptures... strictly prohibit eating meat at all times, whereas other
27164 scriptures... seem to permit it.
27165 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", root text by Kamalashila,
27166 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
27167 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
27169 It would be wrong to say, as some do, that if we don't recite prayers while
27170 being aware of their meaning and merely repeat the words mindlessly, it has no
27171 benefit whatsoever--like prayer flags flapping in the wind. However, there
27172 are indeed differences in the level of benefits and blessings derived from
27173 prayers according to the way we recite them. Therefore, keeping this in mind,
27174 at the beginning of the practice, generate bodhicitta. During the main
27175 practice, some will use an object of concentration and some will practice
27176 without an object of concentration; each person should do what is best
27177 according to their level. At the end, one should dedicate the merit in a way
27178 that is pure from the three conceptual spheres to the best of one's ability.
27179 The most important and essential thing in making [prayer] meaningful is to
27180 depend on those three stages of practice--generation of bodhicitta, the main
27181 practice and dedication of merit. All must do the complete three stages of
27183 -- Chatral Rinpoche, "Compassionate Action", edited, introduced, and
27184 annotated by Zach Larson, published by Snow Lion Publications
27186 "When the thought of the internal
27187 And the external as 'I' and 'mine'
27188 Has perished, grasping ceases
27189 And through that cessation birth ceases.
27191 When actions and afflictions cease, there is liberation;
27192 They arise from false conceptions, these arise
27193 From the elaborations [of false views on inherent
27194 Existence]; elaborations cease in emptiness."
27197 Inherent existence has never been validly known to exist; therefore, it is
27198 impossible for there to be any phenomenon that exists through its own power.
27199 Since it is experienced that mere dependent-arisings, which are in fact empty
27200 of inherent existence, do cause all forms of help and harm, these are
27201 established as existent. Thus, mere dependent-arisings do exist. Therefore,
27202 all phenomena exist in the manner of appearing as varieties of dependent-
27203 arisings. They appear this way without passing beyond the sphere or condition
27204 of having just this nature of being utterly non-inherently existent.
27205 Therefore, all phenomena have two entities: one entity that is its superficial
27206 mode of appearance and one entity that is its deep mode of being. These two
27207 are called respectively conventional truths and ultimate truths.
27208 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
27209 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
27211 The cloistered environment stands in stark contrast to the uncontrolled
27212 environment of everyday active life in the modern world. When I was a
27213 graduate student living in a family housing unit at Stanford University, I
27214 meditated early in the morning. At about 7:00 outside our window, a group of
27215 little girls would begin shrieking and driving their plastic tractors and
27216 tricycles across the bricks. I was meditating and these girls were disturbing
27217 my peace. I got to feeling pretty sorry for myself so I phoned my lama,
27218 Gyatrul Rinpoche, and asked for advice. He gave me a one-liner, "Just view
27219 it." This was not just Rinpoche's way of telling me to quit whining, but a
27220 reminder of the more encompassing teaching to embrace obstacles in practice.
27221 And carry on. We can't always control our environment, but we can embrace it,
27222 the good, the bad, and the loud, and integrate it into Dharma practice.
27223 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point
27224 Mind-Training", edited by Lynn Quirolo, published by Snow Lion Pub.
27226 He who throws mud only loses ground. -- Fat Albert (Bill Cosby)
27228 Grow old along with me!
27229 The best is yet to be.
27232 It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out;
27233 it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
27236 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic,
27237 we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One
27238 might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the
27239 mathematics of probability.
27242 I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died. --Richard Diran
27244 Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history
27245 that man can never learn anything from history.
27246 -- George Bernard Shaw
27248 America believes in education: the average professor earns more
27249 money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
27252 We are more ready to try the untried
27253 when what we do is inconsequential.
27254 Hence the fact that many inventions
27255 had their birth as toys.
27258 Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion,
27259 for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
27260 -- Bertrand Russell
27262 Man is most nearly himself when he achieves
27263 the seriousness of a child at play.
27266 If we have been reborn time after time, it is evident that we have needed
27267 many mothers to give birth to us.... the first cause bringing about
27268 bodhicitta is the recognition that all beings have been our mother.
27269 The love and kindness shown us by our mother in this life would be
27270 difficult to repay. She endured many sleepless nights to care for us when we
27271 were helpless infants. She fed us and would have willingly sacrificed
27272 everything, including her own life, to spare ours. As we contemplate her
27273 example of devoted love, we should consider that each and every being
27274 throughout existence has treated us this way. Each dog, cat, fish, fly, and
27275 human being has at some point in the beginningless past been our mother and
27276 shown us overwhelming love and kindness. Such a thought should bring about
27278 ...if all other sentient beings who have been kind to us since
27279 beginningless time are suffering, how can we devote ourselves to pursuing
27280 merely our own happiness? To seek our own happiness in spite of the suffering
27281 others are experiencing is tragically unfortunate. Therefore, it is clear
27282 that we must try to free all sentient beings from suffering.
27283 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday
27284 Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Khyongla Rato and
27287 3.2.4 The way in which experiences dawn through practicing [Mahamudra]
27289 In beginners, this is similar to water [gushing down] a gorge.
27290 In between, it is the gentle flow of the river Ganga.
27291 Finally, all waters meet like a mother and her child. -- Tilopa
27293 The meditative equipoise of beginners entails intense movement of
27294 thoughts, similar to water gushing down a narrow gorge. The reason for this
27295 is as follows. Though there is some slight resting in equipoise, thoughts
27296 proliferate. Right at that point, through the remedy of alertness and by
27297 considering that you like resting in meditative concentration and dislike not
27298 resting in it, you rest in meditative equipoise again. Through such an
27299 approach, your mind becomes somewhat uplifted.
27300 The meditative equipoise of those who have attained a little bit more
27301 stability than that and are of middling faculties is similar to the gentle
27302 flow of the river Ganga. The reason is as follows. Even if some thoughts
27303 come up, a little here and there, their own face is immediately recognized, so
27304 that the movement of thoughts does not run wild. Without various notions that
27305 chase after these [subtle thoughts] or any physical and mental effort, all
27306 thoughts that come up will dawn slowly. There is also no need to make great
27307 effort in [applying] their remedies. Rather, these happen naturally or of
27309 Finally, in the meditative equipoise of those with highest faculties,
27310 neither thoughts to be relinquished arise nor is there any need to newly
27311 create some remedial wisdom, because there is nothing to be relinquished.
27312 Since existence and peace have become one taste, mother and child luminosity
27313 blend, or, expanse and wisdom have become indifferentiable. Once the
27314 tributary waters and the ocean have become one taste, like a mother and her
27315 child meeting, they cannot be disturbed.
27316 -- The Fifth Shamarpa Goncho Yenla, "Straight from the Heart: Buddhist Pith
27317 Instructions", translated and introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, published
27318 by Snow Lion Publications
27320 The theory of interdependence allows us to develop a wider perspective.
27321 With wider mind, there is less attachment to destructive emotions like anger,
27322 therefore more forgiveness. In today's world, every nation is heavily
27323 interdependent, interconnected. Under these circumstances, destroying your
27324 enemy--your neighbor--means destroying yourself in the long run. You need
27325 your neighbor. More prosperity in your neighbor, you'll get the benefit.
27326 Now, we're not talking about the complete removal of feelings like anger,
27327 attachment, or pride. Just reduction. Interdependence is important because
27328 it is not a mere concept; it can actually help reduce the suffering caused by
27329 these destructive emotions.
27330 We can say the theory of interdependence is an understanding of reality.
27331 We understand that our future depends on global well-being. Having this
27332 viewpoint reduces narrow-mindedness. With narrow mind, one is more likely to
27333 develop attachment, hatred. I think this is the best thing about the theory
27334 of interdependence--it is an explanation of the law of nature. It affects
27335 profoundly, for example, the environment.
27336 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, "The Wisdom of Forgiveness:
27337 Intimate Conversations and Journeys"
27339 The Suffering of Change
27340 Feelings of suffering change into those of happiness. Feelings of
27341 happiness change into suffering. Both arise in dependence upon internal and
27342 external causes which change. For example, we see food as pleasurable, but if
27343 we eat too much, then it causes suffering. When we are young, we see our
27344 bodies as a source of pleasure. As we become older, the same body becomes a
27345 source of suffering.
27346 Just as a wave is always changing, so the nature of suffering is always to
27347 change. It may be experienced as pleasure or as suffering, but it arises from
27348 the same source. Pleasure arises from suffering. Seeing pleasure as
27349 happiness constitutes suffering.
27350 ...Pain and pleasure are of the same nature. Although they look different
27351 at different times, they both arise from the same sea of delusion and karmic
27352 action. Pleasure or pain, one or the other, arises and then falls back into
27353 the ocean. Thus we can conclude that pleasure and pain within the ocean of
27354 samsara are basically suffering, and dissolve into suffering.
27355 This becomes evident in the wide variety of sudden changes of experience
27356 depicted in films. Love and hatred, happiness and family strife, peace and
27357 war, follow each other in rapid succession. The continuous change, although
27358 exaggerated in films, is characteristic of life in general.
27359 -- Ven. Gen Lobsang Gyatso, "The Four Noble Truths", translated by Ven.
27360 Sherab Gyatso, published by Snow Lion Publications
27362 We feel money and power can bring happiness and solve problems, but they
27363 are not definite causes of those desired states. If that were so, it would
27364 follow that those who have wealth would necessarily have happiness, and those
27365 who do not have wealth would always experience suffering. Money and power
27366 facilitate, but it is clear that they are not the primary causes of, happiness
27367 and solving our problems. It is justified for us to make material and
27368 financial development for building our nation and providing shelter, etc. for
27369 ourselves; we need to do that. But we also need to seek inner development.
27370 As we can see, there are many people who have wealth and power who remain
27371 unhappy, due to which their health declines, and they are always taking
27372 medicines. On the other hand, we find people who live like beggars but who
27373 always remain peaceful and happy.
27374 Therefore, in our daily life a certain way of thinking makes us happy, and
27375 a certain way of thinking makes us unhappy. In other words, there are certain
27376 states of mind which bring us problems, and they can be removed; we need to
27377 make an effort in that direction. Likewise, there are certain states of mind
27378 that bring us peace and happiness, and we need to cultivate and enhance them.
27379 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama XIV, "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries", the
27380 Jatakamala translated by Tenzin Dorjee edited by Dexter Roberts
27382 Focusing the Mind on the Deity
27384 Those with superior mental capacity should refine their ability by
27385 practicing the development stage without any sense of clinging or fixation.
27386 In this approach, the appearance of the deity and its ornaments are visualized
27387 in such a way that they are totally complete, vivid, and distinct from the
27388 very beginning. This is the form of great wisdom, the union of development
27389 and completion. Beyond being an identifiable entity with a precise nature, it
27390 appears clearly yet is devoid of any essence. In other words, clarity and
27391 emptiness are indivisible. Like the reflection of the moon in a lake, its
27392 very nature is to appear in a distinct manner, down to the pupils of the eyes,
27393 while in reality it is empty.
27394 Those with moderate mental capacity should begin their meditation with a
27395 sudden recollection of the deity's complete appearance. The next step is to
27396 meditate on the clear appearance of the head, and, once this is stable, to
27397 then meditate progressively on the right arm, left arm, torso, right and left
27398 legs, and finally on the complete form of the deity and its seat. Training in
27399 the development stage of illusory clear appearance keeps one from straying
27400 into the view of nihilism. When one grows weary of this, the practitioner
27401 should recollect purity and refine his or her ability in the essence of this
27402 process, the vajra-like absorption. This key point keeps one from straying
27403 into the belief in permanence.
27404 For beginners with less mental capacity, it may be difficult to visualize
27405 in either of these ways. When not yet familiar with this process, one's
27406 ability should be refined using a permanent form. Take a consecrated and
27407 well-formed representation of the yidam deity, such as a painting or clay
27408 statue made by a skilled artisan, and place it before you. Without
27409 intentionally meditating, look directly at it from top to bottom without
27410 blinking. This is referred to as the auxiliary practice of setting
27411 mindfulness into motion. At first, the agitated movement of conditioned
27412 thought patterns will be experienced. This is the experience of movement,
27413 which is said to be "like water cascading off a cliff."
27414 -- Jigme Lingpa, Patrul Rinpoche, and Getse Mahapandita, "Deity, Mantra,
27415 and Wisdom: Development Stage Meditation in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra",
27416 translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee, fore. by Trulshik
27417 Rinpoche, fore. by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion
27420 The reason why we find so much discussion of epistemology, or how to
27421 define something as a valid cognition, in Buddhist writings is because all our
27422 problems, suffering and confusion derive from a misconceived way of perceiving
27423 things. This explains why it is so important for a practitioner to determine
27424 whether a cognitive event is a misconception or true knowledge. For it is
27425 only by generating insight which sees through delusion that we can become
27427 Even in our own experience we can see how our state of mind passes through
27428 different stages, eventually leading to a state of true knowledge. For
27429 instance, our initial attitude or standpoint on any given topic might be a
27430 very hardened misconception, thinking and grasping at a totally mistaken
27431 notion. But when that strong grasping at the wrong notion is countered with
27432 reasoning, it can then turn into a kind of lingering doubt, an uncertainty
27433 where we wonder: "Maybe it is the case, but then again maybe it is not". That
27434 would represent a second stage. When further exposed to reason or evidence,
27435 this doubt of ours can turn into an assumption, tending towards the right
27436 decision. However, it is still just a presumption, just a belief. When that
27437 belief is yet further exposed to reason and reflection, eventually we could
27438 arrive at what is called 'inference generated through a reasoning process'.
27439 Yet that inference remains conceptual, and it is not a direct knowledge of the
27440 object. Finally, when we have developed this inference and constantly
27441 familiarized ourselves with it, it could turn into an intuitive and direct
27442 realization--a direct experience of the event. So we can see through our own
27443 experience how our mind, as a result of being exposed to reason and
27444 reflection, goes through different stages, eventually leading to a direct
27445 experience of a phenomenon or event.
27446 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
27447 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron, foreword by
27448 Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion
27451 Not recognizing their own face, but letting them run wild, one thought leads
27452 to many kinds of [other] thoughts. If you fall into letting this continue,
27453 you wander around in confusion. Through directly looking at the face of
27454 whatever thought that comes up at the very start [of a potential train of
27455 thought], without being able to stand its own ground, just like a rainbow
27456 fading away in space, this thought vanishes into emptiness. Since you arrive
27457 at such within the previous experience of stillness, if you become familiar
27458 with it, the stream of confusion is severed through thoughts coming to rest on
27459 their own and vanishing on their own. Hence, if you know how to sustain this,
27460 even if you regard movement as a flaw and [try to] stop it, you need neither
27461 stop it nor [apply] any other remedy for the movement of thoughts. Rather, by
27462 sustaining the state of realizing their own essence, you realize the essential
27463 point that all the various appearances of happiness and suffering emerge from
27464 the mind and dissolve back into the mind. Through this, you realize the
27465 essential point that all of cyclic existence and nirvana is produced by the
27466 mind, the mind resting naturally settled without being affected by thoughts
27467 about the three times.
27468 -- "Straight From the Heart: Buddhist Pith Instructions", translated and
27469 introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, published by Snow Lion Publications
27471 It's a dangerous business going out your front door. -- JRR Tolkien
27473 The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them. -- Kin Hubbard
27475 Never face facts; if you do,
27476 you'll never get up in the morning.
27480 I hate it as much as I hate peanuts.
27481 But I can't stop eating peanuts.
27484 One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a human. -- Goethe
27486 The opposite of talking isn't listening.
27487 The opposite of talking is waiting.
27490 Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal
27491 with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
27492 you are the one who gets burned.
27493 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
27495 Question: Western religions use the term "God", and Buddhism does not. Could
27496 emptiness or nirvana be considered God? If the afflictive obstruction that is
27497 the conception of inherent existence is eliminated, does one realize that
27500 Dalai Lama: If God is interpreted as an ultimate reality or truth, then
27501 selflessness may be considered as God and even as a creator in the sense that
27502 within the nature of emptiness things appear and disappear. In this sense,
27503 emptiness is the basis of everything; because of emptiness, things can change,
27504 and things can appear and disappear. Thus, voidness--emptiness,
27505 selflessness--is this kind of basis.
27507 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
27508 Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
27509 published by Snow Lion Publications
27513 Because such love and compassion have not arisen in their mindstreams,
27514 people don't understand that all sentient beings are their kind mothers. They
27515 hold on to them as friends or foes, and the power of bad karmic action causes
27516 them to experience the immeasurable suffering of cyclic existence. "Wouldn't
27517 it be a joy if I could carry the suffering of those mothers, and if all beings
27518 could have all of my happiness and virtue? In order to establish these
27519 mothers in happiness, what a joy it would be if, until cyclic existence is
27520 empty, their suffering and the cause and effect of suffering, their sins and
27521 the cause and effect of sins, would all ripen in me and these mothers would
27522 become abundantly happy. I give my body, enjoyments, power, prestige, and
27523 roots of virtue in all times for the sake of these mothers. I won't pursue my
27524 own peace and happiness for even a moment. I will work for the welfare of
27525 beings without regard for life or limb. These mothers must have the entire
27526 range of happiness and the causes of happiness." With that thought, meditate
27528 "Furthermore, I will not shrink away from the specific harm done to
27529 sentient beings, or any kind of sickness, suffering, misfortune, enemies, and
27530 obstructions that happen to me for their sakes. What a joy if all the
27531 suffering of beings ripened in me, so that I would have that kind of
27532 suffering. And even a greater joy when those suffering beings are free of
27533 suffering and dwell in exceptional happiness."
27534 Generate an extraordinary attitude with that thinking. It is important
27535 that such joy does not stray into any kind of bias. And if you know it all to
27536 be like a dream or an illusion, free of fixation to true existence, it is
27537 called immeasurable joy.
27538 -- "Machik's Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chod (Dharma)",
27539 translated and edited by Sarah Harding, a Tsadra Foundation Series
27540 book published by Snow Lion Publications
27542 Curiosity is the very basis of education
27543 and if you tell me curiosity killed the cat
27544 I say only that the cat died nobly.
27545 -- Arnold Edinborough
27547 Knowledge will forever govern ignorance
27548 and a people who mean to be their own governors
27549 must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives...
27552 Question: What should you say to a loved one who is talking about a third
27553 person with hatred or anger? On the one hand, you want to show compassion for
27554 the feelings being experienced by the loved one. On the other hand, you don't
27555 want to reinforce or lend approval to that hatred. What might one say?
27557 Dalai Lama: Here I would like to tell a story. Once there was a Kadampa
27558 master called Gampowa who had many responsibilities. One day he complained to
27559 the Kadampa master Dromtonpa that he had hardly any time for his meditation or
27560 for his Dharma practice. So Dromtonpa responded by agreeing with him, "Yes,
27561 that's right. I don't have any time either." Then once an immediate affinity
27562 was established, Dromtonpa skillfully said, "But, you know what I am doing is
27563 for the service of the Dharma. Therefore, I feel satisfied." Similarly, if
27564 you find one of your beloved ones speaking against someone out of anger or
27565 hatred, maybe your initial reaction should be one of agreement and sympathy.
27566 Then once you have gained the person's confidence, you can say, "But...."
27567 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
27568 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published
27569 by Snow Lion Publications
27571 ...if you have not purified ordinary appearances into emptiness, how could
27572 you possibly meditate on the mandala circle? The fact that all phenomena are
27573 emptiness, that samsara and nirvana are inseparable, is the very reason we are
27574 able to actualize this by meditating on the mandala circle. In other words,
27575 emptiness is the basis for the development stage. As it is said, "For the one
27576 to whom emptiness is possible, anything is possible." If all phenomena were
27577 not empty and ordinary appearances were truly present, development stage
27578 meditation would be impossible, as the following quotation points out: "Even
27579 though one might empower wheat to be rice, rice won't actually appear."
27580 However, even if all phenomena are realized to be empty in this way, without
27581 the momentum of great compassion you will not be able to manifest the
27582 rupakayas to benefit others. This is similar to the listeners and solitary
27583 buddhas, who enter into a state of cessation and do not benefit others with
27584 rupakaya emanations.
27585 Once one understands this point, it will be like the following saying:
27586 "All these phenomena are like an illusion and birth is like taking a stroll
27587 in a park...." Said differently, one will no longer dwell in existence, while
27588 through compassion, one will not get caught up in a state of peace either.
27589 This is the great, universal path of the offspring of the victorious ones.
27590 For all these reasons, making sure the three absorptions are not isolated from
27591 one another is a vitally important point.
27592 -- Jigme Lingpa, Patrul Rinpoche, and Getse Mahapandita, "Deity, Mantra,
27593 and Wisdom: Development Stage Meditation in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra",
27594 translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee, fore. by Trulshik
27595 Rinpoche, fore. by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Pub.
27597 We can experience things without confusion and without being tense. Even
27598 the most disturbed, nervous person has moments of clarity and calmness--even
27599 if only when he or she is peacefully asleep and dreaming pleasant or innocuous
27600 dreams. This demonstrates that confusion and tension are not integral parts
27601 of the nature of mind. Thus confusion can be removed. Not only can it be
27602 removed, but since confusion cannot be validated and can be totally replaced
27603 by understanding, which can be verified, confusion can be eliminated forever.
27604 Thus it is possible for a total absence of confusion to exist. Furthermore,
27605 since confusion limits mind from using its full potentials, once confusion is
27606 gone, a utilization of all potentials can also exist. Therefore, since we all
27607 have a mind, and all minds have the same nature of being able to experience
27608 whatever exists, we can all realize and experience the definitive Three
27610 Thus, if we aim to remove our confusion and realize our potentials as
27611 indicated by the Buddhas, their achievement, their teachings, what they have
27612 built up along the path and those who are progressing along it, we are
27613 traveling through life with a safe, reliable and positive direction. Taking
27614 refuge, then, means to put this realistic, safe direction in our life.
27615 Without it, our practice of mahamudra either has no direction and leads
27616 nowhere, or an unsound direction leading to more confusion and trouble. In
27617 addition, the further we travel in this safe direction through the mahamudra
27618 techniques--in other words, the more we realize the nature of mind and its
27619 relation to reality--the more confident we become in the soundness of this
27620 direction and our ability to reach its goal. The stronger our confidence, the
27621 further we progress along the path.
27622 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
27623 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
27625 The Rolling Stones have a song that goes,
27626 "Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
27627 Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day."
27628 That is the level that we have to reach, where wild horses cannot drag us
27629 away from the present moment of awareness. Once we have reached that level of
27630 training, then even in the bardos of death we will be able to guide our mind
27631 steadily past all difficulties toward awakening, toward freedom from samsara.
27632 There is another well-known image; it compares our wild minds to a mad
27633 elephant in a china shop. When untamed, this elephant can very easily destroy
27634 many things in the shop, and even the shop itself. With one move, the
27635 elephant can destroy a wall; and with another move, another wall. In only
27636 four moves, this elephant can destroy the whole structure. In the same way,
27637 if our minds are not tamed, they can easily destroy our whole collection of
27638 virtue--all the merit and wisdom we have accumulated through the
27639 accomplishment of countless positive deeds.
27640 Vipashyana meditation is the process of taming and training our minds.
27641 How do we do it? We catch our minds with shamatha and we train them with
27642 vipashyana. Then we ride our minds with mindfulness while remaining aware of
27643 the greater environment. Following these methods, we will reach our goal
27644 quite quickly--especially when we remember the thought of impermanence, which
27646 -- Dzogchen Ponlop, "Mind Beyond Death", published by Snow Lion Publications
27648 With or without religion, you would have good people doing
27649 good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good
27650 people to do evil things, that takes religion.
27653 Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
27656 I was born not knowing and have had only a little
27657 time to change that here and there.
27660 As for me, except for an occasional heart attack,
27661 I feel as young as I ever did.
27664 It is possible to understand the Buddhist teachings as a method of
27665 psychological healing, comparable to psychotherapy, that teaches us how we can
27666 master destructive forces like anger, envy, and greed. Human beings seem to
27667 be a bundle of different qualities and psychological processes. We should
27668 attentively examine our qualities and be alertly aware of our experiences in
27669 order to recognize what we truly feel and think. At the same time, the
27670 personality of human beings is not seen as a unified whole. According to
27671 these teachings, the heart of consciousness is composed of various elements,
27672 the five types of attachment, or skandhas: body, sensations, perceptions,
27673 instinctual forces, and consciousness.
27674 These inner forces impart the false concept of an ego-consciousness. The
27675 basic problem of emotional disorders therefore lies in a false concept of
27676 identity. This I-blindness should therefore be abolished through self-
27677 study.... The goal is not self-realization but selflessness.
27678 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Felizitas Von Schonborn, "Path of
27679 Wisdom, Path of Peace", foreword by Wei Jingsheng
27681 Life would be unbearable if everything stayed the same because human beings
27682 find situations that are fixed and predictable very hard to tolerate. Even in
27683 small matters, we become uneasy if we feel there is no end in sight. I know
27684 of couples who live harmoniously together for ten years then marry and are
27685 divorced within a year. As soon as they feel bound to each other for the rest
27686 of their lives, they begin to fight. Impermanence removes our reasons for
27687 quarrelling with each other. Arguments only break out if we imagine that our
27688 relationships are endless. When we appreciate that our time with our
27689 families, partners, and friends may be shorter than we think, we get on better
27690 with each other. Awareness of impermanence gives us extraordinary inner
27691 strength and resilience.
27692 -- Ringu Tulku, "Mind Training", edited by B.M. Shaughnessy, published by
27693 Snow Lion Publications
27695 Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
27698 The ability to look at events from different perspectives can be very
27699 helpful. Then, practicing this, one can use certain experiences, certain
27700 tragedies, to develop a calmness of mind. One must realize that every
27701 phenomenon, every event, has different aspects. Everything is of a relative
27702 nature. For example, in my own case, I lost my country. From that viewpoint,
27703 it is very tragic--and there are even worse things. There's a lot of
27704 destruction happening in our country. That's a very negative thing. But if I
27705 look at the same event from another angle, I realize that as a refugee, I have
27706 another perspective. As a refugee there is no need for formalities, ceremony,
27707 protocol. If everything were status quo, if things were okay, then on a lot
27708 of occasions you merely go through the motions; you pretend. But when you are
27709 passing through desperate situations, there's no time to pretend. So from
27710 that angle, this tragic experience has been very useful to me. Also, being a
27711 refugee creates a lot of new opportunities for meeting with many people.
27712 People from different religious traditions, from different walks of life,
27713 those whom I may not have met had I remained in my country. So in that sense
27714 it's been very, very useful.
27715 It seems that often when problems arise, our outlook becomes narrow. All
27716 of our attention may be focused on worrying about the problem, and we may have
27717 a sense that we're the only one that is going through such difficulties. This
27718 can lead to a kind of self-absorption that can make the problem seem very
27719 intense. When this happens, I think that seeing things from a wider
27720 perspective can definitely help--realizing, for instance, that there are many
27721 other people who have gone through similar experiences, and even worse
27722 experiences. This practice of shifting perspective can even be helpful in
27723 certain illnesses or when in pain. At the time the pain arises it is of
27724 course often very difficult, at that moment, to do formal meditation practices
27725 to calm the mind. But if you can make comparisons, view your situation from a
27726 different perspective, somehow something happens. If you only look at that
27727 one event, then it appears bigger and bigger. If you focus too closely, too
27728 intensely, on a problem when it occurs, it appears uncontrollable. But if you
27729 compare that event with some other greater event, look at the same problem
27730 from a distance, then it appears smaller and less overwhelming.
27731 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
27732 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
27734 Three Forms of Compassion
27736 Chandrakirti explained three types of compassion: compassion aimed at
27737 suffering, aimed at phenomena, and unaimed. With the first, we look at
27738 animate beings in light of their suffering and develop the wish for them to be
27739 free from both that suffering and its causes. One source of their suffering
27740 is their unawareness that they even have any problems, let alone their not
27741 knowing the causes of their problems. For example, our friend becomes upset
27742 at the slightest thing that goes wrong and sees this as normal. He or she
27743 does not understand that hypersensitivity is to blame and that something can
27744 be done to remedy this. When we see this sad situation, our compassion for
27745 our friend becomes even stronger.
27746 Compassion aimed at phenomena looks at beings in light of their moment-to-
27747 moment changes. With it, we wish others to be free of suffering and its
27748 causes based on the understanding that these both are impermanent. We also
27749 see that others are unaware of this fact and so, when depressed, for example,
27750 they make their sufferings worse by imagining that they will last forever.
27751 Realizing this further enhances compassion for them.
27752 Unaimed compassion looks at beings in terms of their voidness. It has the
27753 same wish as the other two forms, but is based on not identifying others
27754 concretely with their suffering. Seeing that others do not have this insight
27755 and that consequently they identify themselves with their problems intensifies
27756 our compassion for them even more.
27757 -- Alexander Berzin, "Developing Balanced Sensitivity: Practical Buddhist
27758 Exercises for Daily Life", published by Snow Lion Publications
27760 Don't be confused; the point of Scrum and XP and other agile methodologies is
27761 the same point behind any management technique of the past 100 years--squeeze
27762 every drop of work out of your workers until they are empty husks and can be
27763 thrown away. If you're a programmer and you think Scrum is going to "empower"
27764 you, you could not be more mistaken. Management will hide behind the
27765 principles of Scrum when it suits them and then still do whatever they want
27766 otherwise. When it's pointed out to them that they're violating the agile
27767 principles, they will simply claim that this is how the system is tailored
27768 for our company's "needs" and that we shouldn't blindly follow it. But if you
27769 need to break with an agile practice, oh no, the process is *God* and we must
27770 follow it to the exact letter.
27773 I always believe that each individual human being has some kind of
27774 responsibility for humanity as a whole....
27775 Through my own profession, I try my best to contribute as much as I can.
27776 This proceeds without my being concerned whether another person agrees with
27777 my philosophy or not. Some people may be very much against my belief, my
27778 philosophy, but I feel all right. So long as I see that a human being suffers
27779 or has needs, I shall contribute as much as I can to contribute to their
27781 -- Dalai Lama XIV, "Consciousness at the Crossroads", edited by Zara
27782 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by
27783 Snow Lion Publications
27785 A Song on Impermanence
27787 With this spouse and these near and dear ones you desire to live together,
27788 Inseparable for all times, but there is no doubt that you will be separated.
27790 From this excellent home you would like to be inseparable forever
27791 And take root in it, but you will surely depart.
27793 From this happiness, well-being, and wealth you want to be inseparable forever
27794 So you can relish them, but it is certain you will lose them.
27796 From this supreme human body with its freedoms and riches you wish to be
27798 And own it until the end of times, but there is no way that you won't die.
27800 From this really great teacher you yearn to be inseparable
27801 And listen to the dharma for all eternity, but there is no question that you
27804 From these good friends you wish to be inseparable forever
27805 So you can hang out together, but it's a sure thing that you will be parted.
27807 Therefore, from today on, don your armor of vigor--
27808 The time has come to travel to the land of inseparable great bliss.
27809 You friends who have developed weariness from the depths of your hearts,
27810 I, a dharma-beggar, request you to do so.
27812 -- The Omniscient Longchen Rabjam, "Straight from the Heart: Buddhist Pith
27813 Instructions", translated and introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, published
27814 by Snow Lion Publications
27816 The wisdom that realizes emptiness, that has gained insight into the
27817 nature of reality, is of varying kinds, depending upon the level of subtlety
27818 of the consciousness perceiving the emptiness. In general, there are rough
27819 levels of consciousness, more subtle levels, and then the innermost subtle
27820 level of consciousness. It is the uncommon characteristic of Tantric practice
27821 that through it one can evoke this most subtle consciousness at will and put
27822 it to use in a most effective way. For example, when emptiness is realized by
27823 this subtlest level of mind, it is more powerful, having a much greater effect
27824 on the personality.
27825 In order to activate or make use of the more subtle levels of
27826 consciousness, it is necessary to block the rougher levels--the rougher or
27827 grosser levels must cease. It is through specifically Tantric practices, such
27828 as the meditations on the chakras and the channels, that one can control and
27829 temporarily abandon the rougher levels of consciousness. When these become
27830 suppressed, the subtler levels of consciousness become active. And it is
27831 through the use of the subtlest level of consciousness that the most powerful
27832 spiritual realizations can come about. Hence, it is through the Tantric
27833 practice involving the most subtle consciousness that the goal of
27834 enlightenment can most quickly be realized.
27835 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
27836 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
27838 By building up good habits of the mind in meditation, our behavior in daily
27839 life gradually changes. Our anger decreases, we are better able to make
27840 decisions, and we become less dissatisfied and restless. These results of
27841 meditation can be experienced now. But we should always try to have a broader
27842 and more encompassing motivation to meditate than just our own present
27843 happiness. If we generate the motivation to meditate in order to make
27844 preparation for future lives, to attain liberation from the cycle of
27845 constantly recurring problems, or to reach the state of full enlightenment for
27846 the benefit of all beings, then naturally our minds will also be peaceful now.
27847 In addition, we'll be able to attain those high and noble goals.
27848 -- Thubten Chodron, "Buddhism for Beginners", published by Snow Lion
27851 ...all four tantra sets make use of deity yoga, the special tantric means
27852 for amassing the collections of merit and wisdom quickly. Highest Yoga Tantra
27853 has, in addition, techniques for generating subtler minds that realise
27854 emptiness and for using the winds or currents of energy that are the mounts of
27855 these subtler minds as the substantial cause of an actual divine body.
27856 Through this enhancement of the wisdom consciousness the obstructions to
27857 omniscience are quickly removed and Buddhahood is attained.
27858 In the three lower tantras--Action, Performance, and Yoga--deity yoga is
27859 used to bring about the speedy achievement of many common feats and to come
27860 directly under the care of Buddhas and high Bodhisattvas, receiving their
27861 blessings, and so forth. This is done through a threefold process known as
27862 prior approximation, effecting the achievement of feats, and using the feats
27863 in the performance of activities for the welfare of others.
27864 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Deity Yoga in
27865 Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow Lion Publications
27867 If you are able to think about the meaning of cyclic existence in general and
27868 human life in particular, then it is possible to discipline the mind through
27869 religious practice which is the process of becoming peaceful and anxiety-free.
27870 Otherwise, if too much emphasis is put on the sufferings of the hells and the
27871 imminence of death, there is a chance of falling into paralysing fear. There
27872 is a story in Tibet about an abbot of a monastery who went to give a
27873 discourse. A fellow asked the abbot's servant where the abbot had gone, and
27874 the servant said, "He has gone to frighten old men and women." If you fulfil
27875 the value of a human lifetime through engaging in religious practice, then
27876 there is no point in worrying about death.
27877 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
27878 published by Snow Lion Publications
27880 ...if a fire which consumes
27881 One house moves to another,
27882 It is right to throw out anything
27883 Like straw which could ignite.
27885 Likewise anything to which the mind
27886 Is attached ignites the fire of anger.
27887 Fearing our merit will be consumed,
27888 It should be discarded at once.
27890 If a house is on fire and the fire is spreading, we need to clear away straw,
27891 wood or anything else which is highly flammable and could cause a conflagration
27892 that would consume our entire home and property. Similarly, one way to prevent
27893 desire and attachment is to avoid contact with the objects that stimulate it.
27894 If anything comes between us and what we desire or if the thing to which we're
27895 attached is harmed or threatened, we instantly feel angry. This destroys the
27896 positive energy we've created.
27897 Another way is not to avoid the objects but to contemplate their unappealing
27898 aspects, because desire results from focusing only on their attractive side.
27899 The third way is to contemplate their lack of true existence, since desire and
27900 clinging are based on seeing them as very real and objectively existent.
27901 Whichever technique we employ, the aim is to prevent desire and attachment,
27902 since they bring many other problems.
27903 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas",
27904 translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
27906 Usually when we breathe, we breathe in and, as soon as we have finished
27907 breathing in, we immediately start breathing out. And as soon as we have
27908 finished breathing out, we start breathing in again. There is never any space
27909 or gap in between the in-breath and the out-breath. Now, many different ways
27910 of focusing the mind on the breathing have been taught.... There are
27911 basically six methods taught in the abhidharma. But here we have something
27912 different from any of those. This is called gentle threefold breathing. It
27913 is called gentle because there is no particular attempt to manipulate the
27914 breathing, except that instead of breathing in and then immediately breathing
27915 out, after breathing in, you wait before you breathe out...here the duration
27916 of the inhalation, of the retention, and of the exhalation should all be
27917 equal, three equal periods within each complete breath.
27918 In doing this, some people combine the phases of the breath with the
27919 mental repetition of the three mantra syllables: OM AH HUM (HUNG)--OM
27920 coordinated with the in-breath, AH with the retention of the breath, and HUM
27921 (HUNG) with the out-breath. But what is most important here is simply to
27922 recollect, as they occur, the inhalation, retention, and exhalation, so that,
27923 while you are inhaling, you are aware that you are doing so; while you are
27924 retaining the breath, you are aware that you are doing so; and while you are
27925 exhaling, you are aware that you are doing so. In the beginning, it is
27926 recommended that beginners start with doing, for example, twenty-one of these
27927 breaths as a series, and it is important to practice with enough mindfulness
27928 so that, while you breathe in, and so forth, you maintain an awareness of what
27929 part of the breathing process you are in.
27930 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "The Ninth Karmapa's Ocean of Definitive
27931 Meaning", edited, introduced and annotated by Lama Tashi Namgyal,
27932 published by Snow Lion Publications
27934 Life is fragile, like the dew hanging delicately on the grass, crystal
27935 drops that will be carried away on the first morning breeze.
27936 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
27938 ...though the emptiness of an impure phenomenon and the emptiness of a
27939 pure phenomenon are the same, there is a difference. What is the difference?
27940 The continuum of an impure substratum will later cease, not existing in
27941 Buddhahood, whereas a pure substratum's continuum of similar type will exist
27942 right through Buddhahood. Since the deity as whom you are imaginatively
27943 meditating yourself is a divine figure that exists in the state of Buddhahood
27944 when all defilements have been abandoned, this substratum is, for your
27946 Hence, it is important when doing deity yoga to put great effort into:
27947 * working at realizing emptiness as much as you can,
27948 * then imagining that the wisdom realizing emptiness appears itself
27949 as a compassionately directed divine body with a face, arms, and
27951 * and then taking this divine figure as the substratum and
27952 continuously meditating on its emptiness.
27953 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
27954 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by
27955 Snow Lion Publications
27957 ...when you explain or hear the teachings, if your mind and the teachings
27958 remain separate, then whatever is explained will be inconsequential. Hence,
27959 listen in such a way that you determine how these teachings apply to your
27960 mind. For example, when you want to find out whether or not there is some
27961 smudge, dirt, or whatever, on your face, you look in a mirror and then remove
27962 whatever is there. Similarly, when you listen to the teachings, your faults
27963 such as misconduct and attachment appear in the mirror of the teachings. At
27964 that time, you regret that your mind has become like this, and you then work
27965 to clear away those faults and establish good qualities. Hence, you must
27966 train in the teachings.
27967 --Tsong-kha-pa, "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to
27968 Enlightenment: The Lamrim Chenmo", translated by the Lamrim Chenmo
27969 Translation Committee, Joshua Cutler, Editor in Chief, published
27970 by Snow Lion Publications
27972 if god exists, then god doesn't need me to believe in god. it will not
27973 harm god if i do not believe, because god's existence is not dependent on
27974 my belief. god could contact me directly if god existed and actually cared
27975 what i believed, thus i see no reason to believe in god until then. since
27976 i don't need to believe in god, this frees me from wasting any mental
27977 effort *believing* when that belief will not create god if god doesn't
27978 exist, and when my disbelief will not destroy god if god does exist.
27979 i can't change the state of god's existence one way or the other--i have
27980 realized this limitation in my capabilities.
27981 instead, god needs to believe in me. it's my existence that presumably
27982 requires god's participation in some way, if god does exist. but regardless
27983 of any effort to placate a deity, i feel that i need to be the kind of person
27984 who is worth believing in, by god or by anyone else. my seeking perfection
27985 should not come from fear of an ignored and needy deity. i must build the
27986 best moral and ethical system that i can come up with for myself in this life.
27987 it is my own self-control and my behavior towards others that is the final
27988 word on whether i am worth believing in.
27991 Sometimes doing nothing is doing something.
27992 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar
27994 Enjoy now, another now is coming.
27995 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar
27997 Less pain, more gain.
27998 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar
28000 The pause is a part of the walk.
28001 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28003 Go ahead, look around.
28004 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28006 You better wait for the unexpected.
28007 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28009 Making a mistake is also an achievement.
28012 Leave for tomorrow what you can't do today.
28015 The further you are from a problem, the smaller it gets.
28018 If you think you know it all, you are missing something.
28021 Proper rules are not written.
28022 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28024 Sometimes a step forward needs a step back.
28027 If you get to the top on your own, who'll take the picture?
28028 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar, aka Lord Dewar
28030 When a man says his word is as his bond--get his bond.
28031 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar, aka Lord Dewar
28033 Never invest in a going concern until you know which way it is going.
28036 The quality of the article should be its greatest achievement.
28037 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28039 If you do not advertise, you fossilize.
28040 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28042 Yesterday's success belongs to yesterday.
28045 In charity there is no excess.
28048 The greatest mistake you can make is to be
28049 continually fearing you will make one.
28052 Life is a one-way street and you're not coming back.
28053 -- Sir Thomas Robert Dewar
28055 Fish stimulates the brain, but fishing stimulates the imagination.
28058 Respectability is the state of never being caught
28059 doing anything which gives you pleasure.
28062 Of two evils, choose the more interesting.
28065 There is no traffic congestion on the straight and narrow path.
28068 We have a great regard for old age when it is bottled.
28071 A philosopher is a man who can look at an empty glass with a smile.
28072 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28074 A teetotaller is one who suffers from thirst instead of enjoying it.
28075 -- Sir Thomas Dewar
28077 Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else.
28080 Ability without enthusiasm is like a rifle without a bullet.
28083 You can send a boy to college but you can't make him think.
28086 If we are here to help others, I often wonder what the others are here for.
28089 Don't question your wife's judgment; look who she married.
28092 I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we may succeed in
28093 building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in
28094 doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.
28095 -- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech,
28096 Oslo, December 1989, "The Pocket Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by
28099 Benefiting living beings is my main practice, and I would like to give a brief
28100 introduction to the three qualities that are its basis: pure love, compassion,
28101 and bodhichitta, the awakened mind. Pure love is the desire that all living
28102 beings have happiness and its causes. Compassion is the desire that living
28103 beings be free of suffering and its causes, such as unwholesome actions.
28104 Bodhichitta is the desire that all living beings be free of suffering and that
28105 we will be able to place them on the unsurpassed level of awakening, or
28107 -- "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the 17th Gyalwa
28108 Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje", by Michele Martin, published by Snow
28111 How can we eliminate the deepest source of all unsatisfactory experience?
28112 Only by cultivating certain qualities within our mindstream. Unless we
28113 possess high spiritual qualifications, there is no doubt that the events life
28114 throws upon us will give rise to frustration, emotional turmoil, and other
28115 distorted states of consciousness. These imperfect states of mind in turn
28116 give rise to imperfect activities, and the seeds of suffering are ever planted
28117 in a steady flow. On the other hand, when the mind can dwell in the wisdom
28118 that knows the ultimate mode of being, one is able to destroy the deepest root
28119 of distortion, negative karma and sorrow.
28120 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", translated and
28121 edited by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
28123 It is important to realize that there is nobody else who can wake us up and
28124 save us from samsara. There is no such thing in Buddhism. That may be
28125 Buddhism's biggest drawback, and at the same time its greatest advantage.
28126 This view shows us that there is nobody else in control of our lives, our
28127 experiences, our freedom or our bondage. Who is responsible? Who is in
28128 control? It is us. We are in control. We can bind ourselves further in
28129 samsara or we can free ourselves from it right now. It is all up to us. We
28130 are the ones who have to keep looking at our thoughts, looking for the nature
28131 of our mind. There is no guru, deity, buddha or bodhisattva out there to look
28132 for it for us. Although they would happily do this, it would not help us; it
28133 would only help them. We have to do it for ourselves. That is the key point.
28134 -- Dzogchen Ponlop, "Mind Beyond Death", published by Snow Lion Publications
28136 ...mistakenly apprehending inherent existence in all phenomena
28137 serves as the root of all other delusions...
28139 The opponent force powerful enough to eliminate the delusions should be a
28140 wisdom which combines calm abiding and special insight. In order to cultivate
28141 an advanced meditative stabilization that is free of both subtle mental
28142 sinking and mental excitement, first of all there should be a basis: the
28143 practice of morality, an abstaining from negative actions. Therefore, the
28144 path leading to liberation is comprised of the three higher trainings: the
28145 training of morality as the foundation, the training of meditative
28146 stabilization as the complementing factor, and the actual path which is the
28147 training of wisdom. By enhancing the practice of wisdom and by developing it
28148 to its fullest extent, you will be able to eliminate totally the delusions,
28149 particularly ignorance which misapprehends the mode of being of phenomena.
28150 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", translated by Geshe Thupten
28151 Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
28153 There is considerable ongoing debate regarding the traditional view of the
28154 guru-disciple relationship, which asserts that seeing the guru as Buddha,
28155 impeccable and without failings, is vital to ripen the disciple's potential to
28156 attain the fruits of the path. This is reinforced by the admonition that to
28157 see faults in one's own guru will result in karmic downfalls and future
28158 suffering for the disciple. Any faults in the teacher should be seen as the
28159 disciple's aberrations projected outside. The tantric teachings insist this
28160 pure view should be held at all times to protect the disciple from accruing
28162 However, underlying this is also the need to preserve the integrity,
28163 authority, and status of the teacher. This leads to a great deal of confusion
28164 when students begin to see evident flaws in teachers, and it would be folly to
28165 explain them away as the students' impure perception. Consequently it has
28166 become necessary to cultivate a less dogmatic, more pragmatic view. A teacher
28167 may not be a perfect carrier of the projection, but this does not contradict
28168 the tantric view that essentially the guru, an inner phenomenon projected
28169 outside, is Buddha.
28170 If we literalize this principle of the teacher as the embodiment of
28171 perfection, we are in danger of blinding ourselves to the reality that most
28172 teachers are human, and therefore not perfect. An individual can have deep
28173 insights into the nature of reality and still have human failings, a shadow
28174 that has not been fully eradicated. According to the teachings on the Ten
28175 Grounds or Stages of the Bodhisattva, until the final ground is reached, there
28176 are still subtle obscurations to full enlightenment that can manifest in
28177 flawed behavior. Believing without question that the outer guru is Buddha
28178 also traps the teacher in an unrealistic, unconscious position. The Dalai
28179 Lama has commented that too much deference harms the teacher, because we never
28180 challenge him or her.
28181 When disciples become devoted to teachers, considerable power and
28182 authority is entrusted to them. While a teacher's role is to support and
28183 empower disciples to discover their own potential, sometimes this does not
28184 happen. Some teachers become caught in the powerful position they have been
28185 endowed with and are unaware of their own desire for power and authority.
28186 They may begin to enjoy their power too much and take advantage of it for
28187 their own needs. This keeps their disciples disempowered, and ultimately does
28188 not allow growth and individual responsibility to emerge. Teachers may be
28189 unconsciously afraid to empower their disciples and allow them to gain a sense
28190 of their own authority and autonomy. They may try to hold on to their
28191 disciples, when to genuinely empower them could lead to their leaving to
28192 engage in their own journey.
28193 --Rob Preece, "The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra", foreword by Stephen
28194 Batchelor, published by Snow Lion Publications
28196 Attachment increases desire, without producing any satisfaction. There
28197 are two types of desire, unreasonable and reasonable. The first is an
28198 affliction founded on ignorance, but the second is not. To live, you need
28199 resources; therefore, desire for sufficient material things is appropriate.
28200 Such feelings as, "This is good; I want this. This is useful," are not
28201 afflictions. It is also desirable to achieve altruism, wisdom, and
28202 liberation. This kind of desire is suitable; indeed, all human development
28203 comes out of desire, and these aspirations do not have to be an affliction.
28204 ...when you have attachment to material things, it is best to desist from
28205 those very activities that promote more attachment. Satisfaction is helpful
28206 when it comes to material things, but not with respect to spiritual practice.
28207 Objects to which we become attached are something to be discarded, whereas
28208 spiritual progress is something to be adopted--it can be developed
28209 limitlessly, even in old age.
28210 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Expand Love", translated and edited by
28213 Some people find it helpful to set a determination of a reasonable period
28214 of time during which they will sit in meditation without moving. If you do
28215 this, do not make it into a contest in which you grit your teeth in pain just
28216 to say that you sat without moving for a certain length of time. That isn't
28217 conducive for focusing with wisdom on the object of meditation. On the other
28218 hand, avoid moving whenever you feel the slightest bit of restlessness or
28219 discomfort. Doing that isn't conducive for developing concentration either.
28220 Rather, note when there is the urge to move but don't move. Observe the
28221 sensation: Is it really pain or is it simply restless energy in the body?
28222 Learn to differentiate between these two. Learn, also, to differentiate
28223 between pain and discomfort. Watch and study both of those when they arise in
28224 your field of experience.
28225 In general, when attachment, anger, jealousy, or other distracting
28226 emotions arise, observe them without getting involved in their stories.
28227 Experience the feeling, rather than repeat the story to yourself again and
28228 again. Be aware of what it feels like in your body when you are angry,
28229 jealous, arrogant, or clingy. Be aware of the feeling tone in your mind when
28230 one of these emotions is present. Observe how the feeling changes, never
28231 remaining the same.
28232 ...It is important to avoid criticizing yourself when your mind is
28233 distracted or dull. Do not fall into discouraging thoughts or self-hatred
28234 because these are unproductive and are to be abandoned on the path. Remember
28235 that internal transformation takes time and rejoice in your opportunity to
28236 learn and practice the Dharma. "Slowly, slowly," as Lama Thubten Yeshe used
28237 to say. Learn to be satisfied with what you are able to do now while you
28238 aspire to improve in the future.
28239 -- Ven. Thubten Chodron, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path",
28240 foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
28242 A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these
28243 minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden.
28244 But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm
28245 that plays havoc with the garden.
28246 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
28248 You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by it.
28249 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
28251 Buddhists take a vow of morality in the context of first taking refuge--in
28252 Buddha, in the states of realization, and in the spiritual community. Refuge
28253 is the foundation for the practice of morality. Buddha teaches us how to find
28254 refuge from suffering and limitation, but the chief refuge, or source of
28255 protection, is found in the states of realization achieved through practicing
28256 morality, concentrated meditation, and wisdom. ...A lama from the Drukpa
28257 Kagyu tradition and I were very close. We met frequently and always used to
28258 joke, teasing each other back and forth. On one occasion I asked him about
28259 his spiritual experience. He told me that when he was young, he was staying
28260 with his lama who had him perform the preliminary practice of making a hundred
28261 thousand prostrations to the Buddha, the doctrine, and the spiritual
28262 community. Early in the morning and late in the evening he had to make
28263 prostrations on a low platform the length of his body. His lama was
28264 meditating in the dark in the next room; so to trick him into thinking he was
28265 making prostrations he would tap with his knuckles on the prostration
28266 platform. Years later, after his lama passed away, he was taking a meditation
28267 retreat in a cave, during which he recalled his lama's great kindness over
28268 years of training him, and he wept and wept. He almost fainted, but then
28269 experienced the clear light, which he continuously practiced. Subsequently,
28270 after successful meditations he occasionally would remember past lives in
28271 vivid reflections before him.
28272 --His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
28273 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
28274 http://www.snowlionpub.com/search.php?isbn=HOPRPA
28276 A practitioner needs faith, or trust.... Guru Rinpoche said that we
28277 should meditate in the same way that a sparrow enters a nest. A sparrow
28278 spends some time investigating whether or not it is safe to enter. Once his
28279 examination is over, he then enters unhesitatingly. That's a wonderful
28280 metaphor for practice. First clear up all your doubts about your technique,
28281 then throw yourself into the technique with no separation or self-
28282 consciousness. Of course, it's easy to say, but that is the direction toward
28283 which we should be moving.
28284 Another necessary quality is determination. It's easy to gear oneself up
28285 for counting mantras or prostrations. For some, physical discipline is also
28286 easy. But the determination of the meditator is different. We must be
28287 determined to strive to purify our obscurations until they're completely
28288 gone--in other words, until our buddha-nature unobstructedly shines through.
28289 When we sit, we decide to do our best not to be swayed by our negativity. We
28290 should cultivate this attitude at the beginning of our session. Otherwise, no
28291 matter how much we practice, we will daydream a lot and our meditation will
28292 always be wishy-washy. I know this from experience--I may do my session of
28293 meditation, but it is tepid. Why? I don't have that inner strength to remain
28294 unmoved by the arising of the various mental contents.
28295 -- Bruce Newman, "A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism", published by
28296 Snow Lion Publications
28298 This is the way of peace:
28299 "Overcome evil with good,
28300 falsehood with truth, and
28304 The seeing of Truth cannot be dualistic (a "thing" seen). It cannot be seen
28305 by a see-er, or via a see-er. There can only be a seeing which itself is
28306 Truth. "All Else is Bondage; Non-Volitional Living"
28309 An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet,
28310 who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
28311 -- Nicholas Chamfort
28313 A joke's a very serious thing.
28314 -- Charles Churchill
28316 You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
28319 The five subtler aggregates* will eventually be transformed into the
28320 Buddhas of the five lineages. They are now as if accompanied by mental
28321 defilements. When the defilements are removed, these factors do not become
28322 any coarser or subtler; their nature remains, but [when they] become separated
28323 from the faults of mental pollution, they become the Buddhas of the five
28324 lineages. So if you ask whether the Buddhas of the five lineages are present
28325 now in our continuums, these factors are currently bound by faults, and since
28326 there cannot be a Buddha who has a fault, they are not Buddhas. One is not
28327 yet fully enlightened, but that which is going to become a Buddha is present;
28328 therefore, these factors presently existent in our continuums are Buddha seeds
28329 and are called the Buddha nature, or the essence of the One Gone Thus
28331 * The five consituents that are included within a person's continuum--earth,
28332 water, fire, wind, and space--that will be purified into the five Buddha
28333 lineages [the exalted manifestations of these constituents].
28334 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness,
28335 Clarity, and Insight", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
28336 co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
28338 ...an inherently existent "I" appears to us, but instead of assenting to
28339 that appearance and holding it to be true, we analyze how the "I" actually
28341 At those times in our life when there's a very solid feeling of "I," it's
28342 helpful to examine how that "I" appears. I remember the first time I stayed
28343 out all night in college and my mother didn't know. I came home the next day
28344 with this feeling that "I" really existed: "I did this and my mother doesn't
28345 know!" The feeling of "I" was just enormous, incredibly solid, because I did
28346 something I wasn't supposed to do.
28347 Examine how that "I" appears, that big "I," especially when you have a
28348 strong emotion. Get familiar with that sense of "I." When somebody criticizes
28349 us or accuses us of doing something that we didn't do, this feeling comes up
28350 very quickly. Usually, we're focused not on the feeling of "I," but on
28351 attacking the other person or escaping from him. But if we can step back,
28352 it's an incredible opportunity to study the feeling of "I." The person who
28353 irritates us the most can be our best Dharma asset, because he gives us an
28354 opportunity to look at this sense of "I."
28355 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga
28356 Method of Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by
28357 Snow Lion Publications
28359 One time when I was giving an exposition on Nagarjuna's "Fundamentals of the
28360 Middle Way," which deals explicitly with the topic of emptiness, one student
28361 who did not have a prior background of learning in great treatises made a
28362 comment to another colleague. He said: 'Today's teaching was a little
28363 strange. His Holiness began with the presentation of the Buddha's path and
28364 built up the edifice one layer at a time. Then, all of a sudden, he started
28365 talking about emptiness and the absence of inherent existence, so that this
28366 whole edifice he had spent much time building was completely dismantled.'
28367 He couldn't really see the point. There is that danger. However, if we
28368 understand the importance of the need to generate wisdom into emptiness as a
28369 means of bringing about the cessation of the afflictions, particularly
28370 fundamental ignorance, then we recognise the value of deepening our
28371 realisation of emptiness. Also, as Dharmakirti points out, emotions such as
28372 loving kindness and compassion cannot directly challenge fundamental
28373 ignorance. It is only by cultivating insight into no-self that we can
28374 directly overcome our fundamental ignorance.
28375 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
28376 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
28378 Having committed yourself to certain practices, be steadfast and never
28379 transgress the promises you have made. Let go of everything that could tempt
28380 you to do so and devote yourself entirely and single-mindedly to the
28381 accomplishment of your aims. For six years the Buddha did not waver from his
28382 practice of the meditative stabilization known as "Pervading Space." This
28383 meditation focuses on the fundamental nature of phenomena, which is present
28384 wherever there is space. Everywhere throughout space there are suffering
28385 living beings on whom this meditation also focuses with the compassionate wish
28386 to relieve their suffering and the loving wish to give them happiness. Thus
28387 it combines essential wisdom and skillful means.
28388 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "The Three Principal Aspects of the Path: An Oral
28389 Teaching", translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion
28392 If you're not scared or angry at the thought of a human brain being controlled
28393 remotely, then it could be this prototype of mine is finally starting to work.
28394 -- John Alejandro King
28396 Only fools are positive. -- Moe Howard
28398 Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace
28399 that wasn't immune to bullets.
28402 We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by
28403 selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a
28404 shadow that never leaves them.
28407 If you find a good companion, who is following the same spiritual
28408 path, travel together, overcoming obstacles as they arise.
28411 Man is harder than rock and more fragile than an egg.
28412 -- Yugoslav Proverb
28414 That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.
28415 -- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
28417 Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
28420 A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.
28421 -- Christopher Morley, Human Being
28423 The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so,
28424 this purpose has any similarity to ours.
28425 -- Bertrand Russell
28427 Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a
28428 world made for man--who has no gills.
28431 Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose.
28434 Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
28435 -- John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
28437 In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with
28438 humans it is the other way around: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive
28442 Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.
28445 We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.
28448 Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
28451 Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological
28452 clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant
28453 perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are
28454 still in the early morning of our April day.
28455 -- Stephen Jay Gould, "Our Allotted Lifetimes," The Panda's Thumb, 1980
28457 Such is the human race, often it seems a pity
28458 that Noah... didn't miss the boat.
28461 There are too many people, and too few human beings.
28464 It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be
28465 nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a
28467 -- David Ormsby Gore
28469 Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge,
28470 virtue, and abiding love.
28471 -- George Bernard Shaw
28473 The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts
28474 at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo
28475 sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes.
28476 -- Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up
28478 Men! The only animal in the world to fear.
28481 The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
28484 Man embraces in his makeup all the natural orders;
28485 he's a squid, a mollusk, a sucker and a buzzard;
28486 sometimes he's a cerebrate.
28487 -- Martin H. Fischer
28489 Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
28490 -- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916
28492 Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind.
28493 -- David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978
28495 Human nature, if healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its
28496 thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the wrong. God
28497 never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.
28500 Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as
28501 large and wise as a man's head.
28502 -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
28504 Monkeys are superior to men in this:
28505 When a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey.
28506 -- Malcolm de Chazal
28508 It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
28509 -- Mariane Moore, "A Grave," Collected Poems, 1951
28511 The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
28512 procession but carrying a banner.
28513 -- Mark Twain, "Reflections on Being the Delight of God."
28515 Adam ate the apple, and our teeth still ache.
28516 -- Hungarian Proverb
28518 Why was man created on the last day? So that he can be told, when pride
28519 possesses him: God created the gnat before thee.
28522 Man--a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
28525 I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated His ability.
28528 O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.
28529 -- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, vol. I, book II, chapter 1
28531 God pulled an all-nighter on the sixth day.
28534 Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
28537 The progress of evolution from President Washington to
28538 President Grant [is] alone enough to upset Darwin.
28539 -- Henry Adams, Education, 1907
28541 Man--a being in search of meaning. -- Plato
28543 Ultimately, aren't we all just talking monkeys with an attitude problem?
28544 -- "Uncle" Ben, as seen on quotes-r-us.org
28546 The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
28547 -- Gustave Flaubert
28549 Nothing feebler does earth nurture than man,
28550 Of all things breathing and moving.
28553 Everyone is as God made him, and often a good deal worse.
28554 -- Miguel de Cervantes
28556 Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting
28557 on the wall until his back is up against it.
28560 It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
28563 God doesn't measure His bounty, but oh how we do!
28564 -- Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
28566 The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;
28567 men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
28568 -- Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, 1911
28570 The human race is governed by its imagination.
28573 Man uses his intelligence less in the care of his own species than he does in
28574 his care of anything else he owns or governs.
28575 -- Abraham Meyerson
28577 Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite
28578 nonsense, till death stares them in the face.
28581 Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him
28582 when he shows no mercy to what is under him?
28583 -- Pierre Troubetzkoy
28585 The small percentage of dogs that bite people is monumental proof that the dog
28586 is the most benign, forgiving creature on earth.
28587 -- W.R. Koehler, The Koehler Method of Dog Training
28589 Man was created a little lower than the angels,
28590 and has been getting lower ever since.
28593 We have no choice but to be guilty.
28594 God is unthinkable if we are innocent.
28595 -- Archibald MacLeish, JB, 1958
28597 Human beings invent just as many ways to sabotage their lives
28598 as to improve them.
28599 -- Mark Goulston, Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating
28602 As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a
28603 man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
28606 What is man's greatest bane? His brother man alone.
28607 -- Bias of Priene, Maxims
28609 Acedia is not in every dictionary; just in every heart.
28610 -- Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
28612 The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
28613 -- Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945
28615 Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery
28616 but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again
28617 like pimples on an angel's arse?
28618 -- John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor, 1960
28620 God has given a great deal to man, but man would like something from man.
28621 -- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
28623 I was surprised just now at seeing a cobweb around a knocker;
28624 for it was not on the door of heaven.
28625 -- Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth,
28626 by Two Brothers, 1827
28628 I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us.
28629 A single sentence will suffice for modern man:
28630 He fornicated and read the papers.
28633 Man, when he is merely what he seems to be, is almost nothing.
28634 -- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
28636 Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it
28637 into a garden; give him nine years' lease of a garden, and he will
28638 convert it into a desert.
28639 -- Arthur Young, Travels in France, 1792
28641 Our behavior is human with a sliver of animal,
28642 our souls animal with a sliver of human.
28645 Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient.
28646 It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the
28647 Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which
28648 they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the
28649 principal industries of the Orient.
28650 -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
28652 Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal
28653 that is struck with the difference between what things are and what
28655 -- William Hazlitt, The English Comic Writers, 1819
28657 Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a
28658 desert or to make the deserts bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in
28662 A simple and irrefutable argument to knock creationism on its ass: (1) Humans
28663 are a mistake--subproof: opposable thumbs and enlarged brain capacity are the
28664 combined number one factor in the increasingly speedy destruction of planet
28665 Earth. (2) God doesn't make mistakes. (3) Therefore, God couldn't have
28667 -- Cassus Garrulitas
28669 Man talks about everything, and he talks about everything as though the
28670 understanding of everything were all inside him.
28671 -- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
28673 My dog is usually pleased with what I do, because she is not infected
28674 with the concept of what I "should" be doing.
28677 Man will do many things to get himself loved;
28678 he will do all things to get himself envied.
28679 -- Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897
28681 We are all parasites; we humans, the greatest.
28682 -- Martin H. Fischer
28684 Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human
28685 body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was
28686 duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the
28687 left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a
28688 leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on
28689 each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin
28690 ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take
28691 it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that
28692 there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he
28693 was right, he would be wrong.
28694 -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity," Orthodoxy
28696 It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man.
28697 -- Aeschylus, Agamemnon
28699 God is less careful than General Motors, for He floods the world
28700 with factory rejects.
28701 -- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
28703 Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external
28704 circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
28705 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
28707 So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He
28708 can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but
28709 give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty
28710 billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million
28711 miles up in the sky.
28712 -- Russell Baker, New York Times, 21 July 1969
28714 Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is
28715 a problem which he has to solve.
28716 -- Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 1947
28718 When freedom from want and freedom from fear are achieved,
28719 man's remains will be in rigor mortis.
28720 -- Martin H. Fischer
28722 Man is nature's sole mistake.
28725 The average man's judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.
28728 Man--a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
28729 -- Alexander Hamilton
28731 We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all
28732 his noble qualities, still bears in his bodily frame the indelible
28733 stamp of his lowly origin.
28734 -- Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871
28736 We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our
28737 whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
28738 -- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
28740 Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not
28741 depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
28742 -- R. Buckminister Fuller
28744 Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
28745 -- David Herbert Lawrence, White Peacock, 1911
28747 The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel?
28748 I am on the side of the angels.
28749 -- Benjamin Disraeli
28751 I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.
28752 -- Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
28754 Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she
28755 desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him
28756 to leave ease... and throw himself into roils and labors.
28757 -- Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan
28760 The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.
28761 -- T.H. Huxley, "Evolution and Ethics," 1893
28763 Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature,
28764 when they are only repelled by man.
28765 -- William Ralph Inge
28767 People are like birds: on the wing, all beautiful;
28768 up close, all beady little eyes.
28769 -- Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
28771 Evolution is individual--devolution is collective.
28772 -- Martin H. Fischer
28774 I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-
28775 contain'd. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and
28776 whine about their condition.... Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented
28777 with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind
28778 that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or unhappy over the
28780 -- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
28782 As long as people believe in absurdities
28783 they will continue to commit atrocities.
28786 I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me
28787 a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape.
28788 I myself most assuredly know of none.
28789 -- Carl Linnaeus, 1788
28791 In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.
28794 Evolution: that last step was a doozy!
28797 We have a world for each one, but we do not have a world for all.
28798 -- Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
28800 Evolution: one small step for man, one giant leap backward for mankind.
28801 -- The Quote Garden
28803 I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of
28804 man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place
28805 where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
28806 -- Henry David Thoreau, journal, 2 April 1852
28808 Nature does not deceive us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
28809 -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762
28811 It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
28812 -- Niccolo Machiavelli
28814 Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees
28815 that it is old enough to know better.
28818 Question: How can one work with deep fears most effectively?
28820 DL: There are quite a number of methods. The first is to think about actions
28821 and their effects. Usually when something bad happens, we say, "Oh, very
28822 unlucky," and when something good happens, we say, "Oh, very lucky." Actually,
28823 these two words, lucky and unlucky, are insufficient. There must be some
28824 reason. Because of a reason, a certain time became lucky or unlucky, but
28825 usually we do not go beyond lucky or unlucky. The reason, according to the
28826 Buddhist explanation, is our past karma, our actions.
28828 One way to work with deep fears is to think that the fear comes as a result of
28829 your own actions in the past. Further, if you have fear of some pain or
28830 suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it.
28831 If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything,
28832 then there is also no need to worry.
28834 Another technique is to investigate who is becoming afraid. Examine the
28835 nature of your self. Where is this I? Who is I? What is the nature of I?
28836 Is there an I besides my physical body and my consciousness? This may help.
28838 Also, someone who is engaging in the Bodhisattva practices seeks to take
28839 others' suffering onto himself or herself. When you have fear, you can think,
28840 "Others have fear similar to this; may I take to myself all of their fears."
28841 Even though you are opening yourself to greater suffering, taking greater
28842 suffering to yourself, your fear lessens.
28843 -- "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
28844 About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, Foreword
28845 by Sen. Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
28849 When a subject is analyzed, the object to be negated is determined to be
28850 either an appearance or something imagined. It is not logical, [however,] to
28851 negate momentary appearances, because reasonings cannot negate them. To take
28852 an example: for people with eye diseases, the appearances of floaters [bits of
28853 optical debris], double moons, and the like do not stop as long as their
28854 eyesight is impaired. Similarly, as long as beings are not free from
28855 unafflicted ignorance, illusionlike appearances [manifesting] to the six modes
28856 of consciousness do not stop.
28857 It is not necessary to negate [appearances], because our mistakes do not
28858 come from appearances: they arise from fixating on those [appearances]. This
28859 is the case because if we do not fixate on appearances, we are not bound--we
28860 are like a magician who, having conjured up a young woman, has no attachment
28861 towards her. [On the other hand, if,] like naive beings attached to an
28862 illusory young woman, we fixate intensely [on appearances], our karma and
28863 mental afflictions will increase.
28864 To intentionally negate appearances would be wrong because, if they were
28865 negated, emptiness would come to mean the [absolute] nonexistence of things.
28866 Another reason this would be a mistake is that yogins and yoginis meditating
28867 on emptiness would fall into the extreme of nihilism since they would be
28868 applying their minds to a negation that [equals] the [absolute] nonexistence
28870 Thus, [Madhyamikas] set out to negate only what is imagined, because that
28871 is what can be negated. Like a rope mistaken for a snake, what is imagined
28872 does not conform to facts: it is simply the mind's fixations.
28873 -- Kongtrul Lodro Taye, "The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Six, Part Three:
28874 Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy", translated by Elizabeth M. Callahan,
28875 published by Snow Lion Publications
28877 Even though Mac Users may be only 10% of the market,
28878 always remember that we are the top 10%.
28881 While I don't claim to be a great programmer, I try to imitate one. An
28882 important trait of the great ones is constructive laziness. They know that
28883 you get an A not for effort but for results.
28886 We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the
28887 complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is
28891 C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when
28892 you do, it blows away your whole leg.
28893 -- Bjarne Stroustrup
28895 The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether
28896 submarines can swim.
28899 Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the
28900 tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the
28902 -- Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual
28904 UNIX was never designed to keep people from doing stupid things, because that
28905 policy would also keep them from doing clever things.
28908 Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with Browser X" label on a Web
28909 page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had
28910 very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another
28911 word processor, or another network.
28914 If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use?
28915 Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
28918 The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his
28919 own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility; and
28920 among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague.
28923 A programming language is a tool that has profound influence
28924 on our thinking habits.
28927 The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is
28929 -- Deep Thought, 2nd greatest Computer in the Universe of Time and Space
28931 If Windows is the solution, can we please have the problem back?
28934 This is a fascinating property: Writing texts in programming languages can not
28935 only be as creative as poetry, the creations more than in poetry, belong to
28936 the real world as soon as run through the machine.
28939 Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of
28940 indirection. But that usually will create another problem.
28943 Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger Dijkstra
28945 It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have
28946 had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally
28947 mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
28950 Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso
28952 I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order I may learn how to do it.
28955 Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
28958 Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
28961 A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
28964 The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors
28965 know she's down there, but nobody wants to talk about her.
28968 Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
28971 Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a
28972 pretext for a thousand.
28973 -- Charles Caleb Colton
28975 Whatever limits us, we call Fate. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
28977 The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard
28978 those who think alike than those who think differently.
28979 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
28981 Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
28982 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
28984 Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think
28986 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
28988 It often takes more courage to change ones opinion than to keep it.
28991 Let's be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming
28992 gardeners who make our soul bloom.
28995 It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
28998 There are only two forces that unite men--fear and interest.
28999 -- Napoleon Bonaparte
29001 If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their
29002 own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have
29003 a paradise in a few years.
29006 The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
29009 If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
29010 then we are a sorry lot indeed.
29013 Your character must be above suspicion and
29014 you must be truthful and self controlled.
29017 Either you live or you are consequential. -- Erich Kaestner
29019 Pedaled curd gets wide--not strong. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29021 Do not follow where the path may lead.
29022 Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
29023 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
29025 She wore too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. Thats always
29026 a sign of despair in a woman.
29029 Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
29032 First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
29036 Wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved with
29037 sexual relationships with men, that is due to evil on the part of the rulers,
29038 and to cowardice on the part of the governed.
29041 We want to be poets of our life--first of all in the smallest
29042 most everyday matters.
29043 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29045 Without music, life would be an error. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29047 Joseph LaGrange believed that a mathematician has not thoroughly understood
29048 his own work till he has made it so clear that he can go out and explain it
29049 effectively to the first man he meets on the street.
29052 There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from
29053 failure of human wisdom.
29054 -- Andres Bonar Law
29056 Perfect nonviolence is the highest bravery. -- Mahatma Gandhi
29058 There never was a good war or a bad peace. -- Benjamin Franklin
29060 There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing
29061 good in war. Except its ending.
29064 I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only
29065 temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
29068 An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. -- Mahatma Gandhi
29070 Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
29072 If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if
29073 from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
29074 -- Charles Caleb Colton
29076 The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
29079 Ability is nothing without opportunity. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
29081 Never work just for money or for power.
29082 They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.
29083 -- Marian Wright Edelman
29085 Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their
29086 pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.
29087 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29089 Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power,
29091 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29093 Censorship cannot eliminate evil, it can only kill freedom. -- unknown
29095 Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
29096 -- John G. Riefenbaker
29098 People demand freedom of speech to make up for
29099 the freedom of thought which they avoid.
29100 -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
29102 Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the
29103 fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
29106 If you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make
29107 philosophy out of it.
29110 I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
29111 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29113 I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more
29114 to be than a good dancer.
29115 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29117 Faith means not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29119 True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
29120 -- Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld
29122 This war, like the next war, is a war to end war. -- David Lloyd George
29124 How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!
29125 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
29127 When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
29128 -- Rodney Dangerfield
29130 When your mind is trained in self-discipline, even if you are surrounded
29131 by hostile forces, your peace of mind will hardly be disturbed. On the other
29132 hand, if your mind is undisciplined, your mental peace and calm can easily be
29133 disrupted by your own negative thoughts and emotions. The real enemy is
29134 within, not outside. Usually we define our enemy as a person, an external
29135 agent, whom we believe is causing harm to us or to someone we hold dear. But
29136 such an enemy is dependent on many conditions and is impermanent. One moment,
29137 the person may act as an enemy; at yet another moment, he or she may become
29138 your best friend. This is a truth that we often experience in our own lives.
29139 But negative thoughts and emotions, the inner enemy, will always remain the
29140 enemy. They are your enemy today, they have been your enemy in the past, and
29141 they will remain your enemy in the future as long as they reside within your
29143 This inner enemy is extremely dangerous. The destructive potential of an
29144 external enemy is limited when compared to that of its inner counterpart....
29145 In a time when every country is a potential target for the nuclear weapons of
29146 others, human beings still continue to develop defense systems of greater and
29147 greater sophistication. I do not know if it will ever be possible to create a
29148 defense system capable of guaranteeing worldwide protection against all
29149 external forces of destruction. However, one thing is certain: as long as
29150 those destructive internal enemies of anger and hatred are left to themselves
29151 unchallenged, the threat of physical annihilation will always loom over us.
29152 In fact, the destructive power of an external enemy ultimately derives from
29153 the power of these internal forces. The inner enemy is the trigger that
29154 unleashes the destructive power of the external enemy.
29155 Shantideva tells us that as long as these inner enemies remain secure
29156 within, there is great danger. Shantideva goes on to say that even if
29157 everyone in the world were to stand up against you as your enemies and harm
29158 you, as long as your own mind was disciplined and calm, they would not be able
29159 to disturb your peace. Yet a single instance of delusion arising in your mind
29160 has the power to disturb that peace and inner stability.
29161 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, from "The Compassionate Life"
29163 (Each day before breakfast the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, Thubten
29164 Chodron, gives a morning motivation for residents and guests. We were moved
29165 by these inspiring words, and hope you will be, too.)
29169 Let's recall our motivation in the morning and think that today, the most
29170 important thing I have to do is to guard my body, speech and mind so that I
29171 don't harm anybody through what I do with my body, through what I say, or even
29172 through what I think. That's the most important thing, more important than
29173 anything else today.
29174 The second most important thing is, as much as possible, to be of benefit
29175 to others. Thoroughly cultivate that as your motivation simply for being
29176 alive today. Our purpose for being alive isn't just to keep this body alive,
29177 to eat and sleep, and have pleasure. We have a higher purpose, a higher
29178 meaning: to really work for the benefit of living beings. If the purpose of
29179 our life is simply to keep the body alive and have pleasure, then at the end
29180 of life, we have nothing to show for it. The body dies and all the pleasures,
29181 like last night's dream, have gone. But if we work for a higher motivation, a
29182 higher purpose, to really do what's beneficial for all living beings, then
29183 there's happiness and benefit now.
29184 At the end of the life, the benefit that we've given to others continues,
29185 as do all the imprints of the attitude of kindness, the attitude of care
29186 towards others. All the imprints of having generated that positive mind go on
29187 with us into the next life. So even at the time of death, that kind heart
29188 brings incredible benefit and carries through into the next life.
29189 And then let's also generate a third motivation--a really long-term
29190 motivation--to become fully enlightened. In other words, to have the wisdom,
29191 compassion, and skill so that in the long term, we'll be able to be of the
29192 greatest benefit to all living beings, even being able to lead them on the
29193 path to enlightenment. That's our really long-term purpose.
29194 As we change and develop a kind heart, that influences every single living
29195 being we encounter in a positive way. Then, through the influence on them, it
29196 spreads out to all the people they know. So, just spending one day with a
29197 positive, long-term motivation may seem like a small thing, but when we think
29198 of the ripple effect it has now, and the benefit it has in future lives and
29199 for progressing along the path to liberation and enlightenment, we see that
29200 even one day spent with this motivation of kindness, directly and indirectly
29201 benefiting sentient beings, has tremendous outcomes--many, many good results.
29202 -- Thubten Chodron, who is the author of many books, including her latest
29203 work, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path", published by
29204 Snow Lion Publications
29206 ...We can't blame one individual for what happens in our world. I think
29207 we should blame our entire society. Society produces our leaders and
29208 politicians, and if we try to develop a more compassionate and affectionate
29209 society, we will have human beings with a more peaceful nature. Leaders,
29210 politicians, and businesspeople coming from such a society would offer hope
29211 for a better world. Our long-term responsibility--everyone's responsibility,
29212 whether they are believers or nonbelievers--is to find ways to promote a
29213 peaceful and compassionate society.
29214 I think one way is quite simple. Each individual must try to ensure peace
29215 and compassion in his [or her] family. Put together ten peaceful,
29216 compassionate homes, or one hundred, and that's a community. The children in
29217 such a society would receive affection in their family and in their schools
29218 from the educators concerned. We might have one or two setbacks, but
29219 generally I think we could develop a sensible society. Sensible here means a
29220 sense of community, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of commitment.
29221 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Many Ways to Nirvana: Reflections
29222 and Advice on Right Living", edited by Renuka Singh, published by
29223 Snow Lion Publications
29225 We can see that there are many ways in which we actively contribute to our
29226 own experience of mental unrest and suffering. Although, in general, mental
29227 and emotional afflictions themselves can come naturally, often it is our own
29228 reinforcement of those negative emotions that makes them so much worse. For
29229 instance when we have anger or hatred towards a person, there is less
29230 likelihood of its developing to a very intense degree if we leave it
29231 unattended. However, if we think about the projected injustices done to us,
29232 the ways in which we have been unfairly treated, and we keep on thinking about
29233 them over and over, then that feeds the hatred. It makes the hatred very
29234 powerful and intense. Of course, the same can apply to when we have an
29235 attachment towards a particular person; we can feed that by thinking about how
29236 beautiful he or she is, and as we keep thinking about the projected qualities
29237 that we see in the person, the attachment becomes more and more intense. But
29238 this shows how through constant familiarity and thinking, we ourselves can
29239 make our emotions more intense and powerful.
29240 We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive,
29241 overreacting to minor things, and sometimes taking things too personally. We
29242 tend to take small things too seriously and blow them up out of proportion,
29243 while at the same time we often remain indifferent to the really important
29244 things, those things which have profound effects on our lives and long-term
29245 consequences and implications.
29246 So I think that to a large extent, whether you suffer depends on how you
29247 respond to a given situation.
29248 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
29249 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
29251 Realizations come only if we practice joyfully, with confidence and
29252 courage. Realization doesn't grow within a timid or weak state of mind--it
29253 blossoms in the mind free of doubt and hesitation. Realization is fearless.
29254 When we see the true nature of reality, there's nothing hidden, nothing left
29255 to fear. At last we're seeing reality as it is, full of joy and peace.
29256 Our habitual patterns can only be removed by understanding the great
29257 emptiness aspect of true nature, that which is named the Mother of all the
29258 buddhas. Emptiness is freedom; emptiness is great opportunity. It is
29259 pervasive and all phenomena arise from it. As the great master Jigme Lingpa
29260 said, "The entire universe is the mandala of the dakini." The Mother's mandala
29261 is all phenomena, the display of the wisdom dakini.
29262 Without this ultimate great emptiness, the Mother of the buddhas, the
29263 universe would be without movement, development, or change. Because of this
29264 great emptiness state of the Mother, we see phenomena continually arising.
29265 Each display arises, transforms, and radiates, fulfilling its purpose and then
29266 dissolving back into its original state. This dramatic dance of energy is the
29267 activity, ability, or mandala of the wisdom dakini. Thus, the combination of
29268 the great emptiness or openness state, together with the activities of love
29269 and compassion, is both the ultimate Mother and the ultimate wisdom dakini.
29270 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche,
29271 "Tara's Enlightened Activity: An Oral Commentary on 'The Twenty-one
29272 Praises to Tara' ", published by Snow Lion Publications
29274 Just as your innermost wish is to be free from suffering and to abide in
29275 happiness, so too is it the aspiration of all other beings. But, they, like
29276 you, encounter sufferings and problems in their lives, and often their
29277 difficulties are much worse than your own. Examine your capacity to help
29278 them. At this time your ability to help them is quite limited, but if you
29279 reduce your own ignorance, anger, attachment, and other faults, and increase
29280 your good qualities such as generosity, patience, loving-kindness, compassion,
29281 and wisdom, you will be of greater benefit. If you become fully enlightened,
29282 you will be of the greatest possible benefit to all beings. Thus generate the
29283 altruistic intention to become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient
29284 beings most effectively.
29285 -- Thubten Chodron, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path",
29286 foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
29288 ...at Bodh Gaya, [Shakyamuni] displayed the ways of becoming fully
29289 enlightened. Then in stages he turned the three renowned wheels of doctrine.
29290 In the first period, at Varanasi, Buddha turned the wheel of doctrine that
29291 is based on the four noble truths; he did this mainly in consideration of
29292 those having the lineage of Hearers (Sravaka). In the middle period, at
29293 Grdhrakuta, he set forth the middle wheel of doctrine, which is based on the
29294 mode of non-inherent existence of all phenomena; he did this mainly in
29295 consideration of trainees of sharp faculties who bear the Mahayana lineage.
29296 In the final period, at Vaisali, he set forth the final wheel [which is based
29297 on discriminating between those phenomena that do and those that do not truly
29298 exist]; he did this mainly in consideration of trainees of middling and lower
29299 faculties who bear the Mahayana lineage. The teacher Buddha also appeared in
29300 the body of Vajradhara, setting forth tantric doctrines.
29301 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
29302 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
29304 There are different levels of faith. First, clear faith refers to the joy and
29305 clarity and change in our perceptions that we experience when we hear about
29306 the qualities of the Three Jewels and the lives of the Buddha and the great
29307 teachers. Longing faith is experienced when we think about the latter and are
29308 filled with a great desire to know more about their qualities and to acquire
29309 these ourselves. Confident faith comes through practicing the Dharma, when we
29310 acquire complete confidence in the truth of the teachings and the
29311 enlightenment of the Buddha. Finally, when faith has become so much a part of
29312 ourselves that even if our lives were at risk we could never give it up, it
29313 has become irreversible faith.
29314 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "The Excellent Path to Enlightenment",
29315 translated by The Padmakara Translation Group, published by Snow
29318 ...when seeking work, or if you already have a job, it is important to
29319 keep in mind that a human being isn't meant to be some kind of machine
29320 designed only for production. No. Human life isn't just for work, like [a
29321 socialistic] vision where everyone's purpose is just to work for the state,
29322 and there is no individual freedom, where the state even arranges the person's
29323 vacations and everything is planned out for the individual. That is not a
29324 full human life. Individuality is very important for a full human life, and
29325 then accordingly some leisure time, a bit of holiday, and time spent with
29326 family or friends. That is the means to a complete form of life.... If your
29327 life becomes only a medium of production, then many of the good human values
29328 and characteristics will be lost--then you will not, you cannot, become a
29330 So if you're looking for work and have a choice of a job, choose a job
29331 that allows the opportunity for some creativity, and for spending time with
29332 your family. Even if it means less pay, personally I think it is better to
29333 choose work that is less demanding, that gives you greater freedom, more time
29334 to be with your family, or to do other activities, read, engage in cultural
29335 activities, or just play. I think that's best.
29336 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The
29337 Art of Happiness at Work"
29339 Our painful experiences have brought the five poisons* right into our
29340 world. Our heavy sense of being a separate person has led to an anxiety about
29341 our safety in the world. This leads us to aversion and attachment, as we long
29342 to predict and control our relation with the environment. From this all the
29343 other fixed and defensive positions arise. And so the world that we encounter
29344 is covered over and suffused with many subtle moods of hopes and fears,
29345 doubts, jealousies, pride. So even here on a dharma retreat, as we look
29346 around the room, we have a complex sense of whose faces we can look at, and
29347 who we might have to look away from. This is not at all a neutral place. The
29348 force of projections, interpretations and impulsive reactions keeps us busy in
29349 trying to stay ahead of the game....
29350 However in dzogchen we are trying to get to the essential point where
29351 nirvana and samsara separate. This is like a great weed killer: If you spray
29352 it once all the weeds, all the confusion, all the pain and suffering will
29353 vanish. You don't need to pluck out each weed by itself. Believing that you
29354 are a bad person is very unhelpful for the practice of dzogchen. Also
29355 believing that you are a good person is not very helpful in the practice of
29356 dzogchen. You are not a person! Resting in the unborn state we are a pure
29357 awareness free of the least defilement. When you give up your ego identity,
29358 your samsara citizenship, you tear up your identity card and all the problems
29359 and sins and police records linked to that identity vanish immediately.
29360 * Five poisons (dug nga)--the five poisonous mental afflictions are
29361 desire, aggression, ignorance, pride, and jealousy. (Penetrating Wisdom)
29362 -- "Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje Entitled 'The
29363 Mirror of Clear Meaning' ", with commentary by James Low, published by
29364 Snow Lion Publications
29366 And just as men depend upon
29367 A boat for traversing the sea,
29368 So does the mental body need
29369 The matter-body for occurrence.
29370 And as the boat depends upon
29371 The men for traversing the sea,
29372 So does the matter-body need
29373 The mental body for occurrence.
29374 Depending each upon the other
29375 The boat and men go on the sea.
29376 And so do mind and matter both
29377 Depend the one upon the other.
29378 -- Visuddhimagga (XVIII, 36)
29380 There is a Buddhist practice in which one imagines giving joy and the
29381 source of all joy to other people, thereby removing all their suffering.
29382 Though of course we cannot change their situation, I do feel that in some
29383 cases, through a genuine sense of caring and compassion, through our sharing
29384 in their plight, our attitude can help alleviate their suffering, if only
29385 mentally. However, the main point of this practice is to increase our inner
29386 strength and courage.
29387 I have chosen a few lines that I feel would be acceptable to people of all
29388 faiths, and even to those with no spiritual belief. When reading these lines,
29389 if you are a religious practitioner, you can reflect upon the divine form that
29390 you worship. Then, while reciting these verses, make the commitment to
29391 enhance your spiritual values. If you are not religious, you can reflect upon
29392 the fact that, fundamentally, all beings are equal to you in their wish for
29393 happiness and their desire to overcome suffering. Recognizing this, you make
29394 a pledge to develop a good heart. It is most important that we have a warm
29395 heart. As long as we are part of human society, it is very important to be a
29396 kind, warm-hearted person.
29397 May the poor find wealth,
29398 Those weak with sorrow find joy.
29399 May the forlorn find new hope,
29400 Constant happiness and prosperity.
29402 May the frightened cease to be afraid,
29403 And those bound be free.
29404 May the weak find power,
29405 And may their hearts join in friendship.
29406 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday
29407 Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Khyongla Rato
29410 Although there are as many categories of emptiness* as there are types of
29411 phenomena, when you realize the emptiness of one specific phenomenon, you also
29412 realize the emptiness of all phenomena. The ultimate nature, or emptiness, of
29413 all phenomena is of equal taste and of the same undifferentiable nature. Even
29414 though the nature of emptiness of all phenomena is the same, and all the
29415 different aspects of phenomena, such as whether they are good or bad, or the
29416 way they change, arise from the sphere of emptiness, you should understand
29417 that emptiness cannot be found apart from the subject or the object.
29418 Emptiness refers to an object's being free of intrinsic existence. Things
29419 depend on causes and conditions. This very dependence on causes and
29420 conditions signifies that phenomena lack independent, or intrinsic, existence.
29421 It also demonstrates how all the diverse aspects of things that we experience
29422 arise because they are by nature empty. When we talk about emptiness, we are
29423 not dealing with those different aspects, we are dealing with phenomena's
29425 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", trans. by Ven. Geshe
29426 Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell,
29427 published by Snow Lion Publications
29429 The Treasure Discoverers
29430 Most of the influential terma [hidden treasures or teachings] were
29431 purportedly secreted by Padmasambhava or his immediate disciples, and specific
29432 instructions were also laid down for each terma at the time of its
29433 concealment. The theory behind this system is that certain teachings would be
29434 especially effective at particular points in the future, and so they were
29435 hidden in a "time release" system which assured that at the appropriate time a
29436 terton would locate the teaching and disseminate it. When Padmasambhava hid
29437 these treasures, he prophesied the circumstances for the discovery of each
29438 terma and the terton who would find it. He predicted that there would be
29439 three "grand" tertons, eight "great" ones, twenty-one "powerful" ones, one
29440 hundred eight "intermediate," and one thousand "subsidiary" tertons. Most of
29441 these were to be recognized as emanations of Padmasambhava or his chief
29443 ...Many hidden treasures still remain undiscovered, awaiting the proper
29444 time for their dissemination. They continue to reinvigorate the Nyingma
29445 tradition, and a number have been incorporated into other lineages. The
29446 institution of terma serves as a link with the past of the tradition, a link
29447 that periodically revitalizes the present and points the way to the future.
29448 The system reflects the Mahayana ideal of skill in means, the ability to adapt
29449 teachings to changing circumstances.
29450 -- John Powers, "Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow Lion
29453 Practicing compassion will bring about the recognition of emptiness* as
29454 the true nature of the mind. When you practice virtuous actions of love and
29455 compassion on the relative level, you spontaneously realize the profound
29456 nature of emptiness, which is the absolute level. In turn, if you focus your
29457 meditation practice on emptiness, then your loving-kindness and compassion
29458 will spontaneously grow.
29459 These two natures, the absolute and the relative, are not opposites; they
29460 always arise together. They have the same nature; they are inseparable like a
29461 fire and its heat or the sun and its light. Compassion and emptiness are not
29462 like two sides of a coin. Emptiness and compassion are not two separate
29463 elements joined together; they are always coexistent.
29464 In Buddhism, emptiness does not mean the absence of apparent existence.
29465 Emptiness is not like a black hole or darkness, or like an empty house or an
29466 empty bottle. Emptiness is fullness and openness and flexibility. Because of
29467 emptiness it is possible for phenomena to function, for beings to see and
29468 hear, and for things to move and change. It is called emptiness because when
29469 we examine things we cannot find anything that substantially and solidly
29470 exists. There is nothing that has a truly existent nature. Everything we
29471 perceive appears through ever-changing causes and conditions, without an
29472 independent, solid basis. Although from a relative perspective things appear,
29473 they arise from emptiness and they dissolve into emptiness. All appearances
29474 are like water bubbles or the reflection of the moon in water.
29475 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche,
29476 "Opening to our Primordial Nature", published by Snow Lion Publications
29478 [Preceding story: Before reaching enlightenment, the Buddha was born as Prince
29479 Visvantara, who, despite facing many challenges and adversity, brought all of
29480 his heart and courage to bear against a single enemy--human suffering.]
29482 In giving we not only find wealth while in cyclic existence but we achieve the
29483 zenith of prosperity in supreme enlightenment. Therefore we all have to
29484 practice giving. A Bodhisattva's giving is not just overcoming miserliness
29485 and being generous to others; a pure wish to give is cultivated, and through
29486 developing more and more intimacy with it, such giving is enhanced infinitely.
29487 Therefore it is essential to have the firm mind of enlightenment rooted in
29488 great love and compassion and, from the depths of one's heart, to either give
29489 one's body, wealth and virtues literally to sentient beings as infinite as
29490 space, or to dedicate one's body, wealth and virtues for them while striving
29491 in all possible ways to enhance the wish to give infinitely. As mentioned in
29492 Engaging in Bodhisattva Activities and in The Precious Garland, we should
29493 literally give material help to the poor and needy, give teaching to others,
29494 and give protection to them, even the small insects, as much as we can. In
29495 the case of things which we are not able to part with, we should cultivate the
29496 wish to give them away and develop more and more intimacy with that wish.
29497 -- "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries by H.H. the Dalai Lama XIV on the
29498 Jatakamala", translated by Tenzin Dorjee, edited by Dexter Roberts
29500 Mad yogins are known in virtually every tradition in Tibet, but most often
29501 in the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages, and also in the Shije (Pacification) and
29502 Chod traditions. The Nyingma, Kagyu, and Chod traditions are the three with
29503 which Tangtong Gyalpo had the closest ties. One of the texts in Tangtong's
29504 Oral Transmission, a collection of teachings originally passed down from
29505 Tangtong, quotes the great yogini Machik Labdron's statement concerning proper
29506 yogic conduct following realization. In response to a question by one of her
29507 sons, Machik recommended that a practitioner act like a child with unfeigned
29508 spontaneity, like a lunatic with no regard for what is conventionally
29509 acceptable, like a leper with no attachment to his or her own physical health,
29510 and like a wild animal wandering in isolated and rough terrain.
29511 ...Guru Padmasambhava himself prophesied that Tangtong Gyalpo would care
29512 for living beings by means of unpredictable actions. Tangtong's unusual
29513 conduct began to manifest at an early age, and resembled traits noted in the
29514 lives of other mad yogins. He was first called insane by his father and the
29515 members of his village when, as a child, he subdued a malicious spirit
29516 responsible for an epidemic. Several other early incidents are mentioned in
29517 the biographies. When he went to take scholastic examinations at the renowned
29518 monastery of Sakya he earned the nickname Tsondru Nyonpa (Crazy Tsondru)
29519 because of his disinterest in explaining the scriptural definitions of the
29520 highest states of realization. He preferred to spend his time absorbed in
29521 actually experiencing these states. When he was later practicing deliberate
29522 behavior secretly in a vast and empty wasteland, the dakinis gave him five
29523 names indicating his high realization, one of which was Lungtong Nyonpa
29524 (Madman of the Empty Valley).
29525 -- Cyrus Stearns, "King of the Empty Plain: The Tibetan Iron Bridge
29526 Builder Tangtong Gyalpo", a Tsadra Foundation book, published by
29527 Snow Lion Publications
29529 ...In the Buddhist teachings, when we search for the causes of suffering,
29530 we find what is called 'the truth of the origin of suffering', namely that
29531 negative actions--karma--and the negative emotions that induce such actions
29532 are the causes of suffering.
29533 Talking about causes, if we take a step further and investigate more
29534 deeply, we find that the cause alone is not sufficient for bringing about the
29535 results. Causes themselves have to come in contact with co-operative
29536 circumstances or conditions. For instance, say we search for a material or
29537 substantial cause for this plant, we will find that it has a continuity
29538 stretching back into beginningless time.
29539 There are certain Buddhist texts that speak of space particles, existing
29540 before the evolution of this present universe. According to these texts, the
29541 space particles serve as the material and substantial cause for matter, such
29542 as this plant. Now if the essential and substantial cause for matter is
29543 traced to these space particles, which are all the same, how do we account for
29544 the diversity that we see in the material world? It is here that the question
29545 of conditions and circumstances comes into play. When these substantial
29546 causes come in contact with different circumstances and conditions, they give
29547 rise to different effects, that is, different kinds of matter. So we find
29548 that the cause alone is not sufficient for bringing about a result. What is
29549 required is an aggregation of many different conditions and circumstances.
29550 Although you can find certain differences among the Buddhist philosophical
29551 schools about how the universe came into being, the basic common question
29552 addressed is how the two fundamental principles--external matter and internal
29553 mind or consciousness--although distinct, affect one another. External causes
29554 and conditions are responsible for certain of our experiences of happiness and
29555 suffering. Yet we find that it is principally our own feelings, our thoughts
29556 and our emotions, that really determine whether we are going to suffer or be
29558 -- H.H. The Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
29559 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron, Foreword
29560 by Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion
29563 Right now many of us wish for liberation, yet sometimes we cannot keep
29564 ourselves from creating the causes for cyclic existence. When we understand
29565 true suffering well, our wish for liberation will become firm. At present our
29566 resolve to reach liberation is not firm because we think of suffering, but not
29567 deeply. The deluded attitude believing that the unsatisfactoriness of change
29568 is true happiness easily arises in us because we are not yet deeply convinced
29569 that all happiness in cyclic existence is contaminated and is in fact only a
29570 variety of suffering. To remedy this, we should meditate on true suffering
29571 more often and explore its meaning deeply. Then our wish for liberation will
29573 We consider many things--clothes, food, good health, nice possessions,
29574 financial security, the higher rebirths--as true happiness. As a result, we
29575 are attached to them and create more causes for suffering in cyclic existence
29576 in order to gain them. Thinking that the human birth is something marvelous,
29577 we work at creating the causes that propel us toward it. In fact all we are
29578 doing is creating the cause for yet another rebirth in cyclic existence,
29579 together with all the problems that such a rebirth involves.
29580 If we understand that by its nature, cyclic existence is unsatisfactory,
29581 we will have a deep aversion to it. If we do not have a deep aversion to it,
29582 we will not be determined to be free, and therefore will not be able to
29583 destroy our self-grasping ignorance, which is the root of cyclic existence.
29584 In that case, we will not be able to attain liberation. However, when we
29585 deeply feel the extent to which we suffer in cyclic existence, we will
29586 automatically want to abandon the true origin of suffering, attain the true
29587 cessation, and meditate on the true path. Having realized true suffering, we
29588 will easily realize the other three of the four noble truths. Thus it is
29589 said: suffering is to be known. The origin is to be abandoned. The cessation
29590 is to be attained. The path is to be practiced. The determination to be free
29591 is the wish for ourselves to be free of cyclic existence. When we wish others
29592 to be free, that is compassion.
29593 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage:
29594 An Explanation of the Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas", edited by
29595 Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
29597 Mantras are invocations to buddhas... prayers, or a combination of these.
29598 Tantric practitioners repeat them in order to forge karmic connections between
29599 themselves and meditational deities and to effect cognitive restructuring
29600 through internalizing the divine attributes that the mantra represents. A
29601 person who wishes to develop greater compassion, for instance, might recite
29602 the mantra of Avalokitesvara, who embodies this quality: om mani padme hum...
29603 [a] mantra [that] is well known to Tibetans. It represents for them the
29604 perfect compassion of Avalokitesvara, who they believe has taken a special
29605 interest in the spiritual welfare of the Tibetan people. He epitomizes
29606 universal compassion that is unsullied by any trace of negative emotions or
29607 mental afflictions.
29608 Among ordinary beings there are, of course, many acts of compassion, but
29609 these are generally tinged by self-interest, pride, or desire for recognition.
29610 Avalokitesvara's compassion, by contrast, is completely free from all
29611 afflictions and is so vast that it encompasses all sentient beings without
29612 exception and without distinction. People who wish to develop such a
29613 perspective recite Avalokitesvara's mantra over and over, meditating on its
29614 significance, and in so doing they try to restructure their minds in
29615 accordance with the cultivation of his exalted qualities. According to the
29617 'mani'... symbolizes the factors of method--the altruistic intention to
29618 become enlightened, compassion, and love. Just as a jewel is capable of
29619 removing poverty, so the altruistic mind of enlightenment is capable of
29620 removing the poverty, or difficulties, of cyclic existence and of solitary
29621 peace.... The two syllables, 'padme'... symbolize wisdom. Just as a lotus
29622 grows forth from mud but is not sullied by the faults of mud, so wisdom is
29623 capable of putting you in a situation of non-contradiction whereas there would
29624 be contradiction if you did not have wisdom.... Purity must be achieved by an
29625 indivisible unity of method and wisdom, symbolized by the final syllable
29626 'hum', which indicates indivisibility.... Thus the six syllables, 'om mani
29627 padme hum', mean that in dependence on a path which is an indivisible union of
29628 method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into
29629 the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.
29630 -- John Powers, "Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow
29633 "Now let's look at ultimate reality," the Dalai Lama said, pointing a
29634 little finger to his mug. "What exactly is it? We're seeing color, shape.
29635 But if we take away shape, color, material, what is mug? Where is the mug?
29636 This mug is a combination of particles: atoms, electrons, quarks. But each
29637 particle is not 'mug.' The same can be said about the four elements, the
29638 world, everything. The Buddha. We cannot find the Buddha. So that's the
29639 ultimate reality. If we're not satisfied with conventional reality, if we go
29640 deep down and try to find the real thing, we ultimately won't find it."
29641 Thus, the Dalai Lama was saying, the mug is empty. The term "mug" is
29642 merely a label, something we use to describe everyday reality. But each mug
29643 comes into existence because of a complex web of causes and conditions. It
29644 does not exist independently. It cannot come into being by itself, of its own
29646 For example: suppose I decide to make a black mug. To do this, I mix
29647 black clay and water, shape it to my liking, and fire the resulting mixture in
29648 an oven. Clay plus water turns into a mug because of my actions. But it
29649 exists because of the myriad different ways that atoms and molecules interact.
29650 And what about me, the creator of the black mug? If my parents had never met,
29651 the black mug might never have existed.
29652 Therefore the mug does not exist independently. It comes into being only
29653 through a complex web of relationships. In the Dalai Lama's own words, and
29654 this is the key concept in his worldview, the mug is "dependently originated."
29655 It came to be a mug because of a host of different factors, not under its own
29656 steam. It is empty. "Empty" is shorthand for "empty of intrinsic, inherent
29657 existence." Or to put it another way, empty is another word for
29659 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, "The Wisdom of
29660 Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys"
29662 Buddha teaches that one should not practice extremes.... As Nagarjuna's
29663 "Precious Garland of Advice" says,
29664 Practice is not done
29665 By mortifying the body,
29666 Since you have not forsaken injuring others
29667 And are not helping others.
29668 When you disregard the basic needs of the body, you harm the many sentient
29669 organisms that live within the body. You should also avoid the opposite
29670 extreme of living in great luxury. It is possible to make use of good food,
29671 clothing, residence, and furnishings without producing afflictive emotions
29672 such as attachment, pride, and arrogance. The crucial point is the control of
29673 internal factors such as lust and attachment; external factors are not in and
29674 of themselves good or bad. It is not suitable if attachment increases toward
29675 even mediocre food, clothing, and so forth.
29676 Contentment is the key. If you have contentment with material things, you
29677 are truly rich. Without it, even if you are a billionaire, you will not have
29678 happiness. You will always feel hungry and want more and more and more,
29679 making you not rich but poor. If you seek contentment externally, it will
29680 never happen. Your desire will never be fulfilled. Our texts speak of a king
29681 who gained control over the world, at which point he began thinking about
29682 taking over the lands of the gods. In the end his good qualities were
29683 destroyed by pride. Contentment is necessary for happiness, so try to be
29684 satisfied with adequate food, clothing, and shelter.
29685 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving
29686 Relationships", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
29688 There is another way of speaking about the two types of meditation. In this
29689 case, they are differentiated into 1) meditation that perceives the object and
29690 2) meditation in which our mind is transformed into a specific affective
29691 state. An example of the former is meditating on impermanence and emptiness.
29692 These are subtle objects that we must use analytical meditation to perceive.
29693 An example of the latter is meditation on the four immeasurables
29694 (brahmaviharas)--love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Here we are not
29695 trying to perceive a subtle object, but are practicing to transform our minds
29696 into those mental states. For example, everyone admires the quality of love,
29697 but we cannot just say, "I should love everyone," and expect our deepest
29698 feelings to change. First, we must free our minds from the gross obstacles of
29699 attachment to friends, hostility to people who threaten or harm us, and apathy
29700 towards strangers. On this basis, we then train our mind to recognize the
29701 kindness of others, which arouses in us a natural wish to reciprocate and
29702 share our kindness with them. After this we meditate on love and cultivate a
29703 genuine wish for all sentient beings to have happiness and its causes.
29704 Initially that feeling will arise in us but will not be stable. Anger may
29705 still flash into our mind making our good feelings towards others disappear.
29706 We need to cultivate love continuously and do so with a focused mind. The
29707 greater our concentration, the more stable and penetrative the experience
29709 -- Thubten Chodron, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path",
29710 foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
29712 ...for the Christian practitioner, the Creator and the acceptance of the
29713 Creator as almighty, is a very important factor within that tradition in order
29714 to develop self-discipline, compassion, or forgiveness and to increase them in
29715 one's intimate relationship with God. That's something very essential. In
29716 addition, when God is seen as absolute and almighty, the concept that
29717 everything is relative becomes a little bit difficult. However, if one's
29718 understanding of God is in terms of an ultimate nature of reality or ultimate
29719 truth, then it is possible to have a kind of unified approach.
29720 ...As to one's personal religion, I think this must be based on one's own
29721 mental disposition.... Generally speaking, I think it is better to practice
29722 according to your own traditional background, and certainly you can use some
29723 of the Buddhist techniques. Without accepting rebirth theory or the
29724 complicated philosophy, simply use certain techniques to increase your power
29725 of patience and compassion, forgiveness, and things like that.
29726 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
29727 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow
29730 When we compare two ancient spiritual traditions like Buddhism and
29731 Christianity, what we see is a striking similarity between the narratives of
29732 the founding masters: in the case of Christianity, Jesus Christ, and in the
29733 case of Buddhism, the Buddha. I see a very important parallel: in the very
29734 lives of the [founders] the essence of their teachings is demonstrated. For
29735 example... the essence of the Buddha's teaching is embodied in the Four Noble
29736 Truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the
29737 truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path leading to this
29738 cessation. These Four Noble Truths are very explicitly and clearly
29739 exemplified in the life of... the Buddha himself. I feel [it] is the same
29740 with the life of Christ. If you look at the life of Jesus, you will see all
29741 the essential practices and teachings of Christianity exemplified. And in the
29742 lives of both Jesus Christ and the Buddha, it is only through hardship,
29743 dedication and commitment, and by standing firm on one's principles that one
29744 can grow spiritually and attain liberation. That seems to be a central and
29746 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Pocket Dalai Lama", compiled and edited
29749 With the achievement of quiescence, the attention is drawn inwards and is
29750 maintained continuously, single-pointedly upon its object. Tsongkhapa
29751 emphasizes that genuine quiescence is necessarily preceded by an experience of
29752 an extraordinary degree of mental and physical pliancy, which entails an
29753 unprecedented sense of mental and physical fitness and buoyancy.
29754 In the state of meditative equipoise, only the aspects of awareness,
29755 clarity, and joy of the mind appear, and all one's other sense faculties
29756 remain dormant. Thus, while one's consciousness seems as if it has become
29757 indivisible with space, one lacks any sensation of having a body; and when
29758 rising from that state, it seems as if one's body is suddenly coming into
29759 being. When genuine quiescence is achieved, one's attention can effortlessly
29760 be maintained for hours, even days, on end, with no interference by either
29761 laxity or excitation.
29762 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach
29763 to Refining Attention", published by Snow Lion Publications
29765 In Mahayana Buddhism, when one takes the bodhisattva vow, one pledges to
29766 work tirelessly in this life and all future lives to awaken oneself and purify
29767 oneself in order to help all other beings attain freedom from suffering
29768 through spiritual enlightenment. One vows to help beings whenever possible,
29769 and a profound way of doing this is to give a being the gift of life through
29770 an act of kindness. This can take the form of helping an animal in danger
29771 cross the road to safety before being struck by a vehicle or freeing an animal
29772 that is in captivity before it is killed by buying it from the captor and
29773 letting it roam free. If one is in a position to help save another's life--
29774 whether a human or an animal--one must practice fearless kindness to help the
29775 other being in danger.
29776 In Tibetan Buddhism, it is believed that due to the countless incarnations
29777 all beings have undergone throughout time, at one point or another any given
29778 living creature has been one's mother in a past life. Therefore, it is viewed
29779 as an obligation to repay the kindness of those who are referred to as "mother
29780 sentient beings." If your own mother in this life were in danger, you would
29781 certainly do whatever you could to save her life. Similarly, dedicated
29782 holders of the bodhisattva vow feel this kind of urgency to save the lives of
29783 all "mother sentient beings."
29784 -- Chatral Rinpoche, "Compassionate Action", edited, introduced and
29785 annotated by Zach Larson, published by Snow Lion Publications
29787 In the frenzy of modern life we lose sight of the real value of humanity.
29788 People become the sum total of what they produce. Human beings act like
29789 machines whose function is to make money. This is absolutely wrong. The
29790 purpose of making money is the happiness of humankind, not the other way
29791 around. Humans are not for money, money is for humans. We need enough to
29792 live, so money is necessary, but we also need to realize that if there is too
29793 much attachment to wealth, it does not help at all. As the saints of India
29794 and Tibet tell us, the wealthier one becomes, the more suffering one endures.
29795 ...Eating, working, and making money are meaningless in themselves.
29796 However, even a small act of compassion grants meaning and purpose to our
29798 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life",
29799 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
29801 Unlike the Lesser Vehicle tenet systems, which teach only a selflessness of
29802 persons, the Great Vehicle tenet systems teach that the most profound reality,
29803 the most subtle and important type of selflessness, is a selflessness, or
29804 emptiness, that is a quality of all phenomena. They hold that the bodhisattva
29805 trains in altruistically motivated meditation on the emptiness of all
29806 phenomena, thus preparing for the omniscience of buddhahood. Some Great
29807 Vehicle systems maintain that Lesser Vehicle practitioners do not realize the
29808 profound emptiness of phenomena at all and are therefore unable to overcome
29809 the obstructions to omniscience. However, the highest system, the Middle Way
29810 Consequence system, holds that persons on Lesser Vehicle paths do realize
29811 emptiness, but are unable to achieve omniscience on their paths because their
29812 wisdom is not empowered by association with altruism and altruistically
29813 motivated actions of giving, ethics, patience, etc.
29814 -- Guy Newland, "Appearance and Reality: The Two Truths in the Four
29815 Buddhist Tenet Systems", published by Snow Lion Publications
29817 Selflessness in Context: Ultimate Bodhichitta
29818 Let us return for a moment to the beginning of [the Heart] Sutra where the
29819 Buddha enters into the meditative absorption called "appearance of the
29820 profound" and Avalokiteshvara beholds the practice of the profound perfection
29821 of wisdom. Generally speaking, the expression "appearance of the profound"
29822 refers to the bodhisattva deeds, which are encompassed in the practice of the
29823 six perfections. Here, however, the expression refers particularly to the
29824 perfection of wisdom, known in Sanskrit as prajnaparamita. What the text
29825 means by "perfection of wisdom" is a direct, unmediated realization of
29826 emptiness that is also called "ultimate bodhichitta." This is not the direct
29827 realization of emptiness alone; rather it is this direct realization in union
29828 with bodhichitta--the aspiration to become a buddha in order to free all
29829 beings. This union of wisdom and method constitutes the first bhumi, or level
29830 of bodhisattva attainment.
29831 The importance of this altruistic aspiration cannot be overstated.
29832 Bodhichitta is not only important as a motivating factor at the beginning of
29833 practice, it is also important as a complementary and a reinforcing factor
29834 during every stage of the path. The bodhichitta aspiration is twofold,
29835 comprised both of the wish to help others and of the wish to become
29836 enlightened so that one's assistance will be supremely effective.
29837 --from Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's Heart of Wisdom
29838 Teachings by H.H. the Dalai Lama, translated & edited by Thupten Jinpa
29840 From "The Prayer Requested by Namke Nyingbo" by Padmasambhava
29842 All these things of the outer environment and the beings therein
29843 That come into sight as the objects of your eyes like this,
29844 They may appear, but leave them in the sphere free from clinging to a self.
29845 Since they are pure of perceiver and perceived, they are the luminous-empty
29847 I pray to the guru in whom attachment is self-liberated,
29848 I pray to Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
29850 All these sounds, taken as pleasant or unpleasant,
29851 That resound as the objects of your ears like this,
29852 Leave them in the sphere of inconceivable, empty resonance.
29853 Empty resonance, unborn and unceasing, is the Victor's speech.
29854 I pray to the words of the Victor that resound and yet are empty,
29855 I pray to Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
29857 However these thoughts of afflictions' five poisons,
29858 Which stir as objects in your mind like this, may appear,
29859 Do not mess around with them through a mind that rushes ahead into the future
29860 or lingers in the past.
29861 Through leaving their movement in its own place, they uncoil as the
29863 I pray to the guru whose awareness is self-liberated,
29864 I pray to Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
29866 Grant your blessings that the mind stream of someone like me is liberated
29867 Through the compassion of the Tathagatas of the three times,
29868 So that objects, appearing as if perceived outside, become pure,
29869 That my very mind, perceiving as if inside, becomes liberated,
29870 And that, in between, luminosity will recognize its own face.
29872 -- "Straight from the Heart: Buddhist Pith Instructions", translated and
29873 introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, published by Snow Lion Publications
29875 Some people feel that although it may be right to curb feelings of intense
29876 hatred which can cause us to be violent and even to kill, we are in danger of
29877 losing our independence when we restrain our emotions and discipline the mind.
29878 Actually, the opposite is true. Like their counterparts of love and
29879 compassion, anger and the afflictive emotions can never be used up. They
29880 have, rather, a propensity to increase, like a river flooding in summer when
29881 the snow melts, so that far from being free, our minds are enslaved and
29882 rendered helpless by them. When we indulge our negative thoughts and
29883 feelings, inevitably we become accustomed to them. As a result, gradually we
29884 become more prone to them and more controlled by them. And we become
29885 habituated to exploding in the face of displeasing circumstances.
29886 Inner peace, which is the principal characteristic of happiness, and anger
29887 cannot coexist without undermining one another. Indeed, negative thoughts and
29888 emotions undermine the very causes of peace and happiness. In fact, when we
29889 think properly, it is totally illogical to seek happiness if we do nothing to
29890 restrain angry, spiteful, and malicious thoughts and emotions. Consider that
29891 when we become angry, we often use harsh words. Harsh words can destroy
29892 friendship. Since happiness arises in the context of our relationships with
29893 others, if we destroy friendships, we undermine one of the very conditions of
29895 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Ethics for the New Millennium", edited by
29896 Alexander Norman, translated by Dr. Thupten Jinpa
29900 Psychologists talk about people who are co-dependent because they don't
29901 have a sense of self. What psychologists mean when they say a person has no
29902 sense of self is very different from what the Buddha meant by no-self or
29903 selflessness. People with psychological problems actually have a very strong
29904 sense of self in the Buddhist sense, although they may not in the
29905 psychological sense of the word. Psychologically, they don't see themselves
29906 as efficacious individuals in the world, but they still have a very strong
29907 sense of "I": "I am worthless." When somebody criticizes them, they don't
29908 like it. They get into co-dependent relationships to protect or to please
29909 this "I." When they fall into self-pity, their sense of an inherently
29910 existent "I" is very strong. Thus they still have self-grasping even though
29911 they lack a psychologically healthy sense of self.
29912 Buddhism recognizes two kinds of sense of self. There's one sense of self
29913 that is healthy and necessary to be efficacious on the path. The object of
29914 this sense of self is the conventionally existent "I." The other sense of
29915 self grasps at an inherently existent self that never has and never will
29916 exist. Within Buddhism, when we talk about realizing emptiness, we're
29917 negating the false self, this self that appears inherently existent to us.
29918 -- Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga Method of
29919 Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion
29922 Question: If a person views the self and other phenomena as being empty of
29923 any inherent existence, is it then, in that state, possible for them to take
29924 any animate or inanimate phenomenon as their object, and through the power of
29925 imputation or words, enable that object to actually take on a manifesting role
29926 with the qualities which we view objects to have?
29928 His Holiness: This is an instance of not properly understanding the
29929 meaning of "lack of inherent existence." If we think that "emptiness" means
29930 things cannot function, then, with an improper understanding of the view of
29931 emptiness, one will have fallen into nihilism. So, because one has failed to
29932 reconcile emptiness and the fact that things work, this view is incorrect.
29933 That is why it is said that the meaning of emptiness is to be understood in
29934 terms of dependent arising.
29935 Now, since the meaning of emptiness is to be explained in terms of
29936 dependent arising, we can only explain something as arising dependently if
29937 there is a basis, that is, some thing that is dependent. Hence, such a basis
29938 must exist. We see then that when we speak of dependent arising, we are
29939 indicating that things work. Dependent arising proves that things have no
29940 inherent existence, through the fact that things work in dependence on each
29941 other. The fact that things work and the fact that they do so in dependence,
29942 one on the other, eliminates the possibility of their being independent. This
29943 in turn precludes the possibility of inherent existence, since, to inherently
29944 exist means to be independent. Hence, the understanding of emptiness, of the
29945 the emptiness of a kind of inherent existence that is independent, boils down
29946 to understanding dependent arising.
29947 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
29948 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
29950 In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the most profound and commonly
29951 practiced teachings are those of the Vajrayana. Within this powerful system
29952 of skillful means, the supreme view and most potent methods are found in the
29953 teachings and practices of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. These instructions
29954 are regarded as the pinnacle of the teachings and as the most direct path to
29955 realizing the nature of mind and the reality of the world.
29956 The instructions of the Dzogchen lineage are used to directly point out
29957 the nature of mind and bring the experience of enlightenment into our ordinary
29958 life. These teachings are known as "pith instructions," the pure,
29959 quintessential knowledge that cuts through all confusion and gets straight to
29960 the point. There is a saying, "Don't beat around the bush," meaning, "Get to
29961 the point." That is Dzogchen.
29962 In many ways, these teachings go beyond scripture and the formality of
29963 spiritual techniques. These two do have their place, since it is important to
29964 study scripture and meditate in a step-by-step manner. Yet, at some point we
29965 also must connect directly with the nature of mind. We have to strike the
29966 crucial point, the enlightened state, and leap directly into experiencing and
29967 realizing the true nature of our mind.
29968 -- The Third Dzogchen Rinpoche, "Great Perfection: Outer and Inner
29969 Preliminaries", trans. by Cortland Dahl, intro. by Dzogchen Ponlop,
29970 published by Snow Lion Publications
29972 Dzogchen teaches that practice conducted with contriving, rough, fleeting
29973 minds cannot bring enlightenment. Only practice with the deep awareness of
29974 non-contriving rigpa--pure awareness--can bring us to the state of a Buddha.
29975 We can understand this in the same way as we do the statement that practice of
29976 the yoga class of tantras and below cannot bring us enlightenment by itself.
29977 The ultimate, deepest reason why it cannot is that the pathways of practice of
29978 these levels of teaching cannot by themselves make manifest the deep awareness
29979 of subtlest clear light mind. Without the manifestation of the deep awareness
29980 of clear light mind, we do not have the perpetrating causes for an
29981 enlightening body and enlightening mind of a Buddha--causes that are in the
29982 same uncommon category of phenomena as a Buddha's body and mind. Therefore,
29983 no matter how much we practice with pathway minds of yoga tantra and below, we
29984 are never able to attain to enlightenment on their basis alone.
29985 ...when we make clear light mind of deep awareness prominent or enhanced
29986 through techniques presented in the anuttarayoga tantra texts, and then
29987 transform it into the nature of being a pathway mind, only then do we have
29988 what can actualize an enlightening body and enlightening mind of a Buddha.
29989 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
29990 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
29992 Whenever you consider there is bliss, and the objective conditions for
29993 bliss occur, if you fall under the control of that by becoming arrogant or
29994 conceited, then that will fester as an obstruction to the spiritual path.
29995 Rather than thinking about what has caused this happiness, which most probably
29996 is the accumulation of merit or the removal of obscurations, as soon as the
29997 bliss occurs, you think, "That's my nature." Based on that, you become
29998 arrogant or lazy, thinking, "Well, I've accomplished it." This is the
29999 greatest obstacle to the spiritual path. This is what creates the realms
30000 of deva-gods. Oftentimes it is said that people can handle only a little bit
30001 of felicity, but they can handle a lot of adversity. This is because
30002 happiness on the spiritual path is the most difficult thing to handle. Once
30003 it arises, that's where the path stops.
30004 This does not mean that it is necessary to give it all up. Giving up
30005 happiness is not the practice. The main point is not to become mesmerized by
30006 happiness as the end result. You realize that, "Ah, now, the good quality of
30007 this is that I am fortunate, and this is another result of the great fortune
30008 of the path and the result of the accumulation of merit and wholesome deeds.
30009 Even more than ever, I will carry on with the work at hand to achieve
30010 liberation from cyclic existence." So with more diligence and more courage,
30011 you continue listening to teachings, contemplating, meditating, and
30012 appreciating this precious human rebirth.
30013 -- Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche, "Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga",
30014 translated by Sangye Khandro and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow
30017 As to what might be the mechanism through which karma plays a causal role
30018 in the evolution of sentience, I find helpful some of the explanations given
30019 in the Vajrayana traditions, often referred to by modern writers as esoteric
30020 Buddhism. According to the Guhyasamaja tantra, a principal tradition within
30021 Vajrayana Buddhism, at the most fundamental level, no absolute division can be
30022 made between mind and matter. Matter in its subtlest form is prana, a vital
30023 energy which is inseparable from consciousness. These two are different
30024 aspects of an indivisible reality. Prana is the aspect of mobility, dynamism,
30025 and cohesion, while consciousness is the aspect of cognition and the capacity
30026 for reflective thinking. So according to the Guhyasamaja tantra, when a world
30027 system comes into being, we are witnessing the play of this energy and
30028 consciousness reality.
30029 ...Despite the success of the Darwinian narrative, I do not believe that
30030 all the elements of the story are in place. To begin with, although Darwin's
30031 theory gives a coherent account of the development of life on this planet and
30032 the various principles underlying it, such as natural selection, I am not
30033 persuaded that it answers the fundamental question of the origin of life.
30034 Darwin himself, I gather, did not see this as an issue. Furthermore, there
30035 appears to be a certain circularity in the notion of "survival of the
30036 fittest." The theory of natural selection maintains that, of the random
30037 mutations that occur in the genes of a given species, those that promote the
30038 greatest chance of survival are most likely to succeed. However, the only
30039 way this hypothesis can be verified is to observe the characteristics of
30040 those mutations that have survived. So in a sense, we are stating simply
30041 this: "Because these genetic mutations have survived, they are the ones that
30042 had the greatest chance of survival."
30043 From the Buddhist perspective, the idea of these mutations being purely
30044 random events is deeply unsatisfying for a theory that purports to explain the
30045 origin of life. ...One empirical problem in Darwinism's focus on the
30046 competitive survival of individuals, which is defined in terms of an
30047 organism's struggle for individual reproductive success, has consistently been
30048 how to explain altruism, whether in the sense of collaborative behavior, such
30049 as food sharing or conflict resolution among animals like chimpanzees or acts
30050 of self-sacrifice. There are many examples, not only among human beings but
30051 among other species as well, of individuals who put themselves in danger to
30053 ...From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be a metaphysical
30054 assumption--but it is no more so than the assumption that all of life is
30055 material and originated out of pure chance.
30056 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Universe in a Single Atom: Convergence of
30057 Science and Spirituality"
30059 Praising others should be part of our daily life and a component of our
30060 Dharma practice. Imagine what our life would be like if we trained our minds
30061 to dwell on others' talents and good attributes. We would feel much happier
30062 and so would they! We would get along better with others, and our families,
30063 work environments, and living situations would be much more harmonious. We
30064 plants the seeds from such positive actions on our mindstream, creating the
30065 cause for harmonious relationships and success in our spiritual and temporal
30067 An interesting experiment is to try to say something nice to or about
30068 someone every day for a month. Try it. It makes us much more aware of what
30069 we say and why. It encourages us to change our perspective so that we notice
30070 others' good qualities. Doing so also improves our relationships
30072 A few years ago, I gave this as a homework assignment at a Dharma class,
30073 encouraging people to try to praise even someone they didn't like very much.
30074 The next week I asked the students how they did. One man said that the first
30075 day he had to make something up in order to speak positively to a fellow
30076 colleague. But after that, the man was so much nicer to him that it was easy
30077 to see his good qualities and speak about them!
30078 -- Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion Publications
30080 Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. -- Unknown
30082 To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
30085 He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
30086 -- Benjamin Franklin
30088 If, after having performed a virtuous action and accumulated its potency,
30089 that potency remained without degenerating until its fruit issued forth in
30090 either this or a future life, it would not be so fragile. But that is not the
30091 case. Rather, the generation of a strong nonvirtuous state of mind, such as
30092 anger, overpowers the capacity of a virtuously established potency so that it
30093 cannot issue forth, much like scorching a seed. Conversely, the generation of
30094 a strong virtuous attitude overpowers potencies established by nonvirtues,
30095 making them unable to issue their effects. Thus it is necessary not only to
30096 achieve many powerful constructive causes but also to avoid contrary forces
30097 that would cause those beneficial causes to degenerate.
30098 The good actions required for accumulating these causes, or potencies,
30099 arise from a tamed mind, whereas bad actions arise from an untamed mind.
30100 Common beings like us have been accustomed to an untamed mind since
30101 beginningless time. Given this predisposition, we can conclude that actions
30102 performed with an untamed mind are more powerful for us and actions performed
30103 with a tamed mind are weaker. It is important to appreciate that this
30104 excellent life support of a human body that we now possess is a wholesome
30105 result of many powerful good actions from a tamed mind in the past. It was
30106 very difficult to gain, and, since it is very rare, you must take care to use
30107 it well, making sure that it is not wasted.
30108 ...If this human endowment, so difficult to attain, were stable and
30109 permanent--not prone to deterioration--there would be time later to make use
30110 of it. However, this life-support system is fragile and easily disintegrates
30111 from many external and internal causes. Aryadeva's "Four Hundred Stanzas on
30112 the Yogic Deeds of Bodhisattvas" says that once the body depends on the four
30113 elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, which themselves oppose each other,
30114 physical happiness is just an occasional balance of these elements, not an
30116 ...So this human body is a precious endowment, potent and yet fragile.
30117 Simply by virtue of being alive, you are at a very important juncture, and
30118 carry a great responsibility. Powerful good can be achieved for yourself and
30119 others, so becoming distracted by the minor affairs of this lifetime would be
30120 a tremendous waste. You should make wishes to use this lifetime in this body
30121 effectively and make petitions to your guru, the three refuges, and other
30122 sources of help. In doing so, urge yourself on from the inside and seek
30123 assistance from the outside.....
30124 In sum, since this human body, which supports your life, is beneficial,
30125 was difficult to gain, and easily disintegrates, you should use it for your
30126 benefit and that of others. Benefits come from a tamed mind: When your mind
30127 is peaceful, relaxed, and happy, external pleasures such as good food,
30128 clothing, and conversation make things even better, but their absence does not
30129 overpower you. If your mind is not peaceful and tamed, no matter how
30130 marvelous the external circumstances are, you will be burdened by frights,
30131 hopes, and fears. With a tamed mind, you will enjoy wealth or poverty, health
30132 or sickness, you can even die happily. With a tamed mind, having many friends
30133 is wonderful, but if you have no friends, it is all right, too. The root of
30134 your own happiness and welfare rests with a peaceful and tamed mind.
30135 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living Well
30136 and Dying Consciously", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
30138 One of the reasons there is a need to adopt a strong countermeasure
30139 against someone who harms you is that, if you let it pass, there is a danger
30140 of that person becoming habituated to extremely negative actions, which in the
30141 long run will cause that person's own downfall and is very destructive for the
30142 individual himself or herself. Therefore a strong countermeasure, taken out
30143 of compassion or a sense of concern for the other, is necessary. When you are
30144 motivated by that realization, then there is a sense of concern as part of
30145 your motive for taking that strong measure.
30146 ...One of the reasons why there is some ground to feel compassionate
30147 toward a perpetrator of crime or an aggressor is that the aggressor, because
30148 he or she is perpetrating a crime, is at the causal stage, accumulating the
30149 causes and conditions that later lead to undesirable consequences. So, from
30150 that point of view, there is enough ground to feel compassionate toward the
30152 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
30153 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published
30154 by Snow Lion Publications
30156 What do you think would be the chief obstacle in recognizing that each
30157 individual person has been kind to you? In my case, I was afraid of having to
30158 return the kindness, because then I'd be under the control of these people. I
30159 didn't want to do what my parents wanted me to do, although they gave me a lot
30160 of slack--I left college after my first year, went to the woods of Vermont,
30161 went to Tahiti, all on my own with whatever cash I earned. I didn't fit into
30162 the upper-middle-class community where we lived. I didn't want their control;
30163 the lifestyle they were pushing on me was completely unappealing. Therefore,
30164 I refused to recognize their kindness.
30165 However, assuming a debt with respect to every sentient being differs
30166 greatly from having a debt to a few. In this meditation, you start with
30167 friends, then neutral persons, and then enemies and contemplate: "I will
30168 return the debt of kindness that I have with this person through helping her
30169 or him achieve happiness." It is easy to determine that the response to all
30170 sentient beings' kindness cannot be to do everything they want, since, with so
30171 many people, what they want from you would be at cross-purposes. You cannot
30172 even do everything your mother of this lifetime wants you to do, though you
30173 know her advice is, for the most part, motivated by kindness....
30174 Those who help us--our parents, for instance--often attain power over us
30175 for that very reason: "Do as I say because I have helped you." Thus, for some,
30176 it becomes almost a mental habit to refuse to recognize those who have helped
30177 us, because they otherwise would attain some power over us. Still, we know we
30178 should return their many kindnesses. That is one reason why the practice of
30179 reflecting, "This person has helped me in many intimate ways and thus I must
30180 do something in return," gets to be uncomfortable, but when it is extended to
30181 more and more beings, we have to find a way of intending to return their
30182 kindness without coming under their misguided influence.
30183 ...one cannot do everything all those sentient beings want. There are so
30184 many of them, and they want such contradictory things. Besides, to fulfill
30185 what they temporarily want may not be the best way to help them. The greatest
30186 of all ways to return their kindness is to help them become free from all
30187 suffering and to assist in the process of becoming liberated from cyclic
30188 existence and attaining the bliss of Buddhahood. It is important to realize
30189 here in the step of developing an intention to return others' kindness that
30190 acknowledging a debt does not mean that you must do what they say. Otherwise,
30191 you might hold back from the truth of their attentive care.
30192 --Jeffrey Hopkins, "A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting
30193 with Others", foreword by the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion
30196 ...Nagarjuna's Fundamental Treatise says, "That which arises dependently
30197 we explain as emptiness. This [emptiness] is dependent designation; this is
30198 the middle way." His Refutation of Objections says, "I bow down to the
30199 Buddha, the unequaled, supreme teacher, who taught that emptiness, dependent
30200 arising, and the middle way hold a single meaning."
30201 For Tsong-kha-pa, the compatibility of emptiness and dependent arising is
30202 the very heart of the Madhyamaka view and the key to the path. Dependent
30203 arising means that things come into being in dependence upon causes and
30204 conditions. Understanding dependent arising correctly refutes the idea that
30205 things exist in and of themselves--because they must depend on other things.
30206 In the same moment, it also refutes the nihilist extreme--because it shows
30207 that things do arise, they do come into existence, and they affect one
30208 another. Thus, Tsong-kha-pa advises that if you think that you may have found
30209 the profound view of emptiness, you should check to see if you have negated
30210 too much. Can this "emptiness" you have discovered be reconciled with the
30211 mere existence of things that arise interdependently? If not, then you are
30212 certainly mistaken.
30213 ...The point is that one cannot become a buddha without both compassionate
30214 action and nondual wisdom--and one cannot have these two types of path without
30215 both of the two truths, conventional and ultimate. If only emptiness existed
30216 and there were, in fact, no conventional truths, then there would be no living
30217 beings, no suffering to relieve; thus there would be no compassionate action;
30218 and thus there would be no buddhahood. Therefore, maintaining the
30219 compatibility of the two truths--the compatibility of emptiness and dependent
30220 arising--is crucial to the whole of the Dharma.
30221 -- Guy Newland, "Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa's
30222 Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path", published by Snow Lion
30225 Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
30226 -- William S. Burroughs
30228 ...let us discuss true sources of suffering. The fact that sufferings are
30229 not always produced but are produced in some places at some times and cease at
30230 some times and in some places indicates that they are caused. Logically, it
30231 can be said that sufferings are caused because of being produced occasionally.
30232 If sufferings were produced causelessly, either they would never exist or they
30233 would always exist.
30234 Since sufferings are caused, one needs to look into what their causes are.
30235 In the Buddhist systems, the causes are explained to be contaminated actions
30236 and afflictive emotions....
30237 For instance, if I had an angry feeling, this could serve as a motivating
30238 force that would lead to a harsh attitude, harsh speech, and harsh physical
30239 gestures. Since the anger that serves as the motivating factor is a
30240 defIlement--an afflictive emotion--the physical and verbal actions done
30241 through that motivating force are negative karmas, negative actions. Through
30242 them, the atmosphere immediately changes into one of tension. Right away, I
30243 might not feel the effects of those actions, perhaps even feeling that I had
30244 gained a victory over someone, even shouting, "I have won." However, later I
30245 will feel very sorry and shy, deep down experiencing a guilty conscience.
30246 Similarly, those around me would immediately lose their tranquility and peace.
30247 These are painful results of actions impelled by a bad motivation. This is
30248 the law of karma--motivation, action, result.
30249 Conversely, a good, open, sincere motivation such as compassion with a
30250 deep respect for others impels verbal and physical actions that immediately
30251 create a peaceful, harmonious, enjoyable atmosphere. Due to that, I feel
30252 happy and calm, enjoying that atmosphere, and others around me also enjoy the
30253 same. Therefore, bad motivation creates problems, suffering, and pain,
30254 whereas good motivation creates happiness and peacefulness--something good.
30255 This is the general explanation. On a deeper level, right at the time of
30256 an action, predisposing potencies are instilled in the consciousness. The
30257 performance of an action establishes a predisposing potency in the mind that,
30258 in the future, will serve as the causal condition for one's experiencing a
30259 good or bad effect.
30260 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
30261 Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
30262 published by Snow Lion Publications
30264 (Each day before breakfast the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, Thubten
30265 Chodron, gives a morning motivation for residents and guests. Below is a
30266 teaching given during March 2008.)
30270 Have you ever had this experience? You walk outside, and all of a sudden
30271 the silence strikes you--it's in such sharp contrast to the chatter that's
30272 going on in the mind.
30273 We live in a very quiet place. We walk outside and it's pretty quiet--a
30274 few birds chirping, sun shining. Then suddenly the chatter in the mind stops
30275 because we see that it's just chatter. It's in such stark contrast to the
30276 silence that's outside.
30277 We want to learn to notice that chatter before we even have to walk
30278 outside. And we want to be able to find that quiet place inside ourselves and
30279 keep it with us, so that even when we're in a place where there is a lot of
30280 noise, the mind can be quiet.
30281 All that mental chatter is basically negative conceptualization. If we
30282 were thinking about emptiness or developing compassion with that kind of
30283 mental activity, fine! Continue that outside, inside, everywhere. But most
30284 of the time what's going on is, "I like this. I don't like this. I want
30285 this. I don't want that. Why does this person do this? Why don't they do
30286 that?" That kind of mental activity makes the mind quite stressful as well
30287 as accumulates negative karma and wastes a great deal of time.
30288 As soon as we can catch it and be aware of what's going on in our mind,
30289 and come back to that silent space inside, the more peaceful we'll be. Our
30290 lives will be more productive in terms of having the Dharma grow in our
30291 hearts, and we'll be more focused in whatever daily activities we're doing.
30292 We won't be quite so distracted.
30293 -- Thubten Chodron, author of numerous books, including Buddhism for
30294 Beginners; Taming the Mind; Open Heart, Clear Mind; and Working
30297 ...if people have compassion, naturally that's something they can count
30298 on; even if they have economic problems and their fortune declines, they still
30299 have something to share with fellow human beings. World economies are always
30300 so tenuous and we are subject to so many losses in life, but a compassionate
30301 attitude is something that we can always carry with us.
30302 ...Of course, in attempting to explain to someone the importance of
30303 compassion, in some cases, you might be dealing with a very hardened,
30304 individualistic, and selfish person, someone concerned only with her or his
30305 own interests. And it is even possible that there are people who may not have
30306 the capacity to empathize with even someone whom they love or who may be close
30307 to them. But even to such people, it is still possible to present the
30308 importance of compassion and love on the grounds that it's the best way to
30309 fulfill their self-interests. They wish to have good health, live a longer
30310 life, and have peace of mind, happiness, and joy. And if these are things
30311 that they desire, I've heard that there is scientific evidence that these
30312 things can be enhanced by feelings of love and compassion.
30313 ...educating someone about these facts and scientific studies could
30314 certainly encourage some people to cultivate a more compassionate state of
30315 mind. But I think that, even aside from scientific studies, there are other
30316 arguments that people could understand and appreciate from their own practical
30317 or direct everyday experience. For example, you could point out that lack of
30318 compassion leads to a certain ruthlessness. There are many examples
30319 indicating that at some level deep down, ruthless people generally suffer from
30320 a kind of unhappiness and discontent, people like Stalin and Hitler. Such
30321 people suffer from a kind of nagging sense of insecurity and fear. Even when
30322 they are sleeping I think that sense of fear remains... these people lack
30323 something that you can find in a more compassionate person--a sense of
30324 freedom, a sense of abandonment, so when you sleep you can relax and let go.
30325 Ruthless people never have that experience. Something is always gripping
30326 them; there is some kind of hold on them, and they aren't able to experience
30327 that feeling of letting go, that sense of freedom.
30328 ...There are always different degrees of benefit that one might receive
30329 from practicing various methods and techniques, depending on one's particular
30330 circumstances.... First, through learning, thoroughly understanding the value
30331 of compassion--this gives you a feeling of conviction and determination.
30332 Then, employing methods to enhance empathy, such as using your imagination,
30333 your creativity, to visualize yourself in another's situation. And certain
30334 exercises or practices that you can undertake, such as Tong-Len, serve to
30335 strengthen your compassion. But I think it's important to remember that these
30336 techniques... were developed to help as many as possible, at least some
30337 portion of the human population. But it was never expected that these
30338 techniques could help 100 percent of people, the entire human population.
30339 ...the main point really, if we are talking about various methods to
30340 develop compassion, the important thing is that people make a sincere effort
30341 to develop their capacity for compassion. If they make their best efforts to
30342 be kinder, to cultivate compassion and make the world a better place, then at
30343 the end of the day they can say, "At least I've done my best!"
30344 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
30345 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
30347 In ascertaining luminous clarity at the time of the path, the general
30348 technique is to rest evenly in the very essence of luminous clarity. Telopa
30351 Rest relaxed within the uncontrived native state;
30352 Bonds are released and freedom is sure.
30354 This and other such instructions are expressed unanimously by the mighty
30355 adepts. Accordingly, with the body in the seven-point posture of meditative
30356 stability, the mind rests without support, relaxed and uncontrived. This will
30357 create the unerring yogic direct perception of emptiness. This is the
30358 ultimate esoteric instruction of the completion phase found in the profound
30359 tantras. The reason is that once the vital points of the vajra body, which is
30360 the support, are bound, the mind, eyes, and energy currents remain in a state
30361 of nonthought. Because of the special interconnection between body and mind,
30362 the movement in the right and left channels is stopped and immobilized within
30363 the central channel, causing the direct experience of mahamudra, emptiness
30365 Therefore the luminous mind, which is the supported, is realized as empty
30366 appearance arising as the mahamudra of forms of emptiness. This, again,
30367 depends on the dissolution of the energy currents of the right and left
30368 channels in the central channel, the supreme support. There is no more
30369 profound method for affecting this dissolution than resting the mind once it
30370 is uncontrived and relaxed. Therefore, in all the esoteric instructions of
30371 highest tantra, this is called "the esoteric instruction of withdrawal" in the
30373 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, "The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part
30374 Four: Esoteric Instructions, A Detailed Presentation of the Process of
30375 Meditation in Vajrayana", trans. and annot. by Sarah Harding, foreword
30376 by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
30378 Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
30381 Dignity does not consist in a silk dress. -- A saying from the Orient
30383 To solve the problems humanity is facing, we need to organize meetings of
30384 scholars, educators, social workers, neuroscientists, physicians, and experts
30385 from all fields to discuss the positive and negative sides of what we have
30386 done thus far, as well as what needs to be introduced and what needs to be
30387 changed in our educational system. Proper environment plays a crucial role in
30388 the healthy growth of a child. All problems, including terrorism, can be
30389 overcome through education, particularly by introducing concern for all others
30390 at the preschool level.
30391 Living in society, we must share the suffering of our fellow citizens and
30392 practice compassion and tolerance not only toward our loved ones but also
30393 toward our enemies. This is the test of our moral strength. We must set an
30394 example by our own practice. We must live by the same high standards of
30395 integrity we seek to convey to others. The ultimate purpose is to serve and
30397 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to See Yourself As You Really Are",
30398 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
30400 "When Tibet was still free, we cultivated our natural isolation,
30401 mistakenly thinking that we could prolong our peace and security that way.
30402 Consequently, we paid little attention to the changes taking place in the
30403 world outside. Later, we learned the hard way that in the international
30404 arena, as well as at home, freedom is something to be shared and enjoyed in
30405 the company of others, not kept to yourself." Budapest, 1994
30406 "I believe that Tibet will be free only when its people become strong, and
30407 hatred is not strength. It is a weakness. The Lord Buddha was not being
30408 religious, in the popular sense of the term, when he said that hatred does not
30409 cease by hatred. Rather, he was being practical. Any achievement attained
30410 through hatred [can only invite] trouble sooner or later." Statement, 10 March
30412 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Pocket Dalai Lama" compiled and edited by
30415 Persons from orally oriented cultures, writes Ong, tend to project their
30416 sensibilities, to see them expressed in the world around them. More widely
30417 literate cultures create persons who tend to withdraw for insight into their
30418 own personal psyches. Orally oriented peoples may thus be more inclined than
30419 persons in print-dominated cultures to set their feelings or experiences in
30420 the space around them, including the invisible spirits presumed to occupy that
30421 space, and less likely to project these feelings and experiences onto
30422 individual persons. In Tibet lineages or sects are the most likely targets of
30423 negative projections. Western print-oriented persons are more likely to
30424 project their feelings onto other individuals, especially people in
30425 significant relationships with them. Unlike Tibet, or the premodern West, the
30426 contemporary West tends to identify the mind as the exclusive locus of ideas,
30427 feelings, and values. With this localization, the mind becomes "psychic" in a
30428 new sense, distinct from bodily soma and from the larger world.
30429 This very different configuration of personhood affects the way Westerners
30430 are likely to understand the Great Bliss Queen practice. For example, there
30431 is a tendency among Westerners for "visualization" to be a more disembodied
30432 practice than it is for Tibetans. The point in imagining oneself as the Great
30433 Bliss Queen is not just to replace one visual image of oneself with another,
30434 as if observing a changing scene in a movie theater, but to experience a
30435 physical as well as mental shift from deep inside the body.
30436 -- Anne Carolyn Klein, "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists,
30437 and the Art of the Self", published by Snow Lion Publications
30439 ...when you recognize how kind someone has been to you, you are using an
30440 ordinary worldly attitude to help keep you from responses of hatred. For
30441 instance, if someone gave me a grant with a blank check to form a team of
30442 translators of Tibetan thought, I would be more than extremely pleased. Now
30443 if the person who gave me the money came by someday and gave me a hard time, I
30444 would feel a measure of restraint due to reflecting on the person's kindness.
30445 I would seek other means to work things out with the person. When you reflect
30446 how kind every person has been, there is that restraint to the point where,
30447 believe it or not, trained Buddhists will look at a fly or an ant walking
30448 across the table and think, "This is someone who bore me in her womb in a
30449 former lifetime, who took care of me."
30450 If you watch how mothers take precautions for a child in the womb, it is
30451 clear that they do a great deal to help it. They eat nourishing foods and
30452 avoid harmful substances like coffee, alcohol, nicotine, and drugs. If you
30453 reflect on how such a mother takes care of the child in the womb and extend
30454 this reflection to all sentient beings, I think that because your field of
30455 awareness is no longer just a few sentient beings but is gradually expanding
30456 to more and more, you can reflect on the mother's kindness without doing it
30457 merely because you were helped. The staggering debt deflates your sense of
30458 exaggerated importance. The boil is pricked.
30459 -- Jeffrey Hopkins, "A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting
30460 with Others", foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by
30461 Snow Lion Publications
30463 He that can have patience can have what he will. -- Benjamin Franklin
30465 One generation plants the trees, and another gets the shade.
30468 Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. -- Diogenes the Cynic
30470 Fashion is something that goes in one year and out the other. -- Unknown
30472 I'm a born-again atheist. -- Gore Vidal
30474 Buddha's teachings on non-manifest phenomena, such as the extremely subtle
30475 presentations of actions and their effect--which are very hidden phenomena--
30476 cannot be proved with reasoning. How then can they be verified?
30477 There is no need to verify manifest phenomena through reasoning because
30478 they appear directly to the senses. The slightly hidden, however, can be
30479 proved with reasoning that generates inferential understanding, and since
30480 emptiness is very profound but only slightly hidden, it is accessible to
30482 ...very hidden phenomena cannot be proved with reasoning, and it seems
30483 that Buddha can say whatever he likes. However, through our own experience we
30484 can confirm Buddha's teachings on more important topics such as emptiness, the
30485 altruistic mind of enlightenment, love, and compassion, for no matter who
30486 analyses--Buddhist or non-Buddhist--or how much one analyses, if the person is
30487 not biased through desire or hatred, these teachings can bear analysis and
30488 serve as powerful sources of thought. When you see that Buddha does not err
30489 with regard to these more important phenomena, you can accept his other
30491 ...The process of cyclic existence and the eradication of it can be proved
30492 by the reasoning that establishes the misconception of inherent existence as
30493 its root cause and establishes the wisdom cognising emptiness as its antidote.
30494 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in
30495 Tibet", published by Snow Lion Publications
30497 Meditation on [or cultivation of] the six deities is like faith or love
30498 meditation in that the mind is being generated into the entity of the object
30499 meditated. When faith or love are meditated, those two are not the object
30500 observed but the entity into which the consciousness is being generated.
30501 Meditation on impermanence or emptiness, on the other hand, means to take
30502 these as the object and meditate on them. Thus, there are two types of
30503 meditation--of a subjective aspect and on an objective aspect. Meditation on
30504 the six deities is the former, for first one generates a wisdom consciousness
30505 knowing the sameness in suchness of oneself and the deity--the ultimate--and
30506 then causes it to appear as the sounds, letters, and finally the form of the
30508 --His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins,
30509 "Deity Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow
30512 Once we realize emptiness, all phenomena are included within this reality,
30513 which is not separate from the cause and effect of karma and which is free of
30514 mental constructs. On this ultimate level of realization, it is possible to
30515 state that there is no wholesome or unwholesome action. When we have realized
30516 the nature of all phenomena, negative actions naturally subside and positive
30517 ones are spontaneously accomplished. Until this time, however, we would be
30518 slipping into nihilism if we said that the phenomena of relative truth, such
30519 as positive and negative actions or karma, do not exist.
30520 Just knowing this authentic view, however, is not enough. For others to
30521 be able to experience it, we must also know the scriptures and reasonings so
30522 that we can teach. Without the support of this knowledge, it will be
30523 difficult for others to trust what we say, and so Milarepa speaks of scripture
30524 and reasoning as an adornment to realization.
30526 Dissolving thoughts into the dharmakaya--
30527 Is this not meditation naturally arising?
30528 Join it with experience
30529 To make it beautifully adorned.
30531 One way to understand meditation is to see it as a practice of working
30532 with the many thoughts that arise in our mind. With realization they arise as
30533 mere appearances of the dharmakaya, the natural arising of mind's essential
30534 nature. Being clear about this true nature of thought is called "attaining
30535 the level of natural arising." At this point, there is no difference in any
30536 thought that may arise, because we see the nature of each thought to be
30537 emptiness, arising as the dharmakaya. Meditation could be defined as
30538 realizing the dharmakaya of the Buddha.
30539 -- Michele Martin, "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art & Teachings of the
30540 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje", published by Snow Lion Publications
30542 Who is the supreme friend
30543 always helpful in times of need?
30544 Mindfulness of the spiritual instructions
30545 learned through study and contemplation.
30546 -- The Seventh Dalai Lama
30548 Ordinary friends desert us when we fall on hard times or become an
30549 inconvenience in their lives. Others simply disappear into their own
30550 destinies. Even our spiritual teachers eventually die and leave us behind.
30551 Our practice of the Dharma, however, that has been cultivated by means of
30552 study, contemplation and meditation, is the one sure anchor that keeps our
30553 ship stable when the seas become choppy. In fact, the more difficult the
30554 situation we encounter, the more helpful it is to us.
30555 When the Buddha had become very old and was preparing to pass away,
30556 several of his disciples were overcome with grief. They asked him, "What
30557 will we do after you are gone?" He replied, "Whenever you rely upon my
30558 teachings, at that time I am there with you."
30559 The Second Dalai Lama wrote, "When we know how to rely on the Dharma, we
30560 are able to be happy in every situation. Where could one find a more
30561 trustworthy and reliable friend?"
30562 -- Glenn H. Mullin, "Gems of Wisdom from the Seventh Dalai Lama",
30563 published by Snow Lion Publications
30565 I always believe that each individual human being has some kind of
30566 responsibility for humanity as a whole. Particularly, I always believe that
30567 as scientists, you have a special responsibility. Besides your own
30568 profession, you have a basic motivation to serve humanity, to try to produce
30569 better, happier human beings. Whether we understand consciousness or not, we
30570 must produce warm-hearted persons. That is important. I want to express
30571 that. Whenever I meet scientists, I always have to say this.
30572 Through my own profession, I try my best to contribute as much as I can.
30573 This proceeds without my being concerned whether another person agrees with my
30574 philosophy or not. Some people may be very much against my belief, my
30575 philosophy, but I feel alright. So long as I see that a human being suffers
30576 or has needs, I shall contribute as much as I can to contribute to their
30577 benefit. Scientists and medically qualified people can contribute especially.
30578 That's different; that's a particular context. A human being needs to be
30579 cared for according to your professional calling. You can contribute; that's
30580 your shared professional responsibility
30581 -- H. H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
30582 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara
30583 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by
30584 Snow Lion Publications
30586 ...while walking in a park the body may be in the park while the mind is
30587 off working in the office, or at home, or talking to a distant friend, or
30588 making a list of groceries. That means the mind has disconnected from the
30589 body. Instead, when looking at a flower, really look at it. Be fully
30590 present. With the help of the flower, bring the mind back to the park.
30591 Appreciation for sensory experience reconnects mind and body. When the
30592 experience of the flower is felt throughout the body, a healing occurs; this
30593 can be the same when seeing a tree, smelling smoke, feeling the cloth of your
30594 shirt, hearing a bird call, or tasting an apple. Train yourself to vividly
30595 experience sensory objects without judgment. Try completely to be the eye
30596 with form, the nose with smell, the ear with sound, and so on. Try to be
30597 complete in experience while remaining in just the bare awareness of the
30599 When this ability is developed, reactions will still occur. Upon seeing
30600 the flower, judgements about its beauty will arise, or a smell may be judged
30601 to be foul. Even so, with practice the connection to the pure sensory
30602 experience can be maintained rather than continuing to become lost in the
30603 mind's distraction. Being distracted by a cloud of concepts is a habit and it
30604 can be replaced with a new habit: using bodily sensual experience to bring us
30605 to presence, to connect us to the beauty of the world, to the vivid and
30606 nourishing experience of life that lies under our distractions. This is the
30607 underpinning of successful dream yoga.
30608 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep",
30609 edited by Mark Dahlby, published by Snow Lion Publications
30611 To succeed in practicing any form of tantra, it is necessary first to
30612 train in developing the altruistic intention to become enlightened. Dzong-
30613 ka-ba says that this needs to be done "in accordance with the quintessential
30614 instructions," these being found in his Great Exposition of the Stages of the
30615 Path to Enlightenment. Specifically, such an altruistic intention is
30616 generated by way of the seven cause and effect quintessential instructions or
30617 the equalizing and switching of self and other. To do those, it is necessary
30618 to identify what liberation is and to develop an awareness seeking liberation,
30619 for which it is necessary to reflect on the three types of suffering and
30620 develop an intention to turn away from over-emphasizing the appearances of
30621 this life and then to turn away from over-emphasizing the appearances of
30622 future lives, developing an intention to leave such cyclic existence entirely,
30623 whereupon it is possible to reflect on how others suffer and develop
30624 compassion. Done continuously over a long period of time, at best one should
30625 develop a fully qualified altruistic intention to become enlightened, and at
30626 least one should develop such an intention from the depths of the heart.
30627 With such altruism as your basic motivation it is possible to receive
30628 initiation and take the pledges that lay out a type of behavior conducive to
30630 ...nowadays some people look on the practice of religion as if it were
30631 something that causes them to lose their freedom. Opposite to this, rules
30632 [for controlling counter-productive ill-deeds and overcoming afflictive
30633 emotions] are for the sake of utilizing your freedom to develop the limitless
30634 qualities of Buddhahood, in the quest for which you should never be satisfied.
30635 Toward material things, which necessarily have a limit, it is best to be
30636 satisfied with what you have, but with regard to the limitless development of
30637 spiritual qualities, you should never be satisfied with a mere portion, but
30638 continually seek higher development. The rules themselves make your mind
30639 conducive to such progress, so there is no reason to be uptight about them.
30640 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra:
30641 Paths to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
30642 published by Snow Lion Publications
30644 The practice of Dzogchen may begin with doing fixation on an object, in
30645 order to calm one's thoughts. Then one relaxes the fixation, dissolving the
30646 dependence on the object, and one fixes one's gaze in open space. Then, when
30647 one succeeds in making the calm state stable, it is important to work with the
30648 movement of one's thoughts and one's energy, integrating this movement with
30649 the presence of contemplation. At this point one is ready to apply
30650 contemplation in one's daily life. The system of practice just described is
30651 characteristic of the Series of the Nature of the Mind, but that is not to say
30652 that in Dzogchen one must necessarily begin with fixation and meditation on a
30653 calm state. In the Series of Primordial Space, and the Series of Secret
30654 Instructions, for example, one enters directly into the practice of
30655 contemplation. Particularly in the former, there are very precise
30656 instructions on how to find the pure state of contemplation. In the latter,
30657 on the other hand, the explanations are mainly concerned with how one
30658 continues in contemplation in all circumstances.
30659 The practice of contemplation is concisely explained in the line that
30660 reads, "but vision nevertheless manifests: all is good." Even if the
30661 condition of "what is" cannot be grasped with the mind, the whole
30662 manifestation of the primordial state, including our karmic vision, does
30663 nevertheless exist. All the various aspects of forms, colours, and so on,
30664 continue to arise without interruption. When we find ourselves in
30665 contemplation, this doesn't mean that our impure vision just disappears
30666 and pure vision manifests instead. If we have a physical body, there is a
30667 karmic cause for that, so there would be no sense in trying to abandon or
30668 deny the situation we find ourselves in. We just need to be aware of it.
30669 If we have a vision of the material, physical level of existence, which is
30670 the cause of so very many problems, we need to understand that this vision
30671 is only the gross aspect of the colours, which are the essence of the elements.
30672 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State", edited by
30673 Adriano Clemente, translated by John Shane, published by Snow Lion Pub.
30675 Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
30678 A tantric yogi who has gained control of the subtle energies of the body
30679 and the subtle levels of consciousness will have control over the inner and
30680 outer elements and consequently can transform his or her ordinary samsaric
30681 form into a joyous rainbow body. But until we can do this, we have to accept
30682 the fact that our physical basis is a magnet attracting every kind of
30683 discomfort and pain.
30684 ...This samsaric body keeps us running all of our lives. We have to run
30685 to fulfill its endless needs, to keep it away from things that may harm it,
30686 and to protect it from anything unpleasant. We have to give it pleasure and
30687 comfort. We become ordained, and at first this is very satisfactory; but soon
30688 our body makes it so difficult for us that we think our practice would be less
30689 disturbed if we were to live as a layperson. So we give up and return to
30690 ordinary life; but then we end up with a family to support, leaving us with no
30691 time or energy for meditation. We have the pressing tasks of feeding,
30692 clothing, and sheltering our children, and of arranging their education and so
30693 forth. Our lives are spent alternating between work and worry, with
30694 occasional short periods of pleasure, and then we have to die; but even this
30695 we cannot do in peace, for, when we lie down to die, our last thoughts are
30696 worried ones concerning the family we are leaving behind. Such is the nature
30697 of worldly existence.
30698 ...To care for our old people--these ones who have given us our body, our
30699 life, and our culture--is a sacred duty of humanity. But most humans act more
30700 like animals than people, and often we see old people who have been abandoned
30701 by their families. Family units were very strong in Tibet, and old people
30702 were usually cared for directly by relatives. The national care for the old
30703 that we see in the West is something very good, a healthy sign, although
30704 perhaps here the spiritual and psychological basis is somewhat lacking.
30705 The suffering of old age is something we all must face, unless we die
30706 prematurely. There is nothing we can do about it. Gone will be that false
30707 sense of personal ability and strength that made us so proud when we were
30708 young. Instead, helpers or friends will bathe us, dress us, spoonfeed us, and
30709 have to take us to the toilet. Rather than live under the delusion of
30710 permanence, we should engage in spiritual training so that we can enter old
30711 age at least with the grace of wisdom.
30712 ...So we can see that this body indeed causes us much grief in this life
30713 and, sadly, in their quest to satisfy its many needs, most people just collect
30714 an endless stream of negative karmic instincts that will lead them to lower
30715 rebirths in the future. These are the sufferings of the human world.
30716 ...The important point here is to become aware of the third type of
30717 suffering, the subtle suffering that pervades all imperfect existence, the
30718 all-pervading misery concomitant with having a perishable, samsaric base....
30719 [All are] enmeshed in suffering because the nature of their body and mind is
30720 bound with compulsive cyclic processes. Until we develop the wisdom that is
30721 able to free the mind from these compelling forces, there is no doubt that we
30722 shall experience suffering throughout our lives, and that we shall continue to
30723 wander endlessly in the wheel of birth, life, death, and rebirth where the
30724 presence of misery can always be felt.
30725 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
30726 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
30728 Observing the Mind Itself
30730 The primary meditative technique of great perfection is remaining in the
30731 state of pure awareness. This is accomplished by calming the mind and then
30732 abiding in comprehension of its basic clear light nature. The meditative
30733 practice involves being cognizant of the arising and passing away of feelings,
30734 emotions, sensations, etc., but understanding them within the context of pure
30735 awareness. The more one does this, the more one realizes that all phenomena
30736 arise from mind and remerge into it. They are of the nature of pure awareness
30737 and are a projection of luminosity and emptiness. Through cultivating this
30738 understanding, mental phenomena of their own accord begin to subside, allowing
30739 the clear light nature of mind to become manifest. They appear as reflections
30740 on the surface of a mirror and are perceived as illusory, ephemeral, and
30742 Those who succeed in this practice attain a state of radical freedom:
30743 there are no boundaries, no presuppositions, and no habits on which to rely.
30744 One perceives things as they are in their naked reality. Ordinary beings view
30745 phenomena through a lens clouded by concepts and preconceptions, and most of
30746 the world is overlooked or ignored. The mind of the great perfection adept,
30747 however, is unbounded, and everything is possible. For many beginners, this
30748 prospect is profoundly disquieting, because since beginningless time we have
30749 been constricted by rules, laws, assumptions, and previous actions. One who
30750 is awakened, however, transcends all such limitations; there is no ground on
30751 which to stand, no limits, nothing that must be done, and no prohibitions.
30752 This awareness is bottomless, unfathomable, immeasurable, permeated by joy,
30753 unboundedness, and exhilaration. One is utterly free, and one's state of mind
30754 is as expansive as space. Those who attain this level of awareness also
30755 transcend physicality and manifest the "rainbow body" ('ja lus), a form
30756 comprising pure light that cannot decay, which has no physical aspects, and
30757 which is coterminous with the nature of mind.
30758 -- John Powers, "A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published by
30759 Snow Lion Publications
30761 Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
30764 In a democracy it's your vote that counts;
30765 in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
30768 You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. -- Indira Gandhi
30770 Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.
30771 -- Langston Coleman
30773 Every child is an artist. The problem is how to
30774 remain an artist once he grows up.
30777 Among Tibetans, at least traditionally, the economic conditions are such
30778 that this nine-to-five daily employment isn't really an important part of
30779 [working life]. In Tibet, either you are a farmer or a nomad or a merchant.
30780 The work is seasonal.... During the season they work very hard, and when they
30781 finish they come back and don't have any employment.
30782 ...in modern society, and particularly in industrialized nations, the
30783 issue of unemployment is a very difficult situation. There are no easy
30784 answers. One has no choice but to try to cope, and make one's best effort to
30785 find new work. There is just no other solution.
30786 However, the basic attitude of the individual plays a very significant
30787 role, and can make a big difference in how someone responds. While we may not
30788 have control over our situation, our attitude is something that we have some
30789 control over. So first, what we need to realize is that uncertainty and
30790 change are very much a part of the modern economy, particularly with regard to
30791 employment. That is a serious problem, but a fact that we have to accept.
30792 There is no guarantee that there will be a job tomorrow if you are working
30793 today. So, if we understand this ahead of time, it may change how we respond
30794 when that happens. Then we won't feel so surprised, as if we are singled out.
30795 We understand that the loss of a job has many factors, the result of many
30796 causes and conditions. We will understand that, in many cases, it may even
30797 have roots in global economic issues. This way, we won't become so upset by
30798 taking it personally, or looking around us for someone to blame for our
30799 problems. This alone may help reduce our mental agitation. Of course, here
30800 we are talking about unemployment due to some wider causes or layoffs, not due
30801 to being fired because of one's own incompetence.
30802 So there might be different ways in which individuals will respond to the
30803 challenges of change. What is important is to acknowledge this fact and try
30804 to work out how best to cope with the immediate problem itself. For example,
30805 if you need employment as a means of your livelihood and if you become
30806 unemployed, then all your efforts should be put into looking for new
30807 employment so that your livelihood will be secure. But there are two
30808 different responses. One person may feel demoralized and become sort of
30809 paralyzed, thinking, There is no hope, I lost my job, what am I supposed to
30810 do? But another individual in the same situation might look at it as an
30811 opportunity to make some changes. As a challenge. So that is the more
30812 positive way, the more proactive way of dealing with this problem. But of
30813 course it is not easy.
30814 There may also be other ways that might help at least reduce the mental
30815 anxiety of dealing with the situation, so that a person can use all their
30816 mental energy to find new work. For Buddhists, there are certain thought
30817 processes and considerations that help--for example, the belief in karma
30818 [one's actions] and ultimately taking responsibility for one's own karma.
30819 Although this kind of mental attitude may not have any effect in physically
30820 resolving the situation, at least it will help ease the individual from the
30821 psychological effect of losing the job, and so on. And of course, believers
30822 in other religious systems can also take some consolation in their own
30824 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D.,
30825 "The Art of Happiness at Work"
30827 Compassion and love are not man-made. Ideology is man-made, but
30828 compassion and love are produced by nature. It is important to recognize
30829 natural qualities, especially when we face a problem and fail to find a
30830 solution. For example... in religious business, sometimes even due to
30831 religion, we create a problem. If we try to solve that problem using
30832 religious methods, it is quite certain that we will not succeed. So I feel
30833 that when we face those kinds of problems, it is important to return to our
30834 basic human quality. Then I think we will find that solutions come easier.
30835 Therefore, I usually say that the best way to solve human problems is with
30836 human understanding.
30837 It is very important to recognize the basic nature of humanity and the
30838 value of human qualities. Whether one is educated or uneducated, rich or
30839 poor, or belongs to this nation or that nation, this religion or that
30840 religion, this ideology or that ideology, is secondary and doesn't matter.
30841 When we return to this basis, all people are the same. Then we can truly say
30842 the words brother, sister; then they are not just nice words--they have some
30843 meaning. That kind of motivation automatically builds the practice of
30844 kindness. This gives us inner strength.
30845 ...Next, let us talk about the human being as a social animal. Even if we
30846 do not like other people, we have to live together. Natural law is such that
30847 even bees and other animals have to live together in cooperation. I am
30848 attracted to bees because I like honey--it is really delicious. Their product
30849 is something that we cannot produce, very beautiful, isn't it? I exploit them
30850 too much, I think. Even these insects have certain responsibilities, they
30851 work together very nicely. They have no constitution, they have no law, no
30852 police, nothing, but they work together effectively. This is because of
30853 nature. Similarly, each part of a flower is not arranged by humans but by
30854 nature. The force of nature is something remarkable. We human beings, we
30855 have constitutions, we have law, we have a police force, we have religion, we
30856 have many things. But in actual practice, I think that we are behind those
30858 Sometimes civilization brings good progress, but we become too involved
30859 with this progress and neglect or forget about our basic nature. Every
30860 development in human society should take place on the basis of the foundation
30861 of the human nature. If we lose that basic foundation, there is no point in
30862 such developments taking place.
30863 -- "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
30864 About the Dalai Lama" compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, Foreword by
30865 Sen. Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
30867 Emphasizing neither renunciation nor transformation, though incorporating
30868 both into its preparatory practices, the Great Completeness provides a
30869 method know as "self-liberation" (rang 'grol), sometimes described as
30870 "liberation in its own spot" (rang sar 'grol). Liberation takes place in the
30871 situation just as it is, because one's mind and all things are, despite
30872 powerful appearances to the contrary, primordially pure. If one has not yet
30873 made this essential discovery, the Great Bliss Queen ritual can prepare one
30874 for it. If one is familiar with the Great Completeness perspective, one
30875 performs the visualization and recitation of the Great Bliss Queen ritual
30876 entirely within an experience of innate awareness. In either case, the ritual
30877 encompasses the three nondualisms already discussed.
30878 One way of accessing the primordial purity so important to the Great
30879 Completeness tradition is a practice known as "pure vision." This involves
30880 visualizing companions, family, surroundings, and so forth as creations of
30881 light, the habitat of an enlightened being. From the viewpoint of the Great
30882 Completeness, such pure vision is not an imaginative overlay, but a move
30883 toward understanding things as they are. As Khetsun Sangpo taught it, this
30884 practice allows you to understand that apparently ordinary things and persons
30885 have "been [primordially pure] from the beginning" so that "you are
30886 identifying their own proper nature. Your senses normally misrepresent what
30887 is there, but through this visualization you can come closer to what actually
30888 exists." In short, by identifying one's body, companions, and world with
30889 those of the Great Bliss Queen, one develops the ability to discover what has
30890 always been there. This being so, there is no need to renounce or change
30891 anything, only to see it more completely. This is the Great Completeness
30892 tradition's special mix of ontological and cognitive nondualisms. Unlike the
30893 tantric traditions, in which it is necessary to cease the coarse sense and
30894 mental consciousness in order for the most subtle mind of clear light to
30895 appear, the Dalai Lama observes that "in the Old [Nyingma] Translation School
30896 of the Great Completeness it is possible to be introduced to the clear light
30897 without the cessation of the six operative consciousnesses." Hence the
30898 possibility of "discovering" what is already in our midst. Such discovery
30899 reveals a spontaneous presence (yon dan hlun gyis grub ba) of collateral
30900 qualities such as clarity and spontaneous responsiveness. Thus, comments
30901 Longchen Rabjam, "primordially pure primordial wisdom is free in the face of
30902 thought and the primordial wisdom, with a nature of spontaneity, abides as
30903 primordial radiance, and profound clarity."
30904 -- Anne Carolyn Klein, "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists,
30905 and the Art of the Self", by published by Snow Lion Publications
30907 Why is it that meeting our yidam deity directly and receiving the deity's
30908 blessing are so important? If we are studying texts and wish to become great
30909 scholars, there are an inconceivable number of the Buddha's teachings along
30910 with the treatises that comment on them. All these have to be studied
30911 diligently so that we can come to a basic understanding of their meaning;
30912 beyond this, it is extremely difficult to enter into the more subtle levels.
30913 In all of this practice and study, it is our own mind that is central.
30914 Without a great blessing or without awakening the generative power of previous
30915 habitual patterns, it will be extremely difficult to realize primordial
30917 Lord Maitreya stated that bodhisattvas abiding on the various levels are
30918 not able to attain omniscience immediately, and he also affirmed that we do
30919 not need to become expert in all five traditional Buddhist sciences. Among
30920 these are all classifications of the inner science that deals with the mind.
30921 In the practice of the Secret Mantrayana, it is said that as long as objects
30922 continue to arise in our minds, so long will the classifications of the Secret
30923 Mantrayana last. As long as we have not realized the simultaneity of concepts
30924 and liberation, as long as we have not been blessed with the knowledge that
30925 knowing the nature of one phenomenon liberates us into knowing the nature of
30926 all, we need to train from lifetime to lifetime in the many aspects of the
30927 teachings. If we try to become expert in all five sciences or try to know all
30928 the objects of knowledge, our training will be endless. For these reasons, it
30929 is extremely important to seek accomplishments and blessings from the yidam
30930 deity, for through the blessing of the deity, our positive habitual patterns
30931 from the past will be awakened and the doubts that cloud our minds will be
30933 -- "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the Seventeenth
30934 Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje" by Michele Martin, published by Snow Lion
30938 When someone whom I have helped
30939 Or in whom I have placed great hopes
30940 Mistreats me in extremely hurtful ways
30941 May I regard him still as my precious teacher.
30942 -- Shantideva, "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life"
30944 According to worldly norms of human behaviour, when we help someone and
30945 place great trust in them and they mistreat us in return, it is seen as
30946 reasonable to be angry with them because we have been hurt. However,
30947 practitioners of bodhicitta must not give in to this type of conventional
30948 thinking. Instead, we should learn to view such people in a special way, as
30949 objects for our practice of forbearance and loving kindness. We must in fact
30950 recognise these people as our spiritual teachers.
30951 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
30952 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
30954 Advanced meditators develop the ability to create environments of their
30955 own choosing, and they are able to transcend the sufferings that seem so real
30956 to ordinary beings who are bound by mundane conceptions. According to Tsong
30957 Khapa, for one who attains advanced levels of meditation, painful cognitions
30958 no longer occur, no matter what external experiences one encounters. All of
30959 one's cognitions are a union of bliss and emptiness. One recognizes that
30960 nothing is inherently what it appears to be. Whatever occurs is perceived by
30961 one's unshakably blissful consciousness as the sport of luminosity and
30964 "for a Bodhisattva who has attained the meditative stabilisation of
30965 bliss pervading all phenomena, only a feeling of pleasure arises with
30966 respect to all objects; pain and neutrality do not occur, even though
30967 [pieces from his body] the size of a small coin are cut or even though
30968 his body is crushed by elephants, only a discrimination of bliss is
30970 -- Tsong-ka-pa on Ratnarakshita's Commentary
30972 Tantric texts stress that such bodhisattvas are not creating a delusional
30973 system in order to hide from the harsher aspects of reality. Rather, they are
30974 transforming reality, making it conform to an ideal archetype. Since all
30975 phenomena are empty of inherent existence, they have no fixed nature. No one
30976 ever apprehends an object as it is in its true nature, because there is no
30977 such nature. Even if phenomena had fixed essences, we would still never be
30978 able to perceive them, since all we ever experience are our cognitions of
30979 objects, which are overlaid with conceptions about them. All our perceptions
30980 are ideas about things, and not real things. These ideas are also empty,
30981 arising from nothingness and immediately dissolving again into nothingness,
30982 leaving nothing behind. Tantric adepts develop the ability to reconstitute
30983 "reality," which is completely malleable for those who train in yogas
30984 involving blissful consciousnesses realizing emptiness. The sense of bliss
30985 pervades all their cognitions, and their understanding of emptiness allows
30986 them to generate minds that are manifestations of bliss and emptiness.
30987 -- John Powers, "A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published
30988 by Snow Lion Publications
30990 Beware the flatterer; he feeds you with an empty spoon. -- Cosino DeGregrio
30992 Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict
30993 the man before the dollar.
30996 Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of
30997 labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is
30998 the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
31001 For those of you who are not able to devote all your time to meditation,
31002 there is nevertheless the possibility of engaging in practice in a serious
31003 way. For example, the students at the monastic universities in South India
31004 can, with some effort, do meditations during the prayers. When you recite the
31005 prayers, you can mentally do the contemplation. The lifestyle and daily
31006 routine at these monasteries have been structured by the great masters of the
31007 past in a way that is most conducive to individual practice as well as to the
31008 flourishing of the dharma.
31009 If you find that your mind is in a very fluctuating emotional state--
31010 displaying anger, hatred, attachment and so forth--then you should first try
31011 to calm down that state of strong emotion. This should be done by first
31012 transforming it into a neutral state of mind, because there is no way that one
31013 can switch directly from a negative state of mind to a positive one.
31014 Therefore, you should first reduce the force of these emotions and
31015 fluctuations and try to bring about some sort of calmness, using any means--
31016 such as taking a stroll or concentrating on the inhalation and exhalation of
31017 the breath--that will enable you to forget what you are immediately feeling.
31018 This will help you to reduce the force of strong emotion, thereby giving you
31019 the calmness necessary for the practice of dharma. Like a white piece of
31020 cloth which could be dyed any color that you desire, such a neutral state of
31021 mind could then be transformed into a virtuous state of mind.
31022 You could also engage in the preliminary practices of performing 100,000
31023 prostrations, recitations of the Vajrasattva mantra, and so forth. When you
31024 undertake these practices, you should do them properly, not being only
31025 concerned about the number. Many great masters of the past of all traditions
31026 have emphasized the importance of these preliminary practices--they will
31027 enable you to have a very firm start. If through them you can acquire a
31028 fertile mind, then when the seed of meditation is planted, it will readily
31029 bear the fruits of realizations.
31030 Having successfully neutralized the emotional fluctuations within your
31031 mind and having restored a reasonable degree of calmness, engage in the
31032 practice of taking refuge and generating the altruistic aspiration to attain
31033 full enlightenment. Taking refuge in the Three Jewels is the factor that
31034 distinguishes one's practice from that of an erroneous path, and the
31035 generation of the altruistic mind makes it superior to the paths aiming at
31036 individual liberation.
31037 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", translated by Geshe Thupten
31038 Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
31040 ...if you consider just the subtlest mind and the wind or energy that
31041 serves as its mount, the mere factor of luminosity and knowing of the subtlest
31042 mind itself as well as the energy associated with it are what will be
31043 transformed into the mind and body of a Buddha. This is the mind that will
31044 turn into an omniscient consciousness--a Buddha's mind; it is this mind which
31045 will be transformed, not some other mind coming from the outside. In other
31046 words, the Buddha nature is inherent; it is not imported from somewhere else.
31047 This is true because the very entity of the mind, its nature of mere
31048 luminosity and knowing, is not polluted by defilements; they do not abide in
31049 the entity of the mind. Even when we generate afflictive emotions, the very
31050 entity or nature of the mind is still mere luminosity and knowing, and because
31051 of this we are able to remove the afflictive emotions.
31052 -- H.H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness,
31053 Clarity, and Insight", edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins,
31054 co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
31056 The recognition that worldly attainments just do not provide enduring
31057 happiness, and that we need to work on the internals, rather than the
31058 externals, is an important motivation. It is also the basis of achieving
31059 nirvana, often represented by the lotus flower. It is no accident that most
31060 statues of Buddha have him sitting on cushions resting on a lotus flower--the
31061 symbol of renunciation.
31062 But what if we achieve nirvana? What if, through extreme diligence, we
31063 attain its supreme peace and happiness? Would that be enough, or is there a
31064 more profound level of motivation still?
31065 Some years ago a number of tourists were kidnapped by terrorists in the
31066 Philippines, and held hostage in the jungle for many months. Finally they
31067 were released in small groups. I will never forget the reaction of one
31068 hostage who was interviewed at the airport on his way home to join his wife,
31069 who had been freed just days earlier.
31070 You would think that after months of extreme privation and the constant
31071 threat of uncertainty and death, returning safely to one's wife, home, and
31072 family would be a cause for joyful celebration. But the hostage, while
31073 relieved, could only think of the group of hostages he'd left behind. Those
31074 who, in the preceding months, had been his fellow prisoners, whom he now knew
31075 better than anyone else, and with whom in several cases, he had formed unique
31076 and profound bonds of attachment. His overriding concern was to ensure that
31077 those still being held captive would be safely released to experience the same
31078 freedom he had now. Only then would he really be able to celebrate.
31079 -- David Michie, "Buddhism for Beginners: Finding Happiness in an Uncertain
31080 World", published by Snow Lion Publications
31082 The term "meditation" carries with it a burden of trendy, pseudo-mystical
31083 connotations. The biggest mistake people make is to think that they will "get
31084 something" out of meditation. It would be more accurate to think they will be
31085 getting rid of something. Awareness practice undermines our unwitting
31086 subjugation to hypermentation. It cuts through the cascade of thoughts and
31087 feelings that distract us from the present moment where life actually happens.
31088 The inner newsreel, with its imagined or distorted dramas, becomes less urgent
31089 and seductive. The unexamined hopes and fears that have thrown us into
31090 automatic or reflexive behavior lose their power to toss us about. What we
31091 get rid of, initially, is a great deal of compelling noise with no point or
31092 real substance to it. Even by becoming aware of its nature we de-reify it,
31093 render it less solid and intractable.
31094 ...How can we sort out our neuroses when the mind is a wild, chaotic mess
31095 of fragmented thought? How can we work with our anger when we experience it
31096 as a deluge of highly charged, urgent impulses, all mixed in with fleeting
31097 bits of narrative, physical sensations, whispers of memory, rushes of fear,
31098 and the visceral press to act? We can't. Every beginning meditator discovers
31099 very quickly that the mind has a mind of its own. No beginner sits down,
31100 says, "Peace! Be still!" and accomplishes enlightenment. It's enough at the
31101 start just to see, discover, and acknowledge the chatter. That, in itself, is
31102 a great step towards self-awareness. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught that the
31103 awareness of our confusion is the first step towards clarity.
31104 Over time, we can learn to just take note of whatever arises without being
31105 pushed and pulled emotionally. We can sit still and not respond reflexively
31106 to our hypermentation. We can allow ourselves to rest, to gently release
31107 thoughts, to find a quiet space apart from the discursive jumble. We can
31108 choose to be simply and quietly aware. In these quiet moments, experiences
31109 arise much more clearly and distinctly. Only then can we discover the source
31110 of our suffering and our anger.
31111 I once attended a conference between a highly esteemed Tibetan lama,
31112 Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, and a group of psychiatrists. Someone asked
31113 Rinpoche: "What is meditation?" Rinpoche looked playfully puzzled, pretended
31114 not to understand, and after a brief consultation with his translator,
31115 answered: "Meditation? Meditation? I don't know what that means. We have
31116 another word for it which means 'paying attention to.' " Whatever the style,
31117 to meditate is to pay attention.
31118 -- Ron Leifer, M.D., "Vinegar into Honey: Seven Steps to Understanding and
31119 Transforming Anger, Aggression, and Violence", published by Snow Lion
31122 ...practice must be carried out in terms of one's own thought. If one
31123 knows how to bring the teachings into one's own thought, all physical and
31124 verbal deeds can be made to accord with practice. If one does not know how to
31125 bring them into one's own thought, even though one might meditate, recite
31126 scriptures, or spend one's life in a temple, it will not help; thought is
31127 therefore important for practice. Thus, taking refuge in the Three Jewels
31128 (Buddha, his Doctrine and the Spiritual Community), taking into account the
31129 relationship between actions and their effects, and generating an attitude of
31130 helping others, are most important.
31132 Formerly in Tibet there was a famous lama called Drom. One day Drom saw a
31133 man walking around a reliquary. 'Walking around a reliquary is good,' he
31134 said. 'Practice is even better.' The man thought, 'Then, reading a holy book
31135 would be good.' He did so, and one day while he was reading, Drom saw him and
31136 said, 'Reading a holy book is good; practice is even better.'
31138 The man thought, 'This also does not seem to be sufficient. Now if I do
31139 some meditation, that will certainly be practice.' Drom saw him in meditation
31140 and said, 'Meditation is good; practice is even better.' The man was amazed
31141 and asked, 'How does one practise?' Drom answered, 'Do not be attached to this
31142 life; cause your mind to become the practices.' Dram said this because
31143 practice depends on thought.
31145 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
31146 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
31148 Dampa said, "If these practitioners want buddhahood, they must reverse their
31151 [Kunga] asked, "What is wrong with their present behavior?"
31155 They practice thinking that what are in actuality obstacles are
31157 They meet the liberating path, but doubting and striving, they part from
31159 Doubting if they should refrain from their ill-omened actions, they
31161 The speech of those without experience has become Dharma--supposedly the
31163 Kunga is never parted from his prayers for the three village girls!
31164 Now, draw your own conclusions!
31170 When I see people clinging to illusions as real, compassion arises with a
31172 If one considers the sufferings of the six realms in terms of oneself, one
31173 has no time to remain ordinary.
31174 When one sees that the characteristic of samsara is suffering, a mind
31175 wanting nothing whatsoever is born!
31176 When one sees the various bases as rootless, self-grasping is not born!
31177 When impermanence is born in the mind, faith and perseverance will come
31179 Those who grasp at permanence will not destroy persistent grasping at
31181 Kunga! Internalize truthlessness and throw the kitchen sauce into the
31183 -- Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teachings of Padampa Sangye, translated
31184 by David Molk, with Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, published by Snow
31187 Books have the same enemies as people:
31188 fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
31191 In Buddhism there are basically two types of practices: Sutra and
31192 Tantra.... The special purpose of Tantra is to provide a faster path so that
31193 qualified practitioners can be of service to others more quickly. In Tantra
31194 the power of imagination is harnessed to meditation in a practice called deity
31195 yoga. In this practice you imagine 1) replacing your mind as it ordinarily
31196 appears, full of troubling emotions, with a mind of pure wisdom motivated by
31197 compassion; 2) substituting your body as it ordinarily appears (composed of
31198 flesh, blood, and bone) with a body fashioned from compassionately motivated
31199 wisdom; 3) developing a sense of a pure self that depends on purely appearing
31200 mind and body in an ideal environment, fully engaged in helping others. As
31201 this distinctive practice of Tantra calls for visualizing yourself with a
31202 Buddha's body, activities, resources, and surroundings, it is called "taking
31203 imagination as the spiritual path."
31204 Let us consider a qualm about this practice. You are considering yourself
31205 to have Buddha qualities which you presently do not have. Is this, then, a
31206 correct type of meditative consciousness? Yes. Your mind is involved in
31207 understanding reality, out of which you are appearing as a deity. Therefore,
31208 your mind, from this viewpoint, is correct. Also, you are purposely imagining
31209 yourself as having a divine body even if you do not presently possess one.
31210 This is an imaginative meditation; you are not convinced from the depths that
31211 you actually have pure mind, body, and selfhood. Rather, based in clear
31212 imagination of ideal body and mind, you are cultivating the sense of being a
31213 deity, compassionately helping others.
31214 ...to engage in Tantra at any level demands a powerful intention to become
31215 enlightened for the sake of others, and a feeling that this needs to be done
31217 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
31218 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
31220 Why do we want to be wise and compassionate? If it's because we would simply
31221 like to be wise and compassionate, we are off course, because the "I" cannot
31222 attain wisdom and compassion. Wisdom and compassion can only be revealed once
31223 the "I" has disappeared. When we reach this level, we will be able to benefit
31224 others. In the meantime, it is the blind leading the blind. All true
31225 religions seek to gain access to that level of consciousness which is not ego-
31226 bound. In Buddhism, it is called the unconditioned, the unborn, the
31227 deathless. You can call it anything you like. You can call it atman. You
31228 can call it anatman. You can call it God. The fact is, there is a subtle
31229 level of consciousness which is the core of our being, and it is beyond our
31230 ordinary conditioned state of mind. We can all experience this. Some people
31231 experience it through service, others through devotion. Some even think they
31232 can experience it through analysis and intellectual discipline. Buddhists
31233 usually try to access it through meditation. That's what we are doing.
31234 Breaking through to the unconditioned in order to help others break through to
31235 the unconditioned. But we have to start where we are, from right here. We
31236 start with these minds, these bodies, these problems, these weaknesses, and
31238 -- Venerable Tenzin Palmo, "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings
31239 on Practical Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Publications
31241 Over the last few days I have been meeting scientists, mainly specialists
31242 on the brain, as well as psychologists and psychotherapists.... The majority
31243 of them agreed... that the key cause of the mental unrest and depression so
31244 prevalent today... is lack of sympathy and affection.
31245 I think you might find the following story quite interesting. A few weeks
31246 ago I met someone whose mind, I was told, is severely disturbed. At the
31247 beginning, I used all of my reasoning to encourage him, explaining that, as a
31248 human being, there was no need for him to be discouraged, because we have such
31249 a good human brain and intelligence. I pointed out how, with determination,
31250 we can solve all our human problems and overcome all obstacles, and so there
31251 is no reason to worry or be discouraged or depressed. Personally, I always
31252 find this kind of reasoning is quite effective, but this time it failed. He
31253 was not impressed by this line of thinking. On the contrary, instead of
31254 showing any appreciation, he developed a rather contrary attitude. After
31255 listening to what I had to say, he became even more agitated, and asked me,
31256 "Why are you concerned about my problem? How do I know if your attitude is
31257 sincere or not?" I felt really sad. I was quite moved as well, and as I was
31258 explaining something or other, my hand reached out and caressed his arm. It
31259 was a natural gesture, a sincere expression of how I felt. Gradually, his
31260 mood altered; I could see his face beginning to change, and finally a smile
31261 began to appear. Then as I gained confidence, I increased that expression of
31262 affection. At last a big smile spread right across his face.
31263 I told him, "Please consider me as an old friend. Any time, you can come
31264 to see me. Whatever I can do to help you, I am ready to do. I am at your
31265 service." When I said this, then his mood, it was clear, became very happy
31266 and joyful. The following day he came to see me again. When he arrived, he
31267 already had a happy air about him, but nevertheless he was trying to pretend
31268 otherwise and was not smiling. Anyway, what this incident really gave me was
31269 another confirmation of how powerful genuine compassion, love, or altruism can
31270 be, to affect other people's minds. And how they can remove fear and
31271 suspicion, and alleviate feelings of insecurity and mistrust.
31272 So I always consider compassion as the key, not only for achieving and
31273 maintaining our own mental calmness, stability and happiness, but also as
31274 something extraordinarily useful for creating a healthy human society. By
31275 that I mean a happier and less harmful human society. Therefore--whether it
31276 be in individual cases, on a family level, a national level, or an
31277 international level--altruism, love and compassion are the basis for success,
31278 for happiness, and for a happy environment.
31279 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
31280 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron,
31281 Foreword by Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published
31282 by Snow Lion Publications
31284 According to Tibetan Buddhism, ordinary beings are born into life situations
31285 in which they are destined to suffer and die. This is the result of former
31286 contaminated actions and afflictions, which have been accumulated since
31287 beginningless time. Because of this process, physical and mental afflictions
31288 are deeply rooted in sentient beings, and so it is generally considered
31289 necessary to prepare oneself for tantric practice by engaging in the
31290 "preliminary practices," or ngondro (sngon 'gro, purvagama), in order to begin
31291 to reverse one's negative conditioning. These practices combine physical
31292 movements with visualization in order to transform the mind from one that is
31293 fixated on mundane concerns and desires into one that is primarily oriented
31294 toward religious practice for the benefit of others. Some teachers consider
31295 these preparatory trainings to be so essential to successful tantric practice
31296 that they will not give tantric initiations to those who have not completed
31297 them, and even teachers who are willing to waive them generally stress their
31298 importance. The preliminary practices are: (1) taking refuge; (2)
31299 prostration; (3) Vajrasattva meditation; (4) mandala offering; and (5) guru
31301 -- John Powers, "A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism",
31302 published by Snow Lion Publications
31304 [It] is quite clear to me is that the moment you think only of yourself,
31305 the focus of your whole reality narrows, and because of this narrow focus,
31306 uncomfortable things can appear huge and bring you fear and discomfort and a
31307 sense of feeling overwhelmed by misery. The moment you think of others with a
31308 sense of caring, however, your view widens. Within that wider perspective,
31309 your own problems appear to be of little significance, and this makes a big
31311 If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of
31312 inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this
31313 strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you.
31314 By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner
31315 strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm. This is a
31316 clear example of how one's way of thinking can really make a difference.
31317 One's own self-interest and wishes are fulfilled as a byproduct of
31318 actually working for other sentient beings. As the well-known fifteenth-
31319 century master Tsongkhapa points out in his Great Exposition of the Path to
31320 Enlightenment, "The more the practitioner engages in activities and thoughts
31321 that are focused and directed toward the fulfillment of others' well-being,
31322 the fulfillment or realization of his or her own aspiration will come as a
31323 byproduct without having to make a separate effort." Some of you may have
31324 actually heard me remark, which I do quite often, that in some sense the
31325 bodhisattvas, the compassionate practitioners of the Buddhist path, are
31326 "wisely selfish" people, whereas people like us are the "foolishly selfish."
31327 We think of ourselves and disregard others, and the result is that we always
31328 remain unhappy and have a miserable time.
31329 ...we find that kindness and a good heart form the underlying foundation
31330 for our success in this life, our progress on the spiritual path, and our
31331 fulfillment of our ultimate aspiration, the attainment of full enlightenment.
31332 Hence, compassion and a good heart are not only important at the beginning but
31333 also in the middle and at the end. Their necessity and value are not limited
31334 to any specific time, place, society, or culture.
31335 Thus, we not only need compassion and human affection to survive, but they
31336 are the ultimate sources of success in life. Selfish ways of thinking not
31337 only harm others, they prevent the very happiness we ourselves desire. The
31338 time has come to think more wisely, hasn't it? This is my belief.
31339 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, from "The Compassionate Life"
31341 ...all apparent phenomena are nothing but delusion and there is, moreover,
31342 no freedom from delusion to be achieved by dispelling delusion. Delusion is,
31343 by its own essence, completely pure and, hence, enlightened. All phenomena
31344 are, in this way, primordially, fully, and completely enlightened. Phenomena
31345 appearing as various attributes are, therefore, indeed the mandala of vajra
31346 body, speech, and mind. They are like the Buddhas of the three times, never
31347 transcending the essence of complete purity. Sentient beings and Buddhas are
31348 not differentiated in terms of their essence. Just like distinct causes and
31349 results appearing in a dream, they are nothing but perceptions of individual
31350 minds brought forth by the power of imputation.
31351 Here the issue might be raised, "although the scriptures do teach this,
31352 there is no certainty whether it is to be taken at face value or requires
31353 interpretation. Therefore the essential purity of phenomena may well be
31354 established, but it is unreasonable to say that precisely the nature of that
31355 which appears as subjects with attributes is primordially enlightened. For,
31356 if it were that way, thorough affliction and samsara would be entirely absent.
31357 There can't be a reasoning that establishes such a philosophy." The
31358 conceptual mind that takes objects that appear in the experience of sentient
31359 beings as valid is, since beginningless time, deluded. It accepts or negates
31360 with reference to the way things appear to it. With such dialectics it is,
31361 indeed, not possible to establish the vast and profound meaning. Nevertheless,
31362 since the nature of phenomena is inconceivable, it is not the case that there
31363 is no way to realize it by means of discriminating knowledge. Thus it is not
31364 in any way a mistake if one, rather than that, is inclined to approach simply
31365 by faith, regarding the scriptures and oral instructions as valid. One will
31366 then gain access through trust.
31367 One may object, "Well, if one cannot prove [the primordial mandala] with
31368 reasoning, one cannot gain access to it either." We can prove it as follows:
31369 That phenomena are fully enlightened as the mandala of vajra body, speech, and
31370 mind is proven with the reasoning of the intrinsic nature. Just as it is
31371 stated in a sutra, "Form is empty by nature. Why is that? It is so because
31372 that is its nature." All phenomena are pure by their intrinsic nature and,
31373 therefore, there is not a single phenomenon that is impure. This is the
31374 intrinsic nature of phenomena. Complete purity is, therefore, also the
31375 intrinsic nature of body, speech, and mind, and their complete purity is
31376 enlightenment. Therefore, body, speech, and mind, distinguished by their
31377 complete purity, are inseparable, free from mental constructs, and perfectly
31378 pervasive. One must in this way understand them to be the mandala of vajra
31379 body, speech, and mind.
31380 -- Heidi I. Koppl, "Establishing Appearances as Divine: Rongzom
31381 Chozang on Reasoning, Madhyamaka, and Purity", published by
31382 Snow Lion Publications
31384 Because spirits can be positive or negative in relation to humans, it is
31385 wise to be careful with practices that connect the practitioner to a spirit.
31386 It is currently popular for people to take drum journeys in their imaginations
31387 and to look for guardian spirits and power animals and so on. Although
31388 usually this is beneficial, or at least harmless, there really are beings with
31389 whom the rare individual will connect. Not all of them are beings anyone
31390 should want to connect with. There seems to be little regard for who the
31391 being is; this can be a dangerous practice. People are much more careful
31392 about choosing a business partner or a roommate than they seem to be about
31393 choosing a non-physical being for a guide or guardian.
31394 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "Healing with Form, Energy and Light:
31395 The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra and Dzogchen",
31396 published by Snow Lion Publications
31398 ...reflect upon the negative consequences of our strong attachment to
31399 friends and hostility toward enemies. Our feelings for a friend or a loved
31400 one sometimes blind us to certain of his or her aspects. We project a quality
31401 of absolute desirability, absolute infallibility, upon that person. Then,
31402 when we see something contrary to our projections, we are stunned. We swing
31403 from the extreme of love and desire to disappointment, repulsion, and
31404 sometimes even anger. Even that sense of inner contentment and satisfaction
31405 in a relationship with someone we love can lead to disappointment,
31406 frustration, and hatred. Though strong emotions, like those of romantic love
31407 or righteous hatred, may feel profoundly compelling, their pleasure is
31408 fleeting. From a Buddhist point of view, it is far better not to be in the
31409 grip of such emotions in the first place.
31410 What are the repercussions of becoming overpowered by intense dislike?
31411 The Tibetan word for hatred, shedang, suggests hostility from the depth of
31412 one's heart. There is a certain irrationality in responding to injustice or
31413 harm with hostility. Our hatred has no physical effect on our enemies; it
31414 does not harm them. Rather, it is we who suffer the ill consequences of such
31415 overwhelming bitterness. It eats us from within. With anger we slowly begin
31416 to lose our appetite. We cannot sleep at night and often end up just rolling
31417 back and forth, back and forth, all night long. It affects us profoundly,
31418 while our enemies continue along, blissfully unaware of the state we have been
31420 Free of hatred or anger, we can respond to actions committed against us
31421 far more effectively. If we approach things with a cool head, we see the
31422 problem more clearly and judge the best way to address it. For example, if a
31423 child is doing something that could be dangerous to himself or others, such as
31424 playing with matches, we can discipline him. When we behave in such a
31425 forthright manner, there is a far greater chance that our actions will hit the
31426 mark. The child will respond not to our anger but to our sense of urgency and
31428 This is how we come to see that our true enemy is actually within us. It
31429 is our selfishness, our attachment, and our anger that harm us. Our perceived
31430 enemy's ability to inflict harm on us is really quite limited. If someone
31431 challenges us and we can muster the inner discipline to resist retaliating, it
31432 is possible that no matter what the person has done, those actions do not
31434 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in
31435 Everyday Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Khyongla
31436 Rato and Richard Gere
31438 "All phenomena should be understood as lacking an end and a middle, just
31439 as the mind does not have an end or a middle. With the knowledge that the
31440 mind is without an end or a middle, no identity of the mind is perceived.
31441 What is thoroughly realized by the mind, too, is realized as being empty.
31442 By realizing that, the very identity, which is established as the aspect
31443 of the mind, like the identity of physical form, and so forth, is also
31444 ultimately not perceived. In this way, when the person does not ultimately
31445 see the identity of all phenomena through wisdom, he will not analyze
31446 whether physical form is permanent or impermanent, empty or not empty,
31447 contaminated or not contaminated, produced or non-produced, and existent
31448 or non-existent. Just as physical form is not examined, similarly feeling,
31449 recognition, compositional factors, and consciousness are not examined.
31450 When the object does not exist, its characteristics also cannot exist.
31451 So how can they be examined?"
31452 -- Stages of Meditation by Kamalashila
31454 The above passage deals with ultimate reality; its meaning is that in the
31455 ultimate sense the object of imputation is not findable. In this context we
31456 find in the Heart Sutra phrases like: "There is no physical form, no sound, no
31457 smell, no taste, and no object of touch." The mind, too, is not findable in
31458 the ultimate sense. Since in the ultimate sense such things are non-existent,
31459 there is no point examining whether they are permanent or impermanent.
31460 Ultimately all phenomena, including the aggregates and so forth, are devoid of
31461 true existence. Within the notion of ultimate reality, things are devoid of
31462 true existence. In the same way, suchness, which is an attribute of
31463 phenomena, is also devoid of true existence. This is important. Even when we
31464 understand that phenomena like physical form and so forth are devoid of true
31465 existence, there is a danger of thinking that ultimate reality may have true
31467 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", root text by Kamalashila,
31468 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
31469 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
31471 We usually discriminate strongly between someone who intends to harm us
31472 and someone who doesn't. We think, "That's all right; he didn't mean it"; or
31473 the person who has harmed us can say, "Why do you blame me so much? I didn't
31474 mean to." But we get really angry when we know people mean to harm us. How
31475 could we possibly see such people as intimate, close, dear--as dear as our
31477 If you can retain a little compassion when people harm you
31478 unintentionally, you have made progress. But if you retain it when someone
31479 intends to harm you, you are really successful. It's not that you think,
31480 "This person is marvelous; she's trying to rob me," but you don't take these
31481 facts as reasons for hating the person. You recognize the intention and put
31482 your wallet in your front pocket. You take such measures, but the conditions
31483 that prompted them no longer serve as reasons for hatred. Our wish to love
31484 everyone and the actual attitudes we have under pressure are in constant
31485 conflict. That's just the way we are. We've been wandering in cyclic
31486 existence since beginningless time, because of desire and hatred, and it's
31487 going to take a lot of familiarization to change this. Be relaxed about it.
31488 Don't put pressure on yourself, thinking things like, "Oh, I'm a scumbag
31489 because I hate so deeply." Rather, try this attitude: "I have to admit it.
31490 As much as my ideals say I should love so-and-so--or at least be neutral--I
31491 have to face the fact that I don't." Go easy on yourself.
31492 -- Jeffrey Hopkins, "A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting
31493 with Others", foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by
31494 Snow Lion Publications
31496 Many types of valid consciousnesses derive from basic, natural, and
31497 obvious perception. All of us have an innate "I," although if we try to
31498 locate this "I," we get into a lot of difficulties. This sense of "I" gives
31499 us a well-founded aspiration to happiness and a wish not to suffer.
31500 There are different levels of happiness and different kinds of suffering.
31501 Material things usually correspond to physical happiness, whereas spiritual
31502 development corresponds to mental happiness. Since our "I" has these two
31503 aspects--physical and mental--we need an inseparable combination of material
31504 progress and internal, or spiritual, progress. Balancing these is crucial to
31505 utilizing material progress and inner development for the good of human
31507 Big schemes for world development arise from this wish to gain happiness
31508 and relieve suffering. But there are higher levels of happiness beyond these
31509 worldly forms, in which one seeks something longer-term, not just confined to
31510 this lifetime. Just as we need a long-range perspective that protects the
31511 environment, we need an internal long-range perspective that extends to future
31513 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of
31514 Loving Relationships", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
31517 Desire is painful because of not getting,
31518 Anger is painful through lack of might,
31519 And confusion through not understanding.
31520 Because of this, these are not recognized.
31522 Desire produces suffering when one does not encounter what one badly
31523 wants. Anger produces suffering when one lacks might to crush the strong.
31524 Confusion* induces suffering when one fails to understand a subtle matter
31525 thoroughly. The inability to recognize these forms of suffering when one is
31526 overwhelmed by desire and so forth is great suffering indeed. Therefore,
31527 persevere in getting rid of the disturbing emotions. It is like a poor man's
31528 son who suffered because he wanted a queen.
31529 A certain poor man wanted a queen, but kings keep their queens heavily
31530 guarded, and because he could not get her, his desire made him suffer. He
31531 felt anger toward the king for guarding his queens well, and since he could
31532 not do the slightest harm to the king, he suffered acutely on account of his
31533 anger. Blinded by desire and anger his confusion grew, and unable to
31534 understand the situation properly, he was tormented by the suffering it caused
31537 * confusion's function is to feed desire and anger.
31539 -- "Aryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas on the Middle Way: with Commentary by
31540 Gyel-tsap by Aryadeva and Gyeltsap, additional commentary by Geshe Sonam
31541 Rinchen", translated by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
31543 Never hope more than you work. -- Rita Mae Brown
31545 To lead the people, walk behind them. -- Lao Tzu
31547 To consider those things which are existent, there are many phenomena
31548 which are produced only occasionally. For example, certain plants grow only
31549 during certain seasons, not all the time. That shows that they have been
31550 produced by their causes and conditions. On the other hand, certain phenomena
31551 exist permanently. Those are the two types of phenomena. In the case of
31552 phenomena which arise only occasionally for a certain period of time then
31553 cease to exist, their production is evidence used to prove their dependence on
31554 their causes and conditions. But permanent phenomena are not dependent on
31555 causes and conditions. Generally speaking, almost all phenomena which are
31556 beneficial or harmful to us belong to the category of the occasional, the
31557 dependent--the impermanent. Even our mind, which is to be disciplined and
31558 subdued, belongs to that category.
31559 Within the kind of phenomena which are existent, we can talk about
31560 different types: those which are animate and those which are inanimate; those
31561 with form and those formless; visible and invisible; audible and inaudible.
31562 And there are phenomena which definitely exist but can be experienced only by
31563 our mind, not our sense perceptions; in other words, we can talk about two
31564 types of phenomena, external matter and internal consciousness. When we talk
31565 about subduing mind, we refer to internal consciousness, that which has
31566 clarity and cognitive power and is capable of experiencing objects. Although
31567 our mind has arisen depending upon its causes and conditions, we need to find
31568 out to what extent it can be transformed, for it is through the transformation
31569 of our mind that we can subdue it. The way of transformation is to pacify the
31570 mind's faults and to cultivate and enhance its good qualities. Although there
31571 are certain phenomena which, having arisen from their causes and conditions,
31572 remain as they are and cannot be changed by any means, there are others,
31573 including our mind, which can be. To establish that kind of distinction, the
31574 reasons provided in the Lam-rim section on analytical meditation to generate
31575 special insight are especially important and useful.
31576 -- "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries", H.H. the Dalai Lama XIV on the
31577 Jatakamala translated by Tenzin Dorjee edited by Dexter Roberts
31579 Whatever appears, nothing has moved from the absolute nature.
31581 Decide that nothing is extraneous to the absolute nature, taking the
31582 example of gold jewelry.
31583 Once we know how to remain in the absolute nature, the manifold thoughts
31584 that arise in the mind are no different from gold jewelry. One can make all
31585 sorts of things out of gold, such as earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, but
31586 although they have a variety of different shapes, they are all made of gold.
31587 Likewise, if we are able to not move from the absolute nature, however many
31588 thoughts we might have, they never depart from the recognition of the absolute
31589 nature. A yogi for whom this is the case never departs from that realization,
31590 whatever he does with his body, speech, and mind. All his actions arise as
31591 the outer display or ornament of wisdom. All the signs one would expect from
31592 meditating on a deity come spontaneously without him actually doing any formal
31593 practice. The result of mantra recitation is obtained without his having to
31594 do a large number of recitations. In this way everything is included in the
31595 recognition that nothing is ever extraneous to the absolute nature.
31596 In that state one does not become excited at pleasant events or depressed
31597 by unpleasant ones.
31598 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Zurchungpa's Testament: A Commentary on
31599 Zurchung Sherab Trakpa's 'Eighty Chapters of Personal Advice'", based
31600 on Shechen Gyaltsap's Annotated Edition, translated by the Padmakara
31601 Translation Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
31603 crashola in second life:
31604 due to having been in a vehicle which crossed into forbidden land and got
31605 taken away, my avatar was left in an indetermine and very unhealthy state.
31606 i was unable to move, deep underground, and i saw this object off down to
31607 my left, so i clicked on it and picked 'edit'. i realized as i was doing
31608 it, that this was my disembodied hair, which had flown off for some reason.
31609 once i clicked edit, *crunch*, no more second life.
31611 It makes no sense to brood anxiously on the harmful actions we have committed
31612 in the past to the point where we become paralyzed. They are done, it is
31613 over. If the person is a believer in God, the appropriate action is to find
31614 some means of reconciliation with Him. So far as Buddhist practice is
31615 concerned, there are various rites and practices for purification. When the
31616 individual has no religious beliefs, however, it is surely a matter of
31617 acknowledging and accepting any negative feelings we may have in relation to
31618 our misdeeds and developing a sense of sorrow and regret for them. But then,
31619 rather than stopping at mere sorrow and regret, it is important to use this as
31620 the basis for resolve, for a deep-seated commitment never again to harm others
31621 and to direct our actions all the more determinedly to the benefit of others.
31622 The act of disclosure, or confession, of our negative actions to another--
31623 especially to someone we really respect and trust--will be found to be very
31624 helpful in this. We are quite wrong if we merely acknowledge the gravity of
31625 our actions inwardly and then, instead of confronting our feelings, give up
31626 all hope and do nothing. This only compounds the error. Above all, we should
31627 remember that as long as we retain the capacity of concern for others, the
31628 potential for transformation remains.
31629 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Ethics for the New Millennium"
31631 According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind,
31632 wanting others to be free from suffering. It's not passive--it's not empathy
31633 alone--but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others
31634 from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and lovingkindness.
31635 That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we
31636 wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy
31637 and empathy with other sentient beings (this is lovingkindness). Let's
31638 examine these two elements.
31639 The suffering from which we wish to liberate other sentient beings,
31640 according to Buddha's teachings, has three levels. The first level includes
31641 the obvious physical and mental sensations of pain and discomfort that we can
31642 all easily identify as suffering. This kind of suffering is primarily at the
31643 sensory level--unpleasant or painful sensations and feelings. The great
31644 Tibetan master Panchen Losang Chokyi Gyaltsan, tutor to the fifth Dalai Lama,
31645 reminds us that even animals seek to avoid physical suffering and pain.
31646 The second level of suffering is the suffering of change. Although
31647 certain experiences or sensations may seem pleasurable and desirable now,
31648 inherent within them is the potential for culminating in an unsatisfactory
31649 experience. Another way of saying this is that experiences do not last
31650 forever; desirable experiences will eventually be replaced by a neutral
31651 experience or an undesirable experience. If it were not the case that
31652 desirable experiences are of the nature of change, then, once having a happy
31653 experience, we would remain happy forever! In fact, if desirability were
31654 intrinsic to an experience, then the longer we remained in contact with it,
31655 the happier we would become. However, this is not the case. In fact, often,
31656 the more we pursue these experiences, the greater our level of
31657 disillusionment, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness becomes.
31658 ...But the third level of suffering is the most significant--the pervasive
31659 suffering of conditioning. This refers to the very fact of our unenlightened
31660 existence, the fact that we are ruled by negative emotions and their
31661 underlying root cause, namely our own fundamental ignorance of the nature of
31662 reality. Buddhism asserts that as long as we are under the control of this
31663 fundamental ignorance, we are suffering; this unenlightened existence is
31664 suffering by its very nature.
31665 If we are to cultivate the deepest wisdom, we must understand suffering at
31666 its deepest, most pervasive level. In turn, freedom from that level of
31667 suffering is true nirvana, true liberation, the true state of cessation.
31668 Freedom from the first level of suffering alone--merely being free of
31669 unpleasant physical and psychological experiences--is not true cessation of
31670 suffering. Freedom from the second level is again not true cessation.
31671 However, freedom from the third level of suffering--being completely free from
31672 the very source of suffering--that is genuine cessation, genuine liberation.
31673 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's Heart
31674 of Wisdom Teachings", translated & edited by Geshe Thupten Jinpa
31676 The only conclusion that can legitimately be reached is that the self is a
31677 fiction, a mere label superimposed onto the aggregates, a concept created and
31678 reified by the mind but lacking any substantial reality. This reasoning
31679 process alone does not eliminate the idea, however; it merely weakens it.
31680 Because it is so deeply ingrained, the idea of self is only eliminated through
31681 repeated meditation on the reasonings of no-self, which enable the yogin to
31682 become progressively more familiar with the understanding that no self or
31683 essence exists. The Dalai Lama concludes that "when such a realization is
31684 maintained and reinforced through constant meditation and familiarization, you
31685 will be able to develop it into an intuitive or direct experience." (From Path
31687 Many Westerners reject this notion, contending that it would be a sort of
31688 cognitive suicide. The idea that the self (which is assumed even by people
31689 who reject religions that propound the idea) does not exist is profoundly
31690 disturbing to many non-Buddhists, but in Buddhist thought the denial of self
31691 is not seen as constituting a loss, but rather is viewed as a profoundly
31692 liberating insight. Since the innate idea of self implies an autonomous,
31693 unchanging essence, if such a thing were in fact the core of one's being, it
31694 would mean that change would be impossible, and one would be stuck being just
31695 what one is right now. Because there is no such self, however, we are open
31696 toward the future. One's nature is never fixed and determined, and so through
31697 engaging in Buddhist practice one can exert control over the process of change
31698 and progress in wisdom, compassion, patience, and other good qualities. One
31699 can even become a buddha, a fully awakened being who is completely liberated
31700 from all the frailties, sufferings, and limitations of ordinary beings. But
31701 this is only possible because there is no permanent and static self, no soul
31702 that exists self-sufficiently, separated from the ongoing process of change.
31703 -- John Powers, "A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published
31704 by Snow Lion Publications
31706 I often encounter people in and our of my office who seem to be lost in
31707 thought. I sometimes ask them what they are thinking about. They are usually
31708 startled by the question. They look at me blankly and are often surprised to
31709 hear themselves admit with embarrassment that they don't know or can't say.
31710 Or they describe one small, fleeting fragment of disconnected thought. The
31711 "normal" human state of mind is constant, incessant thinking--an enigmatically
31712 linked stream of consciousness, sensations, memories, feelings, desires,
31713 fears, and chatter. And at the center of the narrative, the star of the show
31714 is always--ME! This is why the first leg of the journey requires courage. To
31715 become familiar with the chaotic, egotistical, and often nonsensical narrative
31716 of our own mind stream is disconcerting and painful. To discover directly
31717 that we are literally "lost in thought" can be frightening. But this is where
31718 we are and where we must begin.
31719 It's consoling to remember that everyone is neurotic, each one of us. The
31720 "normal" mind suffers from a complex of conflicting desires and aversions.
31721 The best we can do is to become aware of our neuroses, to become wiser in our
31722 thinking and our conduct of life. In my experience, meditation is the most
31723 direct and efficient method for developing self-awareness. Self-awareness is
31724 not a steady state because experience is not a steady state. Through the
31725 practice of meditation, we can learn to watch our ever-fluctuating mental
31726 processes from a more detached, aerial perspective. Without necessarily
31727 understanding ourselves in some intellectual way, we can directly discover how
31728 the mind works. The mind has its causes and effects, its motivations and
31729 intentions, and its awareness and evaluation of their possible consequences.
31730 -- Ron Leifer, M.D., "Vinegar Into Honey: Seven Steps to Understanding and
31731 Transforming Anger, Aggression, and Violence", published by Snow Lion
31734 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow,
31735 "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow
31736 old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to
31737 the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world
31738 about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the
31739 sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn
31740 why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can
31741 never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust,
31742 and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what
31743 a lot of things there are to learn."
31744 -- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
31746 In Chapter 4 we looked at the when and where of meditation. Whatever
31747 works best for you, given your personal circumstances and temperament, the
31748 important thing is to do it regularly, preferably every day.
31749 I would also recommend that you keep the session to a length of time that
31750 feels comfortable. This is because in the early stages of meditation it's
31751 easy to become discouraged and have thoughts along the lines of: "This might
31752 work for other people, but I don't have the right personality/mind/lifestyle/
31753 partner for meditation." Or: "I've been doing this for six months and my
31754 concentration is no better than when I started." With thoughts like these, you
31755 may start to resent the time you spend meditating and consider giving up.
31756 Much better to keep your practice light and easy to begin with; short
31757 sessions, and concentrated attention, especially towards the end of your
31758 practice so that you "finish like a winner" and feel encouraged for the next
31759 day. Better to end a short session thinking you could have gone on longer
31760 than keep glancing at your watch with the thought that has passed through the
31761 mind of every meditator at some stage--"My watch must have stopped. It's been
31762 longer than two minutes--surely?!"
31763 Having reviewed the meditation practices outlined in the previous chapter,
31764 you may decide you quite like the sound of several of them. On what basis
31765 should they be practiced? My own preference is to have a simple calendar of
31766 activity so that, for example, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are breath-
31767 counting days; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays are visualization days; and
31768 Sundays are for whatever I'm in the mood to do.
31769 On this point, I once asked a high-ranking Tibetan lama which of a number
31770 of meditation practices I should focus on. He gave me an indulgent smile and
31771 said simply, "Whichever you enjoy the most." D'oh!
31772 -- David Michie, "Hurry Up and Meditate: Your Starter Kit for Inner Peace
31773 and Better Health", published by Snow Lion Publications
31775 "Always be sustained by cheerfulness."
31777 The effectiveness of our practice can be measured by looking at our mood.
31778 If we are in better spirits, the practice is working. We can take heart
31779 because we have a purpose, to exchange whatever sadness we meet for joy. The
31780 smallest personal damage can be put to use to dissolve great suffering and do
31781 away with negativity. If there is a way, we try to stop unfortunate things
31782 from happening, but when unhappy events occur we meet them optimistically. We
31783 never let negativity discourage us or injure our ability to help.
31784 Setting out on any adventure demands determination. We may have to toil
31785 and struggle with setbacks along the way but the trials we face are short-
31786 lived. We can endure them because we have a great end in mind: to benefit all
31787 sentient beings. Remaining good-natured and enthusiastic shows that our
31788 efforts are succeeding. Being cheerful is the sign of a good practitioner.
31789 -- Ringu Tulku, "Mind Training", edited by B.M. Shaughnessy, published
31790 by Snow Lion Publications
31792 Once we take ourselves and the quality of our life seriously, and
31793 acknowledge the difficulties we may be experiencing, the next step is to have
31794 confidence that (1) it is possible to overcome them, (2) there is a way to
31795 accomplish this, and (3) we are capable of achieving it [Buddha-nature]. This
31796 bring us to the topics of refuge and Buddha-nature.
31797 Taking refuge is not a passive act of placing ourselves in the hands of a
31798 higher power that will do everything for us, as the English word "refuge"
31799 might imply. It is an active process of putting a safe, reliable and positive
31800 direction in our life. That direction is indicated by the Buddhas, the Dharma
31801 and the Sangha--the Three Precious Gems. They are precious in the sense that
31802 they are both rare and valuable....
31803 In short, the definitive level of the Three Precious Gems of Buddha,
31804 Dharma and Sangha presents the goal we would like to achieve. Their
31805 interpretable level indicates what we rely on, externally, to bring ourselves
31806 there. But we also have internal factors that we need to rely on as well.
31807 These refer to our Buddha-nature.
31808 We are capable of eliminating our problems and achieving the definitive
31809 Three Precious Gems because everyone has Buddha-nature, namely the various
31810 factors or working materials that make it possible. Of all our natural
31811 resources, the most important is mind. We all have a mind which, in its
31812 nature, is unhampered by anything from experiencing whatever exists. No
31813 matter what happens--no matter how confused, stressed or unhappy we may be--we
31814 experience it. Even death is something that we experience when it occurs.
31815 Therefore, because we have a mind that allows us to experience whatever
31816 exists, we have the basic resource that allows us to experience a total
31817 absence of confusion and a utilization of all possible good qualities for
31818 helping others--provided that such a total absence and utilization actually
31819 exist. In other words, if we can establish that it is possible for these two
31820 things to exist--and that they are not just objects of nice but totally
31821 unrealistic wishes--we can be confident that we are capable of attaining them,
31822 simply because we have a mind.
31823 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition
31824 of Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
31826 Actually, we Buddhists are supposed to save all sentient beings, but
31827 practically speaking, this may be too broad a notion for most people. In any
31828 case, we must at least think in terms of helping all human beings. This is
31829 very important. Even if we cannot think in terms of sentient beings
31830 inhabiting different worlds, we should nonetheless think in terms of the human
31831 beings on our own planet. To do this is to take a practical approach to the
31832 problem. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our
31833 daily lives. If we find we cannot help another, the least we can do is to
31834 desist from harming them. We must not cheat others or lie to them. We must
31835 be honest human beings, sincere human beings.
31836 On a very practical level, such attitudes are things which we need.
31837 Whether one is a believer, a religious person, or not, is another matter.
31838 Simply as an inhabitant of the world, as a member of the human family, we need
31839 this kind of attitude. It is through such an attitude that real and lasting
31840 world peace and harmony can be achieved. Through harmony, friendship, and
31841 respecting one another, we can solve many problems in the right way, without
31843 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
31844 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
31846 We may have all come on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now.
31847 -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
31849 ...Maitreya, in his text the Sublime Continuum, gives three reasons on the
31850 basis of which one can conclude that the essence of Buddhahood permeates the
31851 minds of all sentient beings. First, he says that the Buddha's activities
31852 radiate in the heart of all sentient beings. Now this can be understood in
31853 two different ways: one is that we can understand that in every sentient being
31854 there is a seed of virtue, and one could see the seed of virtue as an act of
31855 the completely enlightened, compassionate Buddha. But one could also see it
31856 in deeper terms, that is, that all sentient beings possess the potential for
31857 perfection. Therefore, there is a kind of perfected being inherent within all
31858 sentient beings, radiating. So one can understand it in these ways. Second,
31859 so far as the ultimate nature of reality is concerned, there is total equality
31860 between the samsaric state and nirvana. Third, we all possess a mind which
31861 lacks intrinsic reality and independent existence, which allows us to then
31862 remove the negativities and delusory states that obscure it. For these three
31863 reasons, Maitreya concludes that all sentient beings possess the essence of
31865 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
31866 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by
31867 Snow Lion Publications
31869 ...Compassion diminishes fright about your own pain and increases inner
31870 strength. It gives you a sense of empowerment, of being able to accomplish
31871 your tasks. It lends encouragement.
31872 Let me give you a small example. Recently, when I was in Bodh Gaya, I
31873 fell ill from a chronic intestinal infection. On the way to the hospital, the
31874 pain in my abdomen was severe, and I was sweating a great deal. The car was
31875 passing through the area of Vulture Peak (Buddha taught here) where the
31876 villagers are extremely poor. In general, Bihar State is poor, but that
31877 particular area is even more so. I did not even see children going to or
31878 coming from school. Just poverty. And sickness. I have a very clear memory
31879 of a small boy with polio, who had rusty metal braces on his legs and metal
31880 crutches up to his armpits. It was obvious that he had no one to look after
31881 him. I was very moved. A little later on, there was an old man at a tea
31882 stop, wearing only a dirty piece of cloth, fallen to the ground, left to lie
31883 there with no one to take care of him.
31884 Later, at the hospital, my thoughts kept circling on what I had seen,
31885 reflecting on how sad it was that here I had people to take care of me but
31886 those poor people had no one. That is where my thoughts went, rather than to
31887 my own suffering. Though sweat was pouring out of my body, my concern was
31889 In this way, though my body underwent a lot of pain that prevented sleep
31890 (a hole had opened in my intestinal wall), my mind did not suffer any fear or
31891 discomfort. It would only have made the situation worse if I had concentrated
31892 on my own problems. This is an example from my small experience of how an
31893 attitude of compassion helps even oneself, suppressing some degree of physical
31894 pain and keeping away mental distress, despite the fact that others might not
31895 be directly helped.
31896 Compassion strengthens your outlook, and with that courage you are more
31897 relaxed. When your perspective includes the suffering of limitless beings,
31898 your own suffering looks comparatively small.
31899 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living
31900 Well and Dying Consciously", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
31903 ...blissful light, with a Chenrezig on the tip of each ray, streams out of
31904 you and touches each and every sentient being--those whom you like, those whom
31905 you don't, and those you don't know. When this glowing light touches each
31906 sentient being, it performs two functions: it purifies them of their
31907 negativities, and it inspires them to realize all the stages of the path to
31908 enlightenment. We may start imagining the light touching the beings in the
31909 room and gradually spreading out to those in the area, the country, the
31910 continent, the world, and the universe. Or we can start with our friends and
31911 family, then radiate light to strangers, and finally to those who have harmed
31912 us or of whom we're afraid. Or, we can first radiate light to human beings,
31913 then animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings, demi-gods, and gods. We can use our
31914 creativity and imagination when doing this visualization. Each meditation
31915 session can have a different emphasis.
31916 It's very easy to love sentient beings in a general way. But it's more
31917 effective to be specific in our visualizations. Send light to the guy who cut
31918 you off on the highway. Send light to the IRS employee who questioned your
31919 tax return. Send light to the terrorist who thinks that killing others in the
31920 name of God will cause him to be reborn in heaven. Send light to government
31921 leaders who think that bombing others solves problems. Send light to your
31922 teenager who leaves his room a mess and gets mad when you comment on it. Send
31923 light to specific people you know and care about, people who are having
31924 problems, strangers, and people you don't like. Send it to hospitals, the
31925 Middle East, the inner cities, and Beverly Hills. There's suffering
31926 everywhere. The light frees sentient beings from their suffering.
31927 -- Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga Method
31928 of Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion
31931 In Tibetan drenpa means "mindfulness," and sheshin means "awareness."
31932 Drenpa also means "mindfulness and memory." It means that one is mindful of
31933 what one is doing and remembers what one has to do whether one is meditating,
31934 whether one has lost the power of concentration, and so on. Mindfulness is
31935 like a causal condition and awareness is like the result. If one has very
31936 concentrated mindfulness, one immediately notices a thought arising and this
31937 becomes awareness, which becomes sheshin, and one knows what is occurring.
31938 Normally, one does not know what is in one's mind or what one is thinking, so
31939 there is no awareness. But if one has mindfulness, then it is said to the
31940 extent that mindfulness brings mental stability, one has awareness. So when
31941 one has mindfulness, it is through one's awareness of what is happening.
31942 At this level of pacification we become aware of the negative qualities of
31943 distraction. Santideva explains this by saying that when the mind is
31944 distracted, it is between the fangs of the wild animal of the kleshas
31945 [emotional obscurations], and from mental distractions come all the
31946 difficulties and mental hardships of this and future lives. Being in a state
31947 of distraction will increase the negative qualities of the mind more and more.
31948 However, being aware of the negative qualities motivates us to meditate.
31949 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "The Practice of Tranquillity and Insight:
31950 A Guide to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation", translated by Peter Roberts,
31951 published by Snow Lion Publications
31953 Developing a flexible approach to living is not only instrumental in
31954 helping us cope with everyday problems--it also becomes the cornerstone for a
31955 key element of a happy life: balance.
31956 Settling comfortably into his chair one morning, the Dalai Lama explained
31957 the value of leading a balanced life.
31958 "A balanced and skillful approach to life, taking care to avoid
31959 extremes, becomes a very important factor in conducting one's everyday
31960 existence. It is important in all aspects of life. For instance, in planting
31961 a sapling of a plant or a tree, at its very early stage you have to be very
31962 skillful and gentle. Too much moisture will destroy it, too much sunlight
31963 will destroy it. Too little will also destroy it. So what you need is a very
31964 balanced environment where the sapling can have a healthy growth. Or, for a
31965 person's physical health, too much or too little of any one thing can have
31966 destructive effects. For example, too much protein I think is bad, and too
31968 "This gentle and skillful approach, taking care to avoid extremes,
31969 applies to healthy mental and emotional growth as well."
31970 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., "The Art of
31971 Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
31973 ...Idle talk is usually considered a destructive action because it wastes
31974 our time. But if our friend is depressed and can't listen to wise advice, we
31975 can joke, tell silly stories, and use small talk to lighten his mood. Because
31976 our motivation is kind, our joking and chatting are positive.
31977 Laughing and having a good time aren't in opposition to Dharma. The more
31978 we leave behind attachment, anger, jealousy, and pride, the more we'll enjoy
31979 whatever we're doing. Our hearts will open to others and we can laugh and
31980 smile with ease. The holy beings I've been fortunate to meet have a wonderful
31981 sense of humor and are very friendly.
31982 In Buddhist groups, it's important for people to get to know each other
31983 and have a sense of fellowship. We can share experiences with our Dharma
31984 friends and encourage each other on the path. Buddhism isn't an isolated
31985 path, and it's important for Buddhists to cultivate group unity and
31987 It's not beneficial to retreat inside ourselves, thinking, "Every time I
31988 talk to someone I'm motivated by attachment. Therefore I'll concentrate on
31989 meditation and chanting and won't socialize with others." One of the
31990 fundamental principles of Buddhism is care and compassion for others.
31991 Although at times we may need to distance ourselves from others in order to
31992 settle our own minds, whenever possible we should actively develop genuine
31993 love for others. To do this, we must be aware of what's happening in others'
31994 lives, care about them as we do ourselves, and offer help whenever possible.
31995 Our ability to act with love develops with time and practice, and it has to be
31996 balanced with our need for private contemplation.
31997 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion
32000 Young men and young women may work systematically six days in the week and
32001 rise fresh in the morning, but let them attend modern dances for only a few
32002 hours each evening and see what happens. The Waltz, Polka, Gallop and other
32003 dances of the same kind will be disastrous in their effects to both sexes.
32004 Health and vigor will vanish like the dew before the sun. It is not the
32005 extraordinary exercise which harms the dancer, but rather the coming into
32006 close contact with the opposite sex. It is the fury of lust craving
32007 incessantly for more pleasure that undermines the soul, the body, the sinews
32008 and nerves. Experience and statistics show beyond doubt that passionate
32009 excessive dancing girls can hardly reach twenty-five years of age and men
32010 thirty-one. Even if they reached that age they will in most instances be
32011 broken in health physically and morally. This is the claim of prominent
32012 physicians in this country.
32013 -- Quote from a 1910 periodical.
32015 Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but...
32016 -- I'm trying to see how long I can go without saying yes.
32017 -- I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
32018 -- The monsters haven't turned blue yet, and I have to eat more dots.
32019 -- I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian.
32020 -- I have to fulfill my potential.
32021 -- I don't want to leave my comfort zone.
32022 -- It's too close to the turn of the century.
32023 -- I have to bleach my hare.
32024 -- I'm worried about my vertical hold knob.
32025 -- I left my body in my other clothes.
32027 I remember most vividly my first lesson on epistemology as a child, when I
32028 had to memorize the dictum "The definition of the mental is that which is
32029 luminous and knowing." Drawing on earlier Indian sources, Tibetan thinkers
32030 defined consciousness. It was years later that I realized just how
32031 complicated is the philosophical problem hidden behind this simple
32032 formulation. Today when I see nine-year-old monks confidently citing this
32033 definition of consciousness on the debating floor, which is such a central
32034 part of Tibetan monastic education, I smile.
32035 These two features--luminosity, or clarity, and knowing, or cognizance--
32036 have come to characterize "the mental" in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought.
32037 Clarity here refers to the ability of mental states to reveal or reflect.
32038 Knowing, by contrast, refers to mental states' faculty to perceive or
32039 apprehend what appears. All phenomena possessed of these qualities count as
32040 mental. These features are difficult to conceptualize, but then we are
32041 dealing with phenomena that are subjective and internal rather than material
32042 objects that may be measured in spatiotemporal terms. Perhaps it is because
32043 of these difficulties--the limits of language in dealing with the subjective--
32044 that many of the early Buddhist texts explain the nature of consciousness in
32045 terms of metaphors such as light, or a flowing river. As the primary feature
32046 of light is to illuminate, so consciousness is said to illuminate its objects.
32047 Just as in light there is no categorical distinction between the illumination
32048 and that which illuminates, so in consciousness there is no real difference
32049 between the process of knowing or cognition and that which knows or cognizes.
32050 In consciousness, as in light, there is a quality of illumination.
32051 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Universe in a Single Atom: Convergence
32052 of Science and Spirituality"
32054 False conceptions are exaggerated modes of thought that do not accord with
32055 the facts. Even if an object--an event, a person, or any other phenomenon--
32056 has a slightly favorable aspect, once the object is mistakenly seen as
32057 existing totally from its own side, true and real, mental projection
32058 exaggerates its goodness beyond what it actually is, resulting in lust. The
32059 same happens with anger and hatred; this time a negative factor is
32060 exaggerated, making the object seem to be a hundred percent negative, the
32061 result being deep disturbance. Recently, a psychotherapist told me that when
32062 we generate anger, ninety percent of the ugliness of the object of our anger
32063 is due to our own exaggeration. This is very much in conformity with the
32064 Buddhist idea of how afflictive emotions arise.
32065 At the point when anger and lust are generated, reality is not seen;
32066 rather, an unreal mental projection of extreme badness or extreme goodness is
32067 seen, evoking twisted, unrealistic actions. All of this can be avoided by
32068 seeing the fuller picture revealed by paying attention to the dependent-
32069 arising of phenomena, the nexus of causes and conditions from which they arise
32070 and in which they exist.
32071 Looked at this way, the disadvantages of afflictive emotions are obvious.
32072 If you want to be able to perceive the actual situation, you have to quit
32073 voluntarily submitting to afflictive emotions, because in each and every
32074 field, they obstruct perception of the facts.....
32075 Love and compassion also involve strong feelings that can even make you
32076 cry with empathy, but they are induced not by exaggeration but by valid
32077 cognition of the plight of sentient beings, and the appropriateness of being
32078 concerned for their well-being. These feelings rely on insight into how
32079 beings suffer in the round of rebirth called "cyclic existence," and the depth
32080 of these feelings is enhanced through insight into impermanence and
32081 emptiness.... Though it is possible for love and compassion to be influenced
32082 by afflictive emotions, true love and compassion are unbiased and devoid of
32083 exaggeration, because they are founded on valid cognition of your relationship
32084 to others. The perspective of dependent-arising is supremely helpful in
32085 making sure that you appreciate the wider picture.
32086 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to See Yourself As You Really Are",
32087 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
32089 The Prajna Paramita is a very profound philosophical doctrine, and I will just
32090 outline the main ideas in it in order to clarify the Chod. First we start off
32091 with the confused egocentric state of mind. This state of mind causes us to
32092 suffer, and so, to alleviate the suffering, we start to practice meditation.
32093 What happens in meditation is that the speedy mind begins to slow down and
32094 things begin to settle, like the mud sinking to the bottom of a puddle of
32095 water when it is left undisturbed. When this settling has occurred, a kind of
32096 clear understanding of the way things work in the mind takes place. This
32097 understanding is prajna, profound cognition. Then, according to Buddhist
32098 doctrine, through the use of this prajna, we begin to see that, in fact,
32099 although we think that we have a separate and unique essence, or self, which
32100 we call the "ego," when we look closely, we are a composite of form, sense-
32101 perceptions, consciousness, etc., and are merely a sum of these parts. This
32102 realization is the understanding of sunyata, usually translated as emptiness,
32103 or voidness. It means there is no self-essence, that we are "void of a self."
32104 If we are void of a self, there is no reason to be egocentric, since the whole
32105 notion of a separate ego is false. Therefore we can afford to be
32106 compassionate, and need not continually defend ourselves or force our desires
32108 -- Tsultrim Allione, "Women of Wisdom", published by Snow Lion Publications
32110 There is a film called "Groundhog Day," which is really a Buddhist movie
32111 because this is exactly what the plot is about. For those of you who haven't
32112 seen it, it's about somebody who had to relive the same day again and again
32113 until he got it right. He started out with an extremely negative attitude,
32114 and so throughout the first day he created a lot of negative causes. People
32115 related back to him from his own level of negativity, and so he had a very bad
32116 day. Then the next day he had to experience the same day all over again.
32117 Then again, and again. He became desperate to find a way out. He attempted
32118 suicide many times, but the next morning, there he was again in the same room
32119 and the same bed. The date hadn't changed, and the same song was playing on
32120 the radio. His attitude underwent many, many changes, until in the end he
32121 spent most of his time trying to help people. He forestalled tragedies he
32122 knew were going to happen because he had lived the day over so many times, and
32123 his whole attitude gradually turned around into working out ways to help
32124 others. As his inner attitude transformed, the day gradually got better and
32125 better. Finally, he was able to break through to a new day.
32126 The important thing is how we respond to our situation. We can transform
32127 anything if we respond in a skillful way. This is precisely what karma is
32128 about. If we greet situations with a positive attitude, we will eventually
32129 create positive returns. If we respond with a negative attitude, negative
32130 things will eventually come our way. Unlike the scenario in the movie, it
32131 doesn't always happen right away. We can be very nice people but still have
32132 lots of problems. On the other hand, we can be awful people and have a
32133 wonderful time. But from a Buddhist perspective, it's just a matter of time
32134 before we receive the results of our conduct. And usually it is true that
32135 people with a positive attitude encounter positive circumstances. Even if the
32136 circumstances do not appear positive, they be transformed through a positive
32137 view. On the other hand people with negative minds complain even when things
32138 are going well. They also transform circumstances, but they transform
32139 positive ones into negative ones!
32140 Both our present and our future depend on us. From moment to moment, we
32141 are creating our future. We are not a ball of dust tossed about by the winds
32142 of fate. We have full responsibility for our lives. The more aware we
32143 become, the more capable we are of making skillful choices.
32144 -- Venerable Tenzin Palmo, "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings
32145 on Practical Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Publications
32147 Why is endeavor necessary? If we consider material progress, we see that
32148 research started by one person can always be continued by another. But this
32149 is not possible with spiritual progress. The realization we talk about in the
32150 Buddhadharma is something that has to be accomplished by the individual. No
32151 one else can do it for us. Of course, it would be wonderful if in the future
32152 we could attain realization through some sort of new injection or by means of
32153 a new generation of computers, without having to go through any difficulties.
32154 If we could be absolutely certain that such a time would come, we could simply
32155 lie back and wait to get enlightened. But I doubt that this will ever happen.
32156 It is better to make an effort. We have to develop endeavor.
32158 Thus with patience I will practice diligence,
32159 For it is through zeal that I will reach enlightenment.
32160 If there is no wind, then nothing stirs;
32161 Neither is there merit where there is no diligence.
32162 We can be patient in various ways, such as by not thinking ill of those
32163 who harm us or by accepting suffering as the path. Of these two, the latter
32164 is the more important for generating endeavor, and it is endeavor that enables
32165 us to attain enlightenment. As Shantideva says, "It is through zeal that I
32166 will reach enlightenment." In the same way that protecting a lamp from the
32167 wind allows the flame to burn without flickering, endeavor enables the
32168 virtuous mind to grow undisturbed.
32169 What is endeavor? It is finding joy in doing what is good. To do that,
32170 it is necessary to remove anything that counteracts it, especially laziness.
32171 Laziness has three aspects: having no wish to do good, being distracted by
32172 negative activities, and underestimating oneself by doubting one's ability.
32173 Related to these are taking undue pleasure in idleness and sleep and being
32174 indifferent to samsara as a state of suffering.
32175 -- Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, "A Flash of
32176 Lightning in the Dark of Night: A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of
32177 Life", translated by The Padmakara Translation Group.
32179 Western women emerging from crisis situations often choose to live alone,
32180 intuitively knowing that the confrontation with oneself that this brings will
32181 lead to a deeper understanding. These women in our society (which sees them
32182 as pitiable and unfortunate) can take strength from the stories of Tibetan
32184 These Western women also seek the support of other women or
32185 psychotherapists to help them to emerge from their descents, just as the
32186 yoginis sought the guidance of their teachers and spiritual friends, and the
32187 Greeks needed the help of the "therapeutes" [helpers] to make sense of the
32188 memories they brought back from the oracle cave.
32189 Speaking of the descent myth in terms of her experiences in controlled
32190 therapeutic regressions, Jungian analyst M.L. Von Franz describes the descent
32191 process in relation to the story of "The Handless Maiden":
32192 In the Middle Ages there were many hermits, and in Switzerland there
32193 were the so-called Wood Brothers and Sisters. People who did not want
32194 to live a monastic life but who wanted to live alone in the forest had
32195 both a closeness to nature and also a great experience of spiritual
32196 inner life. Such Wood Brothers and Sisters could be personalities on
32197 a high level who had a spiritual fate and had to renounce active life
32198 for a time and isolate themselves to find their own inner relation to
32199 God. It is not very different from what the shaman does in the Polar
32200 tribes, or what medicine men do all over the world, in order to seek
32201 an immediate personal religious experience in isolation.
32202 ...If we avoid the descent because of fear of what we will discover about
32203 ourselves in the "underworld," we block ourselves off from a powerful
32204 transformative process. This process has been recognized by modern
32205 psychologists and ancient mystery religions alike.
32206 -- Tsultrim Allione, "Women of Wisdom", published by Snow Lion Publications
32208 The modes of thought in pride and in courageous thought are entirely
32210 Depression caused by disintegration of the ego probably comes from not
32211 being able to posit a conventionally existent I. Still, when some
32212 understanding of emptiness develops, you have a different feeling of I than
32213 that to which you previously were accustomed. Our usual feeling is that the I
32214 is something solid, really independent, and very forceful. Such no longer
32215 remains, but at the same time there is a sense of a mere I that accumulates
32216 karma and performs actions. Such a sense of self is not at all a source of
32218 If you have difficulty positing a merely nominal I as well as merely
32219 nominal cause and effect of actions--if you get to the point where if you
32220 assert selflessness, you cannot posit dependent-arising--then it would be
32221 better to assert dependent-arising and give up selflessness. Indeed, there
32222 are many levels of understanding selflessness, and Buddha, out of great
32223 skillfulness in method, taught many different schools of tenets that posit
32224 coarser levels of selflessness for those temporarily unable to understand the
32225 more subtle levels. It is not the case that only if the most profound level
32226 is immediately accessible, it is suitable, and if it is not accessible, the
32227 whole endeavor should be thrown away. You have to proceed step by step with
32228 whatever accords with your level of mind. Between emptiness and dependent-
32229 arising, you should value dependent-arising more highly.
32230 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the
32231 Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins,
32232 published by Snow Lion Publications
32234 Puba Supoche asked, "Dampa, tell me what it's like when you really
32235 practice sincerely! I understand neither heads nor tails of it!"
32236 Dampa said, "View is the destruction of extreme ideas regarding things!
32237 Cutting pride of self with confidence is realization! Being without support
32238 in luminosity is meditation! In insight, absence of recognition is the
32239 innate! Finding nowhere to place the mind among shifting phenomena is
32240 subsequent attainment! In their absence, there is no antidote but natural
32241 intensity! Naked awareness without grasping is dharmakaya! Disappearance
32242 without being anything is experience! Don't you wonder whether all this truly
32244 -- Padampa Sangye, "Lion of Siddhas: The Life and Teachings of Padampa
32245 Sangye", translated by David Molk, with Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche,
32246 published by Snow Lion Publications
32248 [do you have any thoughts about how a person could go about increasing their
32249 feeling of autonomy or freedom at work?]
32251 ...it will completely depend on the person's individual circumstances,
32252 what position they are in. Let's take the example of a prisoner. Now of
32253 course it is best not to be in prison, but even in that situation, where a
32254 person may be deprived of freedom, he or she may discover small choices that
32255 they are able to make. And even if somebody is in prison, with very rigid
32256 rules, they can undertake some spiritual practices to try to lessen their
32257 mental frustrations, try to get some peace of mind. So they can work on
32258 internal development...if people can do this under the extreme conditions of
32259 prison, in the workplace people may try to discover small things, small
32260 choices that they can make in how to go about their work. And of course,
32261 somebody may work on an assembly line with little variation in how to do their
32262 tasks, but they still have other kinds of choices in terms of their attitudes,
32263 how they interact with their co-workers, whether they utilize certain inner
32264 qualities or spiritual strengths to change their attitude at work even though
32265 the nature of the work may be difficult. Isn't it? So, perhaps that would
32267 Of course, when you are talking about rigid rules and lack of freedom,
32268 that doesn't mean that you are required to blindly follow and accept
32269 everything others tell you. In instances where the worker might be exploited,
32270 where the employer thinks of nothing but profit and pays a small salary and
32271 demands a lot of overtime, or where one may be asked to do things that are not
32272 appropriate or are unethical, one should not simply think, "Well, this is my
32273 karma," and take no action. Here it is not enough to think, "I should just be
32275 If there is injustice, then I think inaction is the wrong response. The
32276 Buddhist texts mention what is called "misplaced tolerance," or "misplaced
32277 forbearance." So...misplaced patience or forbearance refers to the sense of
32278 endurance that some individuals have when they are subject to a very
32279 destructive, negative activity. That is a misplaced forbearance and
32280 endurance. Similarly, in the work environment, if there is a lot of injustice
32281 and exploitation, then to passively tolerate it is the wrong response. The
32282 appropriate response really is to actively resist it, to try to change this
32283 environment rather than accept it. One should take some action...perhaps one
32284 could speak with the boss, with the management, and try to change these
32285 things. One needs to actively resist exploitation. And in some cases, one
32286 may simply need to quit and to look for other work.
32287 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D.,
32288 "The Art of Happiness at Work"
32290 The purpose of Buddha's coming to the world was for the sake of sentient
32291 beings' attaining the wisdom that he achieved. The paths that he taught are
32292 only a means leading to Buddhahood; he does not lead sentient beings with a
32293 low vehicle that is not a method leading to Buddhahood. He establishes
32294 sentient beings in the powers and so forth that exist in his own state.
32296 "Manjushri, all the doctrines that I teach to sentient beings are for
32297 the sake of attaining omniscient wisdom. Flowing into enlightenment
32298 and descending into the Mahayana, they are means of achieving
32299 omniscience, leading completely to one place. Therefore, I do not
32300 create different vehicles."
32301 -- from "Chapter of the True One Sutra".
32303 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
32304 published by Snow Lion Publications
32306 We are aiming to develop a strong feeling of love and compassion with
32307 respect to everyone, but this cannot be done without first seeing an equality
32308 of all beings throught meditatively cultivating equanimity. Otherwise, you'll
32309 easily be able to generate love and compassion for friends and may be able to
32310 extend a little of this to neutral people, but even minor enemies will remain
32311 a huge problem. Thus at first it is necessary to recognize how friends,
32312 neutral persons, and enemies are equal.
32313 This is done in two ways. One way to break down rigid classifications of
32314 people is by reflecting first with respect to friends, then neutral persons,
32316 "Just as I want happiness and don't want suffering, so this friend
32317 wants happiness and doesn't want suffering. And equally, this neutral
32318 person wants happiness and doesn't want suffering. And equally, this
32319 enemy wants happiness and doesn't want suffering."
32320 Another way is to reflect on what your relationships have been with others
32321 over the course of lifetimes, beginning with neutral persons, then friends,
32322 and finally enemies. An enemy in this lifetime wants to do you in, but over
32323 the course of lifetimes was this person just an enemy? No. If you do not
32324 believe in rebirth, utilize the rebirth game, the rebirth perspective, as a
32325 technique for making your mind more flexible.
32326 Either of these techniques will work:
32327 - Reflecting on the similarity of yourself and others in the basic
32328 aspiration to gain happiness and be rid of suffering.
32330 - Reflecting on the changeability of relationships over the course
32332 -- Jeffrey Hopkins, "A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting
32333 with Others", foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by
32334 Snow Lion Publications
32336 What is wisdom? It is as explained in the perfection of supreme knowledge
32337 teachings: all phenomena are free from elaborations, and when the perceiving
32338 subject as well becomes equally free from elaborations, that is wisdom. In
32339 particular, the wisdom of the buddha consists in the pacification of the
32340 elaborations and their habitual tendencies in relation to suchness. It is the
32341 inseparability of the expanse and wisdom. It is free from singularity and
32342 multiplicity, quality and qualified. It realizes the nonduality of subjects
32343 and objects. In it all phenomena--samsara and nirvana, faults and qualities,
32344 and so on--are always undifferentiable and equal. Outside of that, there is
32345 no way to posit wisdom.
32346 In a nonanalytical context of repeating what others accept, we Followers
32347 of the Middle Way describe knowable objects as existing. The wisdom of the
32348 buddhas is the same. Since we speak of all phenomena as existing from the
32349 perspective of others (even though from our own perspective they are free of
32350 the elaborations of existence and nonexistence), it is unreasonable to debate
32351 solely about the existence or nonexistence of the wisdom of buddhas.
32352 -- "The Karmapa's Middle Way: Feast for the Fortunate by the Ninth Karmapa,
32353 Wangchuk Dorje", trans. by Tyler Dewar, published by Snow Lion
32356 Well timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. -- Martin Fraqhar Tupper
32358 A diplomat is a man who says you have an open mind,
32359 instead of telling you that you have a hole in the head.
32362 To achieve great things, two things are needed;
32363 a plan, and not quite enough time.
32364 -- Leonard Bernstein
32366 To bend a bamboo, start when it is a shoot. -- Malaysian Proverb
32368 Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.
32371 No shade tree? Blame not the sun, but yourself. -- Chinese Proverb
32373 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool,
32374 than to speak and remove all doubt.
32377 Art is either plagiarism or revolution. -- Paul Gauguin
32379 When this world initially formed, there seem to have been two types of
32380 events or entities, one sentient, the other insentient. Rocks, for instance,
32381 are examples of nonsentient entities. You see, we usually consider them to
32382 have no feelings: no pains and no pleasures. The other type, sentient beings,
32383 have awareness, consciousness, pains and pleasures.
32384 But there needs to be a cause for that. If you posit there is no cause
32385 for consciousness, then this leads to all sorts of inconsistencies and logical
32386 problems. So, the cause is posited, established. It is considered certain.
32387 The initial cause must be an independent consciousness. And on that basis
32388 is asserted the theory of continuation of life after death. It is during the
32389 interval when one's continuum of awareness departs from one's body at death
32390 that the subtle mind, the subtle consciousness, becomes manifest. That
32391 continuum connects one life with the next.
32392 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations
32393 with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara
32394 Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by
32395 Snow Lion Publications
32397 Channels and cakras represent the inner structure of the human body,
32398 referred to in the tantric teachings as the 'vajra body'. 'Vajra' means
32399 'indestructible', and 'vajra body' refers to the dimension of the three
32400 fundamental components: the channels and cakras, the prana that flows through
32401 them, and the bindu or thigle, the white and red seed-essences of the physical
32402 body that form the basis for practices such as the Tummo.
32403 In the tantras of the Upadesa section of Dzogchen, it is explained that
32404 after the conception of a human being the first thing to develop is the navel
32405 cakra. Then from this, through a channel, the head cakra develops followed by
32406 the other main cakras of the throat and the heart. This channel or meridian,
32407 known as the life-channel, develops into the spinal cord and spine. At the
32408 same time it remains as the fundamental energy of the central channel.
32409 The central channel, known as Uma in Tibetan, is connected with the two
32410 lateral channels called Roma and Kyangma. The Roma channel, which is white
32411 and corresponds to lunar energy, is on the right side in men and on the left
32412 in women. Ro means 'taste', and the main function of this channel is to give
32413 the sensation of pleasure. The Kyangma channel, red and corresponding to
32414 solar energy, is on the left side in men and on the right in women. Kyang
32415 means 'sole', and unlike the Roma, this channel is not connected with many
32416 secondary channels. Control of this channel is fundamental in order to
32417 cultivate the experience of emptiness. These are the characteristic features
32418 of the two channels, which are related to the two principles of upaya or
32419 method, and of prajna or energy. Method denotes everything pertaining to the
32420 visible or material dimension; while 'prajna', which generally means
32421 discriminating wisdom, in this context denotes the energy of emptiness that is
32422 the base of any manifestation.
32423 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "Yantra Yoga: The Tibetan Yoga of Movement",
32424 translated by Adriano Clemente, published byy Snow Lion Publications
32426 Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them.
32429 The taller the bamboo grows, the lower it bends.
32432 You can't depend on the man who made the mess to clear it up.
32435 You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket. -- John Adams
32437 Kissing is like drinking salted water; you drink and your thirst increases.
32440 The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the
32441 mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own
32442 capacity.... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the
32443 Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god of the
32444 center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together what
32445 they could doto repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone
32446 else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on,
32447 Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in
32448 him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.
32451 Everybody loves to talk about calm and peace, whether in a family,
32452 national, or international context. But without inner peace how can we make
32453 real peace? World peace through hatred and force is impossible. Even in the
32454 case of individuals, there is no possibility to feel happiness through anger.
32455 If in a difficult situation one becomes disturbed internally, overwhelmed by
32456 mental discomfort, then external things will not help at all. However, if
32457 despite external difficulties or problems, internally one's attitude is of
32458 love, warmth, and kind-heartedness, then problems can be faced and accepted.
32460 The necessary foundation for world peace and the ultimate goal of any new
32461 international order is the elimination of violence at every level. For this
32462 reason the practice of non-violence surely suits us all. It simply requires
32463 determination, for by its very nature non-violent action requires patience.
32464 While the practice of non-violence is still something of an experiment on this
32465 planet, if it is successful it will open the way to a far more peaceful world
32466 in the next century.
32467 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Pocket Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by
32470 On the tenth night of the twelfth month, Gyal Dawa, the girl, came again.
32471 She said, "Don't neglect my request for a prayer. It is very important."
32472 That's the dream she had. I thought, "I'll write it on the full moon day."
32473 So on the night of the fourteenth I prayed with single-pointed devotion to
32474 Guru Rinpoche to grant blessing that the prayer would be beneficial and then
32475 fell asleep. Early in the morning of the fifteenth I dreamed I was sitting in
32476 front of the shrine in a very large building that looked like a temple.
32477 Suddenly a young white man dressed in white with his hair falling loosely over
32478 his shoulder appeared at the entrance. He was playing the cymbals melodiously
32479 and dancing the swirling, joyous dance of the Ging. He came closer and
32482 If you want to establish the dharma,
32483 Establish it in your mind.
32484 In the depth of mind, you will find Buddha.
32485 If you wish to visit the buddha fields,
32486 Purify ordinary deluded attachment.
32487 The perfectly comfortable buddha field is close by.
32488 Develop the joyful effort to practice,
32489 That is the essence of the teaching.
32490 Without practice, who can gain the siddhis?
32491 It is hard to see one's faults,
32492 But to see them nakedly is powerful advice.
32493 In the end when faults have been cleared away,
32494 The enlightened qualities increase and shine forth.
32496 At the end of this he rolled his cymbals. Then he crashed them together,
32497 and I awoke. After I woke up, I did not forget what he had said. I
32498 understood it to have been advice on practicing what to accept and what to
32499 reject. I was sad that although I had actually seen the face of my only
32500 father, Guru Padmasambhava, I had not recognized him.
32501 I, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, old father of the Nyingma, wrote this from my own
32502 experience. Sarva Mangalam [May all be auspicious].
32503 -- Khenpo Tsewaang Dongyal Rinpoche, "Light of Fearless Indestructible
32504 Wisdom: The Life and Legacy of His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche", published
32505 by Snow Lion Publications
32507 The modern economy has no national boundaries. When we talk about ecology,
32508 the environment, when we are concerned about the ozone layer, one individual,
32509 one society, one country cannot solve these problems. We must work together.
32510 Humanity needs more genuine cooperation. The foundation for the development
32511 of good relations with one another is altruism, compassion, and forgiveness.
32512 For small arguments to remain limited, in the human circle the best method is
32513 forgiveness. Altruism and forgiveness are the basis for bringing humanity
32514 together. Then no conflict, no matter how serious, will go beyond the bounds
32515 of what is truly human.
32516 -- "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
32517 About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited bby Sidney Piburn, Foreword
32518 by Sen. Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
32520 Creation in four vajra steps entails meditation on emptiness; generating a
32521 moon, sun, and seed-syllable from which light emanates and then converges; the
32522 full manifestation of the deity resulting from the convergence of the light
32523 and transformation of the seed-syllable; and visualization of three syllables
32524 at the deity's three places. [The syllables om, ah, and hum are imagined at
32525 the forehead, throat, and heart, respectively.]
32526 ...Kongtrul explains that all the varieties of the creation phase
32527 incorporate the four key elements of form, imagination, result, and
32528 transformative power. "Form" means meditating on forms that represent the
32529 aspects of awakening and generating clear images of these forms, thereby
32530 stopping impure appearances. "Imagination" means using the force of creative
32531 imagination to convert the visualized forms of awakening into reality.
32532 "Result" means meditating on the result, that is, the very goal to be
32533 attained, and thereby achieving that goal. "Transformative power" means
32534 turning the ordinary body and mind into pristine awareness by relying on the
32535 transformative powers of awakened beings. Among these, Kongtrul points out,
32536 the most important element for realization of the path is the transformative
32537 power of the vajra master combined with one's own devotion to that master.
32538 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taaye, "The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight,
32539 Part Three: The Elements of Tantric Practice", translated by Ingrid
32540 Loken McLeod and Elio Guarisco, published by Snow Lion Publications
32542 From The Prayer Requested by Namke Nyingbo
32545 All these things of the outer environment and the beings therein
32546 That come into sight as the objects of your eyes like this,
32547 They may appear, but leave them in the sphere free from clinging to a self.
32548 Since they are pure of perceiver and perceived, they are the
32549 luminous-empty body of the deity.
32550 I pray to the guru in whom attachment is self-liberated,
32551 I pray to Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
32553 All these sounds, taken as pleasant or unpleasant,
32554 That resound as the objects of your ears like this,
32555 Leave them in the sphere of inconceivable, empty resonance.
32556 Empty resonance, unborn and unceasing, is the Victor's speech.
32557 I pray to the words of the Victor that resound and yet are empty,
32558 I pray to Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
32560 However these thoughts of afflictions' five poisons,
32561 Which stir as objects in your mind like this, may appear,
32562 Do not mess around with them through a mind that rushes ahead into the
32563 future or lingers in the past.
32564 Through leaving their movement in its own place, they uncoil as the dharmakaya.
32565 I pray to the guru whose awareness is self-liberated, I pray to
32566 Padmasambhava from Uddiyana.
32568 Grant your blessings that the mind stream of someone like me is liberated
32569 Through the compassion of the Tathagatas of the three times,
32570 So that objects, appearing as if perceived outside, become pure,
32571 That my very mind, perceiving as if inside, becomes liberated,
32572 And that, in between, luminosity will recognize its own face.
32574 -- "Straight from the Heart: Buddhist Pith Instructions", translated
32575 and introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, published by Snow Lion Publications
32577 The actual method of cultivating the correct attitudes towards the
32578 spiritual master is to practice contemplative meditation upon the guru's good
32579 qualities and the beneficial effects that he or she introduces into one's
32580 life. By reflecting again and again on the great kindness the guru performs,
32581 a confidence suitable for spiritual training under him or her is born. This
32582 process of reflecting on the role of the guru is important in the beginning as
32583 well as in the higher practices, for as we sit in contemplation we become
32584 faced with a stream of reactions, which if understood at an early stage can
32585 clear the mind of much doubt, confusion and superstition.
32586 The spiritual master is the source of all spiritual progress. In this
32587 context, Geshe Potowa once said, "If even those who want to learn a common
32588 worldly trade must study under a qualified teacher, how much more so must we
32589 who seek enlightenment? Most of us have come from the lower realms and have
32590 no background or experience in the paths and stages to enlightenment; and, if
32591 we wish to gain this experience, why should we not study with someone
32592 qualified to teach us the methods that develop it?"
32593 In the beginning of his Great Exposition, Lama Tsongkhapa writes, "The
32594 root of spiritual development is to cultivate an effective relationship with a
32595 master." This means that we must cultivate the correct attitudes and then
32596 demonstrate them correctly in action. This is the root that, if made strong,
32597 supports the trunk, branches, leaves and flowers of practice. When the roots
32598 of a tree are strong, the entire tree becomes strong, whereas when the roots
32599 are weak, the entire tree will remain weak.
32600 ...We should engender respect such that we see the guru as a Buddha. If
32601 we can do this, then we experience the guru as we would a Buddha and
32602 consequently are sufficiently inspired to practice what he or she teaches.
32603 The instruction to see the guru as a Buddha is not unreasonable, for in many
32604 ways the spiritual master is Buddha himself.
32605 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
32606 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Liion Publications
32608 ...when you start practicing, you should not expect too much. We live in
32609 a time of computers and automation, so you may feel that inner development is
32610 also an automatic thing for which you press a button and everything changes.
32611 It is not so. Inner development is not easy and will take time. External
32612 progress, the latest space missions and so forth, have not reached their
32613 present level within a short period but over centuries, each generation making
32614 greater developments based on those of the previous generation. However,
32615 inner development is even more difficult since internal improvement cannot be
32616 transferred from generation to generation. Your past life's experience very
32617 much influences this life, and this life's experience becomes the basis for
32618 the next rebirth's development, but transference of inner development from one
32619 person to another is impossible. Thus, everything depends on yourself, and it
32621 I have met Westerners who at the beginning were very enthusiastic about
32622 their practice, but after a few years have completely forgotten it, and there
32623 are no traces of what they had practiced at one time. This is because at the
32624 beginning they expected too much. Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva
32625 Deeds emphasizes the importance of the practice of patience--tolerance. This
32626 tolerance is an attitude not only towards your enemy but also an attitude of
32627 sacrifice, of determination, soo that you do not fall into the laziness of
32628 discouragement. You should practice patience, or tolerance, with great
32629 resolve. This is important.
32630 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatsoo, "Kindness,
32631 Clarity, and Insight 25th Anniversary Edition", edited and translated
32632 by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow
32635 I take refuge until I am enlightened in the Buddhas,
32636 the Dharma, and the Sangha.
32637 By the positive potential I create by practicing generosity
32638 and the other far-reaching attitudes (ethical discipline,
32639 patience, joyous effort, meditative stabilization, and wisdom),
32640 may I attain Buddhahood in order to benefit all sentient beings.
32642 It takes only a few moments to think in this way and to recite the prayer,
32643 yet doing so has a significant effect on the rest of our day. We'll be more
32644 cheerful and will be sure of our direction in life. Especially if we don't do
32645 a regular meditation practice, starting the day in this way is extremely
32647 In the evening, after reviewing the day's activities and freeing our minds
32648 from any remaining afflictions that may have arisen during the day, we again
32649 take refuge and generate the altruistic intention.
32650 Before going to sleep, we can envision the Buddha, made of light, on our
32651 pillow. Placing our head in his lap, we fall asleep amidst the gentle glow of
32652 his wisdom and compassion. Instead, we can learn the guidelines and try to
32653 implement them as much as we can, reviewing them periodically to refresh our
32654 minds. We may choose one guideline to emphasize this week in our daily lives.
32655 Next week, we can add another, and so on. In that way, we'll slowly build up
32656 the good habits of practicing all of them.
32657 -- Ven. Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion
32660 Compassion is the wish for another being to be free from suffering;
32661 love is wanting them to have happiness.
32662 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Compassionate Life"
32664 The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past,
32665 worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present
32666 moment wisely and earnestly.
32669 Our patience will achieve more than our force. -- Edmund Burke
32671 The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his tax return,
32672 it's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
32673 -- Arthur C. Clarke
32675 Despite all the material progress in this and the last century we still
32676 experience suffering, especially in relation to mental well-being. In fact,
32677 if anything, the complex way of life created by modernisation or globalisation
32678 is causing new problems and new causes of mental unrest. Under these
32679 circumstances I feel that the various religious traditions have an important
32680 role to play in helping to maintain peace and the spirit of reconciliation and
32681 dialogue, and therefore harmony and close contact between them is essential.
32682 Whether we are believers or non-believers and, within the category of the
32683 believers, whether we hold this or that belief, we must respect all the
32684 traditions. That's very important.
32685 I always tell people in non-Buddhist countries that followers of other
32686 religions should maintain their own tradition. To change religion is not
32687 easy, and people can get into trouble as a result of confusion. So it is much
32688 safer to keep to one's own tradition, while respecting all religions. I'm
32689 Buddhist--sometimes I describe myself as a staunch Buddhist--but, at the same
32690 time, I respect and admire the works of other traditionss' figures such as
32691 Jesus Christ. Basically, all the religious traditions have made an immense
32692 contribution to humanity and continue to do so, and as such are worthy of our
32693 respect and admiration.
32694 When we contemplate the diversity of spiritual traditions on this planet
32695 we can understand that each addresses the specific needs of different human
32696 beings, because there is so much diversity in human mentality and spiritual
32697 inclination. Yet, fundamentally, all spiritual traditions perform the same
32698 function, which is to help us tame our mental state, overcome our negativities
32699 and perfect our inner potential.
32700 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
32701 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
32703 ...For one who abides in thought
32704 Feats do not arise.
32705 Therefore abandon thought
32706 And think a mantra form.
32708 'Abandon thought' refers to the eradication of thought conceiving self
32709 [inherent existence] through the wisdom of selflessness; it does not mean to
32710 stop any and all types of thought. 'Think a mantra form' means to meditate on
32711 a deity. The measure of firmness in deity yoga is indicated by 'whether
32712 going, standing, or sitting is always immovable though moving about'. When
32713 one has attained the capacity to hold the mind on the divine body in all types
32714 of behaviour--whether in meditative equipoise or not--without moving to
32715 something else, one has the capacity to remove the pride of ordinaariness.
32716 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins,
32717 "Deity Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow
32720 A person who is liberated, who has freed his or her mind of all mental
32721 afflictions, still experiences physical suffering. The difference between us
32722 and an arhat, a person who has freed the mind from mental affliction, is that
32723 an arhat doesn't identify with pain. Arhats experience physical pain vividly
32724 but don't grasp onto it; they can take action to avoid or alleviate pain, but
32725 whether they do so or not, the physical pain doesn't come inside. What an
32726 arhat does not experience is mental suffering. A buddha, one who is perfectly
32727 spiritually awakened, has gone a further step. A buddha has no mental
32728 suffering of his or her own, but is vividly and non-dually aware of the
32729 suffering of others.
32730 Superficially, the arhat who is free from mental suffering can seem to us
32731 who lack this realization as numb and detached, in a state of existential
32732 anesthesia. A buddha, one who is fully awakened, presents the paradox of
32733 being free from suffering and also non-dually present with other people's joys
32734 and sorrows, hopes and fears. A buddha taps into immutable bliss, the
32735 ultimate ground state of awareness beyond the dichotomy of stimulus-driven
32736 pain and pleasure. The mind of a buddha has been purified of all obscuration
32737 and from its own nature there naturally arises immutable bliss, like a spring
32738 welling up from the earth. With the unveiling of the buddha-nature of
32739 unconditioned bliss, there is also a complete erosion of an absolute
32740 demarcation between self and other. The barrier is gone. This is why buddhas
32741 are vividly and non-dually aware of the suffering of others, their hopes and
32742 fears, the whole situation, and at the same time are not disengaged from the
32743 purity and bliss of their own awareness. The mind of a buddha doesn't block
32744 out anything and nothing is inhibited, and this is why the awareness of an
32745 awakened being is frequently described as "unimaginable."
32746 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point
32747 Mind Training", published by Snow Lion Publications
32749 The fifth Tara is known as Wangdu Rigje Lhamo. She is Kurukulle in
32750 Sanskrit and Rigjema or Rigje Lhamo in Tibetan. Wangdu means power of
32751 "gathering, summoning," or "magnetizing." We can think of it as attracting
32752 everything beneficial, to benefit all beings. Rigjema means "she who
32753 precisely understands everything" and Lhamo is "divine lady." So she is known
32754 as the Tara who precisely understands the power of magnetizing.
32755 Kurukulle's practice is very extensively taught throughout Tibetan
32756 Buddhism. She is often named the "Red Tara" because of her color. Her Praise
32758 CHAG TSHAL TUT TA RA HUNG YI GE
32759 Homage, Mother, filling all regions, sky, and the realm of desire
32761 DO DANG CHOG DANG NAM KHA GANG MA
32762 With the sounds of TUTTARA and HUNG,
32764 JIG TEN DUN PO ZHAB CHI NEN TE
32765 Trampling the seven worlds with her feet,
32767 LU PA ME PAR GUG PAR NU MA
32768 Able to summon all before her.
32769 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab annd Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, "Tara's Enlightened
32770 Activity: An Oral Commentary on 'The Twenty-one Praises to Tara'",
32771 published by Snow Lion Publications
32773 The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
32776 Always bear in mind that your resolution to succeed
32777 is more important than any one thing.
32780 Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless-like water. Now you put water into a
32781 cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle,
32782 you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can
32783 crash. Be water, my friend.
32786 All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability.
32787 The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
32790 A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
32791 than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
32794 The remembrance of youth is a sigh. -- Oriental Maxim
32796 Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
32797 -- Herbert Henry Asquith
32799 The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
32800 -- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
32802 What we play is life. -- Louis Armstrong
32804 Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain
32805 the whole truth, or the only truth.
32808 Some say the glass is half empty,
32809 some say the glass is half full,
32810 I say, are you going to drink that?
32813 Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. -- Carl Jung
32815 Since a politician never believes what he says,
32816 he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.
32817 -- Charles de Gaulle
32819 On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable.
32820 The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the
32821 other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out
32822 is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting
32823 against each other.
32824 -- Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984
32826 Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.
32827 -- William Ruckelshaus
32829 Those who get too big for their briches will be exposed in the end. -- Anon.
32831 We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is weird
32832 because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world
32833 is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my
32834 interest has been to convince you that you must accept responsibility for being
32835 here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous
32836 time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count,
32837 since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for
32838 witnessing all the marvels of it.
32839 -- Don Juan, Yaqui Shaman
32841 Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
32844 People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true. -- Francis Bacon
32846 The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling,
32847 but in rising every time we fall.
32850 Stapp's Ironical Paradox:
32851 The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any
32852 human accomplishment an incredible miracle.
32853 -- Col. John P. Stapp
32855 When the only tool you own is a hammer,
32856 every problem begins to resemble a nail.
32859 Peace is not a little white dove. It is you and me. -- Rigoberta Menchu Tum
32861 If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
32864 The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes,
32865 in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip
32866 himself of almost all sense and meaning.
32867 -- Sir Winston Churchill
32869 Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? -- Frank Scully
32871 Money often costs too much. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
32873 The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.
32876 The true meaning of life is to plant trees
32877 under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
32878 -- Nelson Henderson
32880 The first human being who hurled an insult instead
32881 of a stone was the founder of civilization.
32884 When the weight of the world has got you down
32885 and you want to end your life.
32886 Bills to pay, a dead-end job,
32887 and problems with the wife.
32888 But don't throw in the tow'l,
32889 'cuz there's a place right down the block...
32890 Where you can drink your misery away...
32891 At Flaming Moe's.... (Let's all go to Flaming Moe's...)
32892 When liquor in a mug (Let's all go to Flaming Moe's...)
32893 can warm you like a hug. (Flaming Moe's...)
32894 And happiness is just a Flaming Moe away...
32895 Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away...
32896 -- Flaming Moe's Theme Song, The Simpsons.
32898 Stop living for what's around the corner
32899 and start enjoying the walk down the street.
32902 Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom. -- George Iles
32904 One day Ananda, who had been thinking deeply about things for a while, turned
32905 to the Buddha and exclaimed: "Lord, I've been thinking--spiritual friendship
32906 is at least half of the spiritual life!" The Buddha replied: "Say not so,
32907 Ananda, say not so. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!"
32908 -- Samyutta Nikaya, Verse 2
32910 There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human
32911 limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on
32912 some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly
32913 moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one,
32914 and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.
32917 A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but
32918 together can decide that nothing can be done.
32921 An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
32922 -- Robert A. Humphrey
32924 The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best--and therefore
32925 never scrutinize or question.
32926 -- Stephen Jay Gould
32928 41. One's own awareness, fresh and uncontrived
32929 One's own awareness, fresh and uncontrived,
32930 Is the primordially present ultimate Lama
32931 From whom you have not been separated for even an instant.
32932 This meeting with the original abiding nature--how amazing!
32933 I, Jnana, wrote this in response to Changchub Palmo's request.
32934 -- "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart Advice", translated by
32935 Ron Garry, a Tsadra Foundation Series book, published by Snow Lion
32937 I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring
32938 newspaper headings concerning railroad disasters, less than three hundred
32939 people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve
32940 months. The Erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list. It had
32941 killed forty-six.or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know
32942 the number was double that of any other road. But the fact straightway
32943 suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did more
32944 business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed
32945 ceased to be matter for surprise.
32946 By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the
32947 Erie ran eight passenger trains each way every day.sixteen altogether; and
32948 carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in six
32949 months.the population of New York city. Well, the Erie kills from thirteen
32950 to twenty-three persons out of its million in six months; and in the same
32951 time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, my hair
32953 "This is appalling!" I said. "The danger isn't in travelling by rail, but
32954 in trusting to those deadly beds. I will never sleep in a bed again."
32955 --Mark Twain on Risk Analysis, 1871
32957 The activities of this degenerate age are like a madman's performance of dance.
32958 No matter what we do, there is no way to please others.
32959 Think about what is essential.
32960 This is my heart's advice.
32961 --Bhande Dharmaradza
32963 In any group of people, there is always some misunderstanding. You cannot
32964 satisfy everyone, no matter what you do. The Bodhicaryavatara says that every
32965 individual has a different way of thinking. Thus, it is very difficult to
32966 please everyone. Even the Buddha could not do it, so how can we? Instead of
32967 trying to please others, please yourself by applying yourself fully to
32969 Investigate your situation carefully, according to the Dharma. For us, it is
32970 more important to know what is best than to know how to please everyone. Know
32971 what is right, and on the basis of your own wisdom and skill, just do it.
32972 Don't expect that other people will be pleased with you or that they will be
32973 happy about what you do. Rather, do what's best, what's helpful for yourself
32974 and for others. If they are happy about it, that's fine. If they are not
32975 happy, what can you do?
32976 -- "A Complete Guide to the Buddhist Path", by Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen,
32977 edited by Khenmo Trinlay Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
32979 Lochen Gyurme Dechen, nephew of the great accomplished master Tangtong
32980 Gyalpo, sang this song, a prayer of the Six Doctrines, called "The Rain
32983 Nama Shri Jnana Daki Nigupta-ye!
32985 Lady of the celestial realms, compassionate one,
32986 Chief of wisdom dakinis, Niguma,
32987 When I, your child, pray fervently to you,
32988 In your expanse free from formulations, please think of me.
32989 Lady who reveals the sacred circle of great secrets,
32990 Bestow now the empowerment of the four joys!
32991 Lady who opens the door to the unborn state,
32992 Clear away now my negative acts and obscurations with the purification
32994 Lady who emits fire from the short Ah,
32995 Burn now my soiled aggregates and sense elements!
32996 Lady who draws great bliss from the syllable Ham,
32997 Bestow now coemergent wisdom!
32998 Lady who reveals the natural experience of illusion,
32999 Destroy now my attachment to the reality of anger and desire!
33000 Lady who emanates and transforms during lucid dreams,
33001 Lady who makes spontaneous luminosity arise,
33002 Dispel now the darkness of my stupidity!
33003 Lady who leads above at the time of departure,
33004 Guide me now to the celestial realms!
33005 Lady who overcomes the appearances of delusion in the intermediate state,
33006 Grant me now the invincible body of enlightenment's perfect rapture.
33008 This prayer was sung by the religious teacher Gyurme Dechen.
33010 -- "Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse of the Shangpa Masters", compiled by
33011 Jamgon Kongtrul, translated & edited by Ngawang Zangpo, a Tsadra
33012 Foundation Series book, published by Snow Lion Publications
33014 ...ngondro, the foundational practices, are ways to bring body, speech, or
33015 energy, and all aspects of mind into increasingly effortless harmony with the
33016 oceanic expanse central to Dzogchen teachings. This expanse is another name
33017 for reality, the heart of our being, and thus for mind-nature. Its vastness
33018 challenges the cramped and reified self-images that temporarily obstruct our
33019 view of the whole. Finitudes of any kind--the sense of being small and
33020 contained, the familiar urgent rush of business, passions, or plans--are
33021 simply conceptions. These conceptions are both cause and effect of energetic
33022 holdings in the body. The foundational practices illuminate these holdings
33023 and, in the end, lead to their dissolution into the expanse. As Khetsun
33024 Sangpo Rinpoche has said, "Like a fire that burns fuel, the mind consumes
33025 thought by working with it."
33026 In the Tibetan traditions, teaching and practice sessions typically open
33027 with a reference, brief or extensive, to the foundational practices. Every
33028 lineage has its own variations, but the basic structure and principles of
33029 these practices are virtually identical. After an acknowledgment of one's
33030 guru or lineage and the intention to benefit all beings, the sequence usually
33031 begins with the four thoughts. These are reflections on (1) the preciousness
33032 of one's own life, (2) the fragility of life and the uncertainty of death's
33033 timing, (3) the inexorable nature of karma, and (4) the impossibility of
33034 avoiding suffering so long as ignorance holds one in samsara. In addition,
33035 there are two other contemplations: (5) the benefits of liberation compared to
33036 life in samsara and (6) the importance of a spiritual guide. These six are
33037 known as the outer foundational practices.
33038 These six are combined with five inner practices, each of which is repeated
33039 one hundred thousand times. The first inner foundational practice is refuge.
33040 Refuge, writes Adzom Drukpa, is the cornerstone of all paths. Without it, he
33041 adds, quoting Candrakirti, all vows come to nothing. Most succinctly, refuge
33042 helps us cultivate a quality vital to the path and to human interaction in
33043 general: this is the quality of trust, the ability to fruitfully rely on
33044 someone or something other than oneself. Adzom Paylo Rinpoche once said that
33045 whereas relying on others in the context of samsara generally leads us astray,
33046 relying on the Dharma increases our good qualities.
33047 -- "Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse: A Story of Transmission", by Anne C.
33048 Klein, foreword by Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, preface by Tulku Thondup
33049 Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
33051 1.18 Fruition of the Seed of Enlightenment
33053 When we engage in virtuous actions, we realize they are beneficial not only
33054 for others, but also for ourselves. Our good deeds can earn the praise and
33055 appreciation of others, and the benefits of our work come back to us through
33056 others. When we are involved with virtuous works, people respect us and hold
33057 us in high esteem. And we know we must be doing something good, because we
33058 experience a wholesome, pleasant feeling about our life's work. We quickly
33059 begin to see the short-term benefits of our involvement in virtuous action as
33060 our bodies and minds become more peaceful in our daily lives.
33061 This serenity in turn increases our longevity as our body and mind become
33062 more harmonized. Even after our death, we will be reincarnated in higher
33063 realms of existence as a result of our involvement with virtuous works during
33064 this life. Yet a higher rebirth is merely a short-term benefit, a temporary
33065 relief from the sufferings of samsara, for until we achieve liberation from
33066 samsara we remain trapped in the cycle of suffering, and "whatever goes up,
33068 Within the mundane world, when our evil deeds are common knowledge, no one
33069 sings their praises. If such deeds are remembered at all, it is in infamy.
33070 However, when a being lives with a mind of true bodhichitta and does great
33071 works of pure altruism, their deeds are remembered for centuries. Of such
33072 cases we have many examples within the Kagyu lineage alone: the historical
33073 Buddha, Guru Rinpoche, Milarepa, the Karmapas, and countless others. Yet it
33074 is also important to remember that virtuous action eventually leads us to the
33075 liberation of buddhahood; this is the ultimate long-term benefit of planting
33076 the seed of enlightenment of which we speak. Hence, as we make this journey
33077 towards liberation, it is extremely important for us to learn to recognize
33078 which of our actions are virtuous and which are not.
33079 -- Lama Dudjom Dorjee, "Heartfelt Advice", Snow Lion Publications
33081 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, addressing those who have or will undertake a
33082 retreat, gives this advice:
33084 "You will fall sick, experience pain, and encounter many adverse
33085 circumstances. At such times do not think, 'Although I am practicing the
33086 Dharma, I have nothing but trouble. The Dharma cannot be so great. I have
33087 followed a teacher and done so much practice, and yet hard times still befall
33088 me.' Such thoughts are wrong views. You should realize that through the
33089 blessing and power of the practice, by experiencing sickness and other
33090 difficulties now, you are purifying and ridding yourself of negative
33091 actions.... By purifying them while you have the chance, you will later go
33092 from bliss to bliss. So do not think, 'I don't deserve this illness, these
33093 obstacles, these negative influences.' Experience your difficulties as
33094 blessings...when you do experience such difficulties, you should be very happy
33095 and avoid having adverse thoughts like, 'Why are such terrible things
33098 As Rinpoche advises, relating to hardship properly depends on the strength
33099 of one's view. In general, having a view is knowing exactly where you want
33100 to go and how to get there. It is the vision of knowing what you want. For
33101 example, if you have the view to become a doctor, your vision guides you
33102 through financial burdens, physical and emotional difficulties, and obstacles
33103 that get in your way. You know it will be difficult and involve sacrifice,
33104 but with a strong view, you forge to the finish line.
33105 Similarly, if you want to become spiritually awakened, it is the power of
33106 your view that gets you there. If you are having a hard time getting to the
33107 meditation cushion, or engaging in the necessary study, it is because your
33108 view is not strong enough or is incomplete. A partial view, in this case, is
33109 one that doesn't include hardship. You can strengthen your view and
33110 accelerate progress by understanding how you lose your view in the fog of
33111 hardship, and therefore lose sight of your path.
33112 -- Dr. Andrew Holecek, "The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual
33113 Hardship into Joy", published by Snow Lion Publications
33115 Chod is a very powerful path to buddhahood. Its power comes from working
33116 with the practitioner's afflictive emotions. Chod is purposely performed in
33117 frightening places to help the practitioner heighten his fear so that he has
33118 the opportunity to cut through it.
33119 -- adapted from Chod Practice in the Bon Tradition, by Alejandro Chaoul,
33120 published by Snow Lion Publications
33122 Under the heading of the great way's [Mahayana's] perspective, we read of how
33123 the Buddha merely demonstrates the process of enlightenment in this world,
33124 something he has done and will do repeatedly. Kongtrul quotes the Buddha in
33125 an important discourse:
33127 "In the past, countless ages ago, in a world-system that united as many
33128 realms as there are grains of sand in the Ganges, I attained enlightenment as
33129 Transcendent Buddha Crown of the Powerful One, aided beings, and transcended
33130 sorrow. Then once again, from that point until the present age, I have
33131 repeatedly demonstrated the inconceivable process of enlightenment.
33132 "I will continue, until cyclic existence is empty, to demonstrate [this
33133 process of] enlightenment beginning with the initial development of the mind
33134 of awakening as an ordinary being."
33136 While such statements do not help us grasp the nature of the Buddha's
33137 enlightenment, they do underline the fact that enlightenment is a specific
33138 experience, the result of a known and knowable process that the Buddha
33139 deliberately demonstrates time and again so that we might follow his example,
33140 no guesswork involved.
33141 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, "Treasury of Knowledge, Books Two, Three,
33142 and Four: Buddhism's Journey to Tibet" translated and introduced by
33143 Ngawang Zangpo, published by Snow Lion Publications
33147 The essence of thoughts that suddenly arise is without any nature. Do not
33148 inhibit their appearance in any way, and without thinking of any essence, let
33149 them arise clearly, nakedly, and vividly. Likewise, if one thought arises,
33150 observe its nature, and if two arise, observe their nature. Thus, whatever
33151 thoughts arise, let them go without holding onto them. Let them remain as
33152 fragments. Release them unimpededly. Be naked without an object. Release
33153 them without grasping. This is close to becoming a Buddha. This is the self-
33154 extinction of samsara, samsara is overwhelmed, samsara is disempowered, and
33155 samsara is exhausted. Knowledge of the path of method and wisdom, appearances
33156 and emptiness, the gradual stages, the common and special paths, and the 84,
33157 000 entrances to the Dharma is made perfectly complete and fulfilled in an
33158 instant. This is self-arisen, for it is present like that in the very nature
33159 [of awareness]. Natural liberation is the essence of all the stainless paths,
33160 and it bears the essence of emptiness and compassion.
33161 -- Karma Chagme, "A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the
33162 Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga", commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche, trans.
33163 by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
33165 We must learn to trust ourselves when we practice the doctrines of the Buddha.
33166 In time, we come to trust the infallibility of karmic cause and effect and of
33167 the interdependence of all actions. We must come to know and trust the
33168 importance of the accumulation of merit and wisdom, in the same way we know
33169 and trust that even the smallest drops of water falling into a bucket will
33170 eventually fill it.
33171 We must learn to trust that our own dharma practice will remove our entire
33172 jungle of kleshas [unwholesome qualities], much like knowing a raging wildfire
33173 can clear an entire forest from the earth. All of our negativities can be
33174 swept away by the firestorm of our compassionate wisdom. We must trust that
33175 all of our happiness and sadness is completely dependent on, and a result of,
33176 our previous karma; when we trust this process we can begin the accumulation
33177 of virtuous actions immediately.
33178 No one achieves perfection in anything meaningful the very first time they
33179 try; however, we've heard the phrase over and over again that "practice makes
33180 perfect." It is true that with multiple repetitions and patience everyone can
33181 achieve perfection over time. I don't know of anyone who has sat down to
33182 meditate for the very first time and immediately attained enlightenment, but
33183 just like the drops of water that we trust will eventually fill our bucket,
33184 consistent dharma practice will eventually lead us to liberation.
33185 -- Lama Dudjom Dorjee, "Heartfelt Advice", published by Snow Lion
33187 Unbroken practice is like a watchful guard.
33188 It is simply unscattered and is free from acceptance or rejection.
33189 There is no duality of things to be abandoned and their antidotes.
33190 This is my heart's advice.
33192 This verse and the following instructions concern how to continue with
33193 Mahamudra practice. Once we have received instructions, we have to accomplish
33194 them and perfect the practice. Continuity of practice is essential for the
33195 perfection of enlightenment.
33196 Unbroken practice means that one is mindful all the time, like a watchful
33197 guard. Thieves and robbers may come at any time, so the guard of a mansion
33198 containing great treasure must be alert twenty-four hours a day. In the same
33199 way, it is important to watch our mind since the thieves of attachment,
33200 desire, anger, and forgetfulness can come at any time and steal the wealth of
33201 our compassion and wisdom, along with our realization of Mahamudra.
33202 Once mindfulness is continuously established, an unscattered mind is "just
33203 there," on the spot, whether we are walking, eating, driving, or performing
33204 other activities. We can watch the mind and see how our mental state shapes
33205 our world. But when we watch it, we should just relax. Milarepa advises us
33208 Rest naturally, like a small child.
33209 Rest like an ocean without waves.
33210 Rest with clarity, like a candle flame.
33211 Rest without self-concern, like a corpse.
33212 Rest unmoving like a mountain.
33214 -- Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen, "A Complete Guide to the Buddhist Path",
33215 edited by Khenmo Trinlay Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
33217 Every time we begin to practice, it helps not to plunge in right away.
33218 Instead, take a few moments to stop your ordinary chain of thoughts. This is
33219 especially relevant if you are very busy and have only five minutes for your
33220 daily practice, but even ordinarily we have this constant stream of thoughts.
33221 Suppose that just before practice you have a fight with your fianc�. This
33222 will probably trigger a chain of thoughts about what you want to say to your
33223 partner. If you start your practice in the midst of all this, it is not going
33224 to go so well. This is why it helps to put a stop to this chain of thoughts
33225 for just a few moments.
33226 I have found this to be very, very useful. There are actually countless
33227 methods for stopping the chain of thoughts, but for me, before I practice, I
33228 just sit for a while. Every time a thought comes along, I try to stop it by
33229 cultivating a sense of renunciation, and I do this over and over again. I
33230 think about how I am now forty-years-old and, even if I live to be eighty, I
33231 only have half of my life left. I think that out of this forty years, I am
33232 going to sleep the equivalent of twenty years. So now there are only twelve
33233 hours a day that could actually be termed living. If we then factor in
33234 watching at least one movie a day, eating, and gossip, we have maybe five
33235 hours or so left. Out of forty years that means eight years remain, and most
33236 of that will go to indulging our paranoia, anxiety, and all that.... There is
33237 actually very little time for practice!
33238 This should give you an idea of how to stop the chain of thoughts. Don't
33239 immediately throw yourself into the practice; instead, just watch yourself,
33240 watch your life, and watch what you are doing. If you are doing ten minutes
33241 of practice every day, you should try to stop the chain of thoughts for at
33242 least two to three minutes. We do this to transform the mind by invoking a
33243 sense of renunciation. When we think, "I am dying. I am coming closer to
33244 death" and other such thoughts, it really helps.
33245 -- Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in the commentary to "Entrance to the Great
33246 Perfection: A Guide to the Dzogchen Preliminary Practices", compiled,
33247 translated, and introduced by Cortland Dahl, published by Snow Lion
33250 Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that
33251 something else is more important than fear.
33254 Good timber does not grow with ease;
33255 the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
33258 Q: Does every kind of desire lead to pain?
33260 A: Not all desire leads directly to pain. However, the very word expresses
33261 the sense of sticking to something. It does not permit freedom. It binds.
33262 When attached and fastened to something, we cannot move far away. It is as if
33263 the desired object pulls us back, and we cannot free ourselves from it. For
33264 this kind of desire we use a term meaning attachment. So long as we are
33265 attached, we stick there and cannot achieve liberation. However, this does
33266 not necessarily entail chaos and pain.
33268 Q: Does that mean that some desire is actually beneficial?
33270 A: In the Tibetan language, desire names an attachment that harms ourselves
33271 and others. The source of benefit for ourselves and others receives a
33272 different name; we call that "longing."
33274 -- "Essential Practice: Lectures on Kamalashila's Stages of Meditation in
33275 the Middle Way School by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche", translated and
33276 introduced by Jules B. Levinson, published by Snow Lion Publications
33278 He who plants a tree plants hope. -- Lucy Larcom
33280 We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with
33281 nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a
33282 presumption that once our eyes watered.
33285 The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do
33289 It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it,
33290 helping each other, not destroying each other.
33293 When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one
33294 finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and
33295 appreciates them, one is free of fear.
33298 In Buddhism, there is a teaching called the "three bodies" (sanjin), also
33299 called the "three properties" or the "three enlightened properties". These
33300 are the three kinds of form that a Buddha may manifest as: 1) the Dharma Body
33301 (dharmakaya or hosshin) is the form in which a Buddha transcends physical
33302 being and is identical with the undifferentiated unity of being or Suchness
33303 (Skt. tathata, Jp. shinnyo); 2) the Bliss or Reward Body (sambhogakaya or
33304 hojin) is obtained as the "reward" for having completed the bodhisattva
33305 practice of aiding other beings to end their suffering and having penetrated
33306 the depth of the Buddha's wisdom. Unlike the Dharma Body, which is
33307 immaterial, the Bliss Body is conceived of as an actual body, although one
33308 that is still transcendent and imperceptible to common people; 3) the
33309 Manifested Body (nirmanakaya or ojin) is the physical form in which the Buddha
33310 appears in this world in order to guide sentient beings. It is considered
33311 that the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, is nirmanakaya. Honen believed that
33312 Amida is sambhogakaya.
33314 Sometimes we put our glasses in our pockets or on our heads and later we ask,
33315 "Where are my glasses?" This is quite common. We look everywhere else without
33316 finding our glasses. That is why we need the guru, who can say to us, "There
33317 are your glasses." That is all that the Mahamudra and Dzogchen teachers do:
33318 they simply point out. What they are pointing out is something that you
33319 already have. It is not something that they give you. They do not give you
33320 new glasses. They cannot afford to give you new glasses, but they can afford
33321 to point out where you can find your own glasses.
33322 When we receive pointing-out instructions from our root teacher, we are
33323 being introduced directly and nakedly to the reality of mind's nature. These
33324 instructions become very effective if we have prepared ourselves to receive
33326 ...Pointing-out is similar to pointing to the sky when it is very cloudy and
33327 saying to someone, "There is the blue sky." The person will look up and say,
33328 "Where?" You may reply, "It is there--behind the clouds." The person to whom
33329 you are pointing out the blue sky will not see it at first. However, if even
33330 a patch of blue sky appears, then you can say, "Look--the blue sky is like
33331 that." The person then gets a direct experience. He or she knows
33332 experientially that there is blue sky, which will be fully visible when the
33334 -- The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "Mind Beyond Death", published by Snow
33337 In general, clear light is of two types--the objective clear light that is
33338 the subtle emptiness [of inherent existence], and the subjective clear light
33339 that is the wisdom consciousness realizing this emptiness.
33340 -- Lati Rinbochay, "Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth"
33342 [At the time of Buddha, a farmer asked to be ordained as a monk. Shariputra
33343 did not see his merit. But, with a great, compassionate mind, the Buddha took
33344 his hand and said, "I will give you ordination. You do have a seed to attain
33346 The Buddha explained, "Thousands and thousands of kalpas ago, this man was
33347 born as a fly. He was sitting on a pile of cow dung when a sudden rush of
33348 water caught the cow dung, along with the fly, and sent them into the river.
33349 Downstream, someone had placed a prayer wheel in the water, and that cow dung
33350 and fly swirled around and around it. Because of that circumambulation, this
33351 man now has a seed to attain arhatship in this lifetime."
33352 Cause and result are so subtle that only omniscient wisdom can perceive
33353 every detail. That is why we must be very careful that our actions are truly
33355 Reciting just one mantra, protecting the life of even one small bug, giving
33356 a small thing--we should not ignore such actions by saying, "This is nothing;
33357 it makes no difference if I do it or not." Many small actions will gather and
33358 swell like the ocean. These are not merely Buddhist beliefs; these are the
33359 causes that create our world no matter who we are. Our study and practice
33360 give us the opportunity to understand this and to be sincere with ourselves
33361 even in small things.
33362 -- Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen, "A Complete Guide to the Buddhist Path",
33363 edited by Khenmo Trinlay Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
33365 Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
33368 What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we
33369 open and shut our eyes!
33370 -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
33372 Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an
33373 acquaintance, or a stranger.
33374 -- Franklin P. Jones
33376 Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
33377 Develop the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and blame,
33378 but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow the calmness, the
33382 Whosoever has heard the law of virtue and vice is as one who has eyes and
33383 carries a lamp, seeing everything and will become completely wise.
33386 ...in Dzogchen, one applies specific practices in order to create a variety of
33387 sensations, so that the practitioner is more clearly enabled to distinguish
33388 the state of presence--which always remains the same--from the sensations
33389 which change according to the practice being carried out. This obviously
33390 enables one to 'no longer remain in doubt' as to what the state of pure
33391 presence is. The practices known as the twenty-one Semdzin found in the
33392 Dzogchen Mennagde, or Upadesha, series, have this particular function,
33393 enabling the practitioner to separate the ordinary, reasoning mind from the
33394 nature of the mind.
33395 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra
33396 and Dzogchen", compiled and edited by John Shane, published by Snow Lion
33399 People often wonder how to reconcile the Buddha's teachings on non-attachment
33400 with those on love. How can we love others without being attached to them?
33401 Non-attachment is a balanced state of mind in which we cease overestimating
33402 others' qualities. By having a more accurate view of others, our unrealistic
33403 expectations fall away, as does our clinging. This leaves us open to loving
33404 others for who they are, instead of for what they do for us. Our hearts can
33405 open to care for everyone impartially, wishing everyone to be happy simply
33406 because he or she is a living being. The feeling of warmth that was
33407 previously reserved for a select few can now be expanded to a great number of
33409 -- Ven. Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion Pub.
33411 Even in this world, and even now, there are said to be many hidden yogis or
33412 discreet yogis, called bepay naljor in Tibetan. It means those realized ones
33413 who are not generally recognized as great spiritual sages or saints, but have
33414 deeply tasted the fruit of enlightenment, and are living it. Perhaps they are
33415 anonymously doing their good works here among us right now!
33416 The infinite vast expanse is one's own inconceivable nature. Who can say
33417 who has realized it and who hasn't? When we travel around the world or
33418 experience other dimensions, there are so many beings who have tasted it. We
33419 can see it in their behavior, in their countenance, and in stories that are
33420 told--not just in the Dzogchen tradition or the Buddhist tradition, but in any
33421 tradition, and in our Western world too.
33422 This true nature is so vast and inconceivable that even some birds and
33423 animals and beings in other unseen dimensions can be said to have realized it,
33424 as in some of the ancient Indian Jataka stories and other teaching tales. It
33425 is always said that everything is the self-radiant display of the primordial
33426 Buddha Samantabhadra. There are infinite numbers of Buddhas and infinite
33427 numbers of beings. Who can say who is excluded from it?
33428 -- Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche and Lama Surya Das, "Natural Great Perfection:
33429 Dzogchen Teachings and Vajra Songs", published by Snow Lion Publications
33431 Many spiritual seekers are not yet ready to become the disciples of
33432 spiritual mentors. Their present levels of commitment may suit working only
33433 with Buddhism professors, Dharma instructors, or meditation or ritual
33434 trainers. Even if they are ready to commit themselves to the Buddhist path
33435 and to spiritual mentors, they may not yet have found properly qualified
33436 mentors. Alternatively, the spiritual teachers available to them may be
33437 properly qualified and may even have shown them great kindness. Yet, none
33438 seem right to be their mentors. They feel they can relate to them only as
33439 their Buddhism professors. Nevertheless, the Kadam style of guru-meditation
33440 may still help such seekers to gain inspiration from these teachers at the
33441 present stages of their spiritual paths.
33442 Unless our spiritual teachers are total charlatans or complete scoundrels,
33443 all of them have at least some good qualities and exhibit at least some level
33444 of kindness. Our Buddhism professors, Dharma instructors, or meditation or
33445 ritual trainers may lack the qualities of great spiritual mentors. Still,
33446 they have some knowledge of the Dharma, some insight from applying the Dharma
33447 to life, or some technical expertise in the practice. Our teachers are kind
33448 to instruct us, even if their motivations contain the wish to earn a living.
33449 If we correctly discern and acknowledge whatever qualities and levels of
33450 kindness that our professors, instructors, or trainers in fact possess, we may
33451 derive inspiration, through guru-meditation, by focusing on them with
33452 conviction and appreciation.
33453 -- Dr. Alexander Berzin, "Wise Teacher, Wise Student: Tibetan Approaches to
33454 a Healthy Relationship", published by Snow Lion Publications
33456 A tenth-century Bengali pandita named Palden Atisha reintroduced Buddhism
33457 into Tibet. He had a servant who was really awful. He was abusive to Atisha,
33458 disobedient, and generally a big problem. The Tibetans asked Atisha what he
33459 was doing with such an awful guy who was so completely obnoxious. They said,
33460 "Send him back. We'll take care of you." Atisha replied, "What are you
33461 talking about? He is my greatest teacher of patience. He is the most
33462 precious person around me!"
33463 Patience does not mean suppression, and it doesn't mean bottling up our
33464 anger or turning it in on ourselves in the form of self-blame. It means
33465 having a mind which sees everything that happens as the result of causes and
33466 conditions we have set in motion at some time in this or past lives. Who
33467 knows what our relationship has been with someone who is causing us
33468 difficulties now? Who knows what we have have done to him in another life!
33469 If we respond to such people with retaliation, we are just locking ourselves
33470 into that same cycle. We are going to have to keep replaying this part of
33471 the movie again and again in this and future lifetimes. The only way to break
33472 out of the cycle is by changing our attitude.
33473 -- "Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism by
33474 Venerable Tenzin Palmo", published by Snow Lion Publications
33476 [Understanding through the merging of sound and meaning takes place when one
33477 immediately understands the meaning of a teaching through hearing the sound of
33480 One might ask what these words are in the key instructions on the Three
33481 Words That Strike the Vital Point. The sound and the word are the same. For
33482 example, the word "mother" can be understood as indicating someone who is very
33483 kind. If one says "mother," the meaning of what that word expresses is
33484 pointed out. What is known as "the three words" is like that.
33485 What are the three words? "View," "meditation," and "action." What does it
33486 mean to "strike the vital point" with these three words? If one wants to kill
33487 a man and strikes his heart with a weapon, the man will not live another hour.
33488 He will die immediately. What vital point do these three words strike? Just
33489 as oil is present in a mustard seed, all of us, all sentient beings, have
33490 buddha nature. Though it is present, we do not recognize it, because our
33491 minds are obscured by delusions. When, as a result of the view, meditation,
33492 and action, we come to recognize these delusions, we can get rid of them in a
33493 moment. In one day sentient beings can be transformed into buddhas--that is
33494 the ultimate view, meditation, and action of dzogchen. Such a power of
33495 transformation is called "striking the vital point."
33496 -- Dilgo Khyentse, "The Collected Works of Dilgo Khyentse", edited by
33497 Matthieu Ricard and Vivian Kurz, excerpt from Volume 3: "Primordial
33498 Purity", published by Snow Lion Publications
33500 If we can attain nondual, nonconceptual awareness in meditation, we are
33501 engaged in profound political activity, even though we may lose this awareness
33502 during the times we are not formally meditating (the buddha's awareness in
33503 post-meditation is the same as during meditation). Meditating in nondual,
33504 nonconceptual awareness, which is meditating on the dharmadhatu, immediately
33505 begins systematically to destroy in ourselves the structure of dualistic
33506 consciousness with all its attendant cognitive obscurations and emotional
33507 affiictions. From the standpoint of duality, since this dualistic
33508 consciousness also involves other sentient beings as the other pole of our
33509 duality, our activity in dissolving this consciousness has a profound impact
33511 While our nondualistic, nonconceptual meditation is purifying our own
33512 obscurations and afflictions and thereby transforming our personal experience
33513 of others, it is also becoming a spark of buddha activity in those others. As
33514 our meditation becomes effective, the attitude of others towards us begins to
33515 change, and they themselves begin to turn inward and to search with greater
33516 conscientiousness through the stuff of their own minds and lives for spiritual
33517 solutions to their own problems. And as the power of our meditation
33518 increases, this effect reaches ever-widening concentric circles of sentient
33519 beings with whom we have karmic interdependence, which in this day and age
33520 includes not only our immediate family and friends, working associates, and
33521 local communities, but also everyone with whom we are connected through all
33522 the media of our lives.
33523 --Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "The Ninth Karmapa's Ocean of Definitive
33524 Meaning", edited, introduced and annotated by Lama Tashi Namgyal,
33525 published by Snow Lion Publications
33527 Realizations come only if we practice joyfully, with confidence and courage.
33528 Realization doesn't grow within a timid or weak state of mind--it blossoms in
33529 the mind free of doubt and hesitation. Realization is fearless. When we see
33530 the true nature of reality, there's nothing hidden, nothing left to fear. At
33531 last we're seeing reality as it is, full of joy and peace.
33532 ...Thinking of Tara will bring total calm, peace, and protection from all
33533 fears and all frightening situations. Tara's practice removes the two
33534 obscurations: negative emotions and subtle conceptual thinking. It will
33535 increase the two merits: accumulation merit and wisdom merit. From the moment
33536 you start praying to and practicing Tara, your life will be always under the
33537 protection of the Great Mother. From then on rebirth in the lower realms will
33538 be prevented. If you do this prayer for others, it will bring them the same
33539 benefits; it will protect them in their lifetimes as well as uproot future
33540 births in the lower realms. So there is great benefit.
33541 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal in "Tara's Enlightened
33542 Activity: An Oral Commentary on 'The Twenty-one Praises to Tara'",
33543 published by Snow Lion Publications
33545 Realizations come only if we practice joyfully, with confidence and courage.
33546 Realization doesn't grow within a timid or weak state of mind--it blossoms in
33547 the mind free of doubt and hesitation. Realization is fearless. When we see
33548 the true nature of reality, there's nothing hidden, nothing left to fear. At
33549 last we're seeing reality as it is, full of joy and peace.
33550 ...Thinking of Tara will bring total calm, peace, and protection from all
33551 fears and all frightening situations. Tara's practice removes the two
33552 obscurations: negative emotions and subtle conceptual thinking. It will
33553 increase the two merits: accumulation merit and wisdom merit. From the moment
33554 you start praying to and practicing Tara, your life will be always under the
33555 protection of the Great Mother. From then on rebirth in the lower realms will
33556 be prevented. If you do this prayer for others, it will bring them the same
33557 benefits; it will protect them in their lifetimes as well as uproot future
33558 births in the lower realms. So there is great benefit.
33559 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal in "Tara's Enlightened
33560 Activity: An Oral Commentary on 'The Twenty-one Praises to Tara'",
33561 published by Snow Lion Publications
33563 6. Meditation on the Buddha
33564 Begin by observing your breath for a few minutes to calm the mind.
33565 Think of the qualities of infinite love, compassion, wisdom, skillful means,
33566 and other wonderful qualities you aspire to develop. What would it feel like
33567 to have those qualities? Get a sense of the expansiveness and peace of having
33568 a wise and kind heart that reaches out impartially to work for the benefit of
33570 Those qualities of love, compassion, wisdom, skillful means, and so on now
33571 appear in the physical form of the Buddha, in the space in front of you. He
33572 sits on an open lotus flower, and flat sun and moon disks. His body is made
33573 of radiant, transparent light, as is the entire visualization. His body is
33574 golden and he wears the robes of a monk. His right palm rests on his right
33575 knee and his left is in his lap, holding a bowl of nectar, which is medicine
33576 to cure our afflictions and other hindrances. The Buddha's face is very
33577 beautiful. His smiling, compassionate gaze looks at you with total acceptance
33578 and simultaneously encompasses all sentient beings. His eyes are long,
33579 narrow, and peaceful. His lips are red and his earlobes long.
33580 Rays of light emanate from each pore of the Buddha's body and reach every
33581 part of the universe. These rays carry countless miniature Buddhas, some
33582 going out to help beings, others dissolving back into the Buddha after having
33583 finished their work.
33584 The Buddha is surrounded by the entire lineage of spiritual teachers, all
33585 meditational deities, innumerable other Buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, dakas,
33586 dakinis, and Dharma protectors. To the side of each spiritual master is an
33587 elegant table upon which are arranged volumes of Dharma teachings.
33588 Surrounding you are all sentient beings appearing in human form, with your
33589 mother on your left and your father on your right. The people you do not get
33590 along with are in front of you. All of you are looking to the Buddha for
33592 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the
33593 Path", foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion
33596 If we investigate on a deeper level, we will find that when enemies inflict
33597 harm on us, we can actually feel gratitude toward them. Such situations
33598 provide us with rare opportunities to put to test our own practice of
33599 patience. It is a precious occasion to practice not only patience but the
33600 other bodhisattva ideals as well. As a result, we have the opportunity to
33601 accumulate merit in these situations and to receive the benefits thereof.
33602 The poor enemy, on the other hand, because of the negative action of
33603 inflicting harm on someone out of anger and hatred, must eventually face the
33604 negative consequences of his or her own actions. It is almost as if the
33605 perpetrators of the harm sacrifice themselves for the sake of our benefit.
33606 Since the merit accumulated from the practice of patience was possible only
33607 because of the opportunity provided us by our enemy, strictly speaking, we
33608 should dedicate our merit to the benefit of that enemy. This is why the Guide
33609 to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life speaks of the kindness of the enemy.
33610 --Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, "The Compassionate Life"
33612 If our practice does not diminish self-grasping, or perhaps even enhances
33613 it, then no matter how austere and determined we are, no matter how many hours
33614 a day we devote to learning, reflection, and meditation, our spiritual
33615 practice is in vain.
33616 A close derivative of self-grasping is the feeling of self-importance. Such
33617 arrogance or pride is a very dangerous pitfall for people practicing Dharma.
33618 Especially in Tibetan Buddhism, with its many levels of practice, the exalted
33619 aspirations of the bodhisattva path, and the mystery surrounding initiation
33620 into tantra, we may easily feel part of an elite. Moreover, the philosophy of
33621 Buddhism is so subtly refined and so penetrating that, as we gain an
33622 understanding of it, this also can give rise to intellectual pride.
33623 But if these are the results of the practice, then something has gone awry.
33624 Recall the well-known saying among Tibetan Buddhists that a pot with a little
33625 water in it makes a loud noise when shaken, but a pot full of water makes no
33627 People with very little realization often want to tell everyone about the
33628 insights they have experienced, the bliss and subtleties of their meditation,
33629 and how it has radically transformed their life. But those who are truly
33630 steeped in realization do not feel compelled to advertise it, and instead
33631 simply dwell in that realization. They are concerned not to describe their
33632 own progress, but to direct the awareness of others to ways in which their own
33633 hearts and minds can be awakened.
33634 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
33635 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
33637 What is method, within the context of the unity of method and wisdom? It is
33638 a dedicated heart of bodhichitta, based on love and compassion. It apprehends
33639 its object, enlightenment, with the intention to achieve it in order to
33640 benefit others. Compassion, as its basis, apprehends its object, the
33641 suffering of others, with the wish to remove it.
33642 Wisdom, on the other hand, is a correct view that understands voidness--the
33643 absence of fantasized, impossible ways of existing. Even if it is aimed at
33644 the same object as method, it apprehends that object as not existing in an
33646 The ways wisdom and compassion each apprehend their object are not at all
33647 the same. Therefore, we need to actualize these two, as method and wisdom,
33648 first separately and then together.
33649 Even if we speak about the mahamudra* that is method and wisdom, inseparable
33650 by nature in the ultimate tantric sense, the first stage for its realization
33651 is understanding the abiding nature of reality.
33652 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
33653 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
33655 In Buddhism we speak of three types of phenomena: First, there are evident
33656 phenomena that are perceived directly.
33657 Second, there are slightly hidden phenomena, which are not accessible to
33658 immediate perception. There are differences of opinion on this even within
33659 Buddhist philosophy. Generally speaking, we think this second type of
33660 phenomena can be known indirectly by inference.
33661 One example of something known by inference is that anything arising in
33662 dependence upon causes and conditions is itself subject to disintegration and
33663 momentary change. This momentary change is not immediately evident to your
33664 senses. You can look at something with your eyes, and it does not appear to
33665 be changing right now, but by inference you can know that it is momentarily
33666 changing. This is an example of the second category of phenomena.
33667 Third, there are very concealed phenomena, which cannot be known by either
33668 of the two preceding methods. They can be known only by relying upon
33669 testimony of someone such as the Buddha.
33670 -- "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on
33671 Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara Houshmand, Robert B.
33672 Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
33674 I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
33675 magnificent glow, than asleep and permanent as a planet.
33678 Sometimes our life can feel devoid of meaning even though we may try in
33679 different ways to put meaning into it.... Meaning comes when we go deeply
33680 within, wait, listen, and open. It begins to come when we genuinely open to
33681 the suffering of those around us with a compassionate heart. Equally, it
33682 comes as we respond to the environment within which we live with care and
33684 The meaning or purpose to be found in bodhichitta is less associated with
33685 what we do than with the quality we bring to what we engage in. Small, simple
33686 aspects of our life can be profoundly meaningful and have deep impact both for
33687 ourselves and others. Meaning lies in the quality of heart that we put into
33689 It is not, therefore, the outer manifestation of what we can achieve that is
33690 the root of meaning. It is the undercurrent of bodhichitta's intention or
33691 purpose and meaning that flows within. What bodhichitta implies is that in
33692 attuning to our buddha nature or buddha potential, we touch a source of
33693 meaning in ourselves that will come through whatever we do.
33694 This root of meaning gives the bodhisattva the capacity to live a relatively
33695 ordinary life and transform adverse circumstances into the path. Even small
33696 things become meaningful, like the way we respond to someone's distress or a
33697 gesture of friendliness that lifts someone's day. This deeper sense of
33698 purpose is reflected in the care we give to our relationships and the
33700 Being present and responsive to what arises may mean that the eventual goal
33701 of our sense of purpose is less crucial. We are seldom, if ever, able to see
33702 fully where our path will take us, and once we are open to the meaning present
33703 in bodhichitta, the ego must surrender ambitions and allow the journey to
33705 -- Rob Preece, "The Courage to Feel: Buddhist Practices for Opening to
33706 Others", published by Snow Lion Publications
33708 We have to admit impermanence into our lives. It's important to live with
33709 impermanence as a frame of reference so that we can approach each moment or
33710 each day with a sense of humility about what we are able to do and what we are
33711 not able to do and relinquish control over things we cannot have control over.
33712 It is important to live as if things are as permanent as stone.
33713 You have to invest yourself in love and concern for people, accept people's
33714 love as if that's the only thing that exists. The commitment to living as if
33715 everything is always there forever with the acceptance that nothing is going
33717 --David Hodge and Hi-Jin Kang Hodge, "Impermanence: Embracing Change",
33718 published by Snow Lion Publications
33720 We are the people our parents warned us about. -- Jimmy Buffett
33722 To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid,
33723 you must also be well-mannered.
33726 I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
33729 Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time.
33730 Hatred ceases through love.
33731 This is an unalterable law.
33732 -- Shakyamuni Buddha
33734 The Tibetan controversies about instantaneous enlightenment through
33735 recognition of the nature of the mind have been studied by David Jackson.
33736 As he shows, it is mainly members of the Kagyu traditions in Tibet who have
33737 maintained this doctrine, although it is certainly common in Chinese Ch'an
33738 Buddhism and in the teachings of the Great Perfection in Tibet. Dolpopa
33739 quotes the position that is the object of his refutation: "Recognizing the
33740 very essence naturally purifies them, without rejection." This expresses the
33741 view that through recognition of the essence of the thoughts as the dharmakaya
33742 they are purified or dissolved into the dharmakaya, and also the idea that any
33743 affliction that arises is actually a manifestation or self-presencing of
33744 primordial awareness itself. Thus there is no need to reject thoughts or
33745 afflictions, which are naturally purified by means of the recognition. This
33746 type of viewpoint is widespread in Tibetan Buddhism.
33747 In contrast to these views, Dolpopa claims that the definition of an
33748 ordinary sentient being or a buddha, and of samsara or nirvana, is determined
33749 by the presence or absence of the incidental and temporary obscurations that
33750 veil the true nature of reality. It is not determined solely by recognition
33751 of the nature of the mind or the thoughts.
33752 ...While the ground buddhahood of the dharmakaya and the resultant
33753 buddhahood of the dharmakaya have not the slightest difference in essence,
33754 they are distinguished as ground and result by means of the presence or
33755 absence of incidental stains.
33756 -- Cyrus Stearns, "The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought
33757 of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen", a Tsadra Foundation
33758 Series book, published by Snow Lion Publications
33760 We live in an ocean of cyclic existence whose depth and extent cannot be
33761 measured. We are troubled again and again by the afflictions of desire and
33762 hatred as if repeatedly attacked by sharks.
33763 Our mental and physical aggregates are impelled by former contaminated
33764 actions and afflictions and serve as a basis for present suffering as well as
33765 inducing future suffering. While such cyclic existence lasts, we have various
33766 thoughts of pleasure and displeasure: 'If I do this, what will people think?
33767 If I do not do this, I will be too late; I won't make any profit.' When we see
33768 something pleasant we think, 'Oh, if I could only have that!'
33769 ...Day and night, night and day we spend our lives in the company of the
33770 afflictions, generating desire for the pleasant and anger at the unpleasant,
33771 and continue thus even when dreaming, unable to remain relaxed, our minds
33772 completely and utterly mixed with thoughts of desire and hatred without
33774 To what refuge should we go? A source of refuge must have completely
33775 overcome all defects forever; it must be free of all faults. It must also
33776 have all the attributes of altruism--those attainments which are necessary for
33777 achieving others' welfare. For it is doubtful that anyone lacking these two
33778 prerequisites can bestow refuge; it would be like falling into a ditch and
33779 asking another who is in it to help you out. You need to ask someone who is
33780 standing outside the ditch for help; it is senseless to ask another who is in
33781 the same predicament. A refuge capable of protecting from the frights of
33782 manifold sufferings cannot also be bound in this suffering but must be free
33784 Furthermore, the complete attainments are necessary, for if you have fallen
33785 into a ditch, it is useless to seek help from someone standing outside it who
33786 does not wish to help or who wishes to help but has no means to do so.
33787 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
33788 published by Snow Lion Publications
33790 If we were forced to choose between a sense of practical application and
33791 learnedness, a sense of practical application would be more important, for one
33792 who has this will receive the full benefit of whatever he knows. The mere
33793 learnedness of one whose mind is not tamed can produce and increase bad states
33794 of consciousness, which cause unpleasantness for himself and others instead of
33795 the happiness and peace of mind that were intended. One could become jealous
33796 of those higher than oneself, competitive with equals and proud and
33797 contemptuous towards those lower and so forth. It is as if medicine had
33799 Because such danger is great, it is very important to have a composite of
33800 learnedness, a sense of practical application and goodness, without having
33801 learnedness destroy the sense of practical application or having the sense of
33802 practical application destroy learnedness.
33803 -- The Dalai Lama, "A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and
33804 About the Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by Sidney Piburn, Foreword
33805 by Sen. Claiborne Pell, published by Snow Lion Publications
33807 A bodhisattva, having generated a sincere and spontaneous desire to attain
33808 full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, enters the Mahayana
33809 path of accumulation. Here the bodhisattva cultivates the four mindfulnesses
33810 and develops mental quiescence, then passes on to the path of application,
33811 where she or he strives for a conceptual insight into emptiness. When
33812 quiescence and insight are combined in examining emptiness, the bodhisattva
33813 attains a direct, non-conceptual realization of emptiness, and thus becomes an
33814 arya, on the path of seeing.
33815 The path of seeing corresponds to the first of the ten bhumis, i.e. stages,
33816 levels, or grounds said to be traversed by a bodhisattva. The other nine
33817 bodhisattva stages are coextensive with the path of development, during the
33818 course of which the disciple completely eliminates not only the defilements
33819 that are obstacles to liberation but even the traces of defilement, which are
33820 obstacles to full enlightenment.
33821 When the path of development is completed, the disciple is ready to enter
33822 the path of no-more-training; this marks the attainment of full enlightenment,
33823 the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya of an omniscient, compassionate,
33824 and powerful buddha.
33825 -- Geshe Lhundub Sopa, Roger Jackson, John Newman, "The Wheel of Time: The
33826 Kalachakra in Context", edited by Beth Simon, published by Snow Lion
33829 "If you fear you are running after the objects of the six senses, hold
33830 yourself with the hook:"
33831 'Employ the watchman that is mindfulness.'
33833 Someone who has been captured with a hook has no option but to go wherever
33834 he is led. In the same way, if we catch hold of our mind--which risks being
33835 distracted by the objects of the six senses--with the hook of mindfulness, and
33836 with vigilance and carefulness, this will be of enormous benefit. We should
33837 use this watchman to constantly check how many positive or negative thoughts
33838 and actions we produce during the day. When we are able to control our minds
33839 through mindfulness, everything that appears in samsara and nirvana becomes an
33840 aid in our practice and serves to confirm the meaning of the teachings. All
33841 appearances are understood as being dharmakaya. We perceive everything in its
33842 natural purity, and there is nothing we can call impure.
33843 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "Zurchungpa's Testament: A Commentary on
33844 Zurchung Sherab Trakpa's 'Eighty Chapters of Personal Advice'", based on
33845 Shechen Gyaltsap's Annotated Edition, translated by the Padmakara
33846 Translation Group, published by Snow Lion Publications
33848 A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.
33851 Art is science made clear. -- Jean Cocteau
33853 A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper
33854 cannot be understood.
33857 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff
33858 that nature replaces it with.
33859 -- Tennessee Williams
33861 The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
33862 -- Willem de Kooning
33864 We need to understand the essential nature of the broad diversity of
33865 phenomena. For example, if we are obliged to be involved frequently with a
33866 man who exhibits a personality that is true only on the surface, as well as
33867 another basic personality, it is important for us to know both of them. To
33868 engage in a relationship with this person that does not go awry, we must know
33869 both aspects of his personality. To know only the facade that he presents is
33870 insufficient; we need to know his basic disposition and abilities. Then we
33871 can know what to expect from him; and he will not deceive us.
33872 Likewise, the manifold events in the world are not non-existent; they do
33873 exist. They are able to help and hurt us--no further criterion for existence
33874 is necessary. If we do not understand their fundamental mode of existence, we
33875 are liable to be deceived, just as in the case of being involved with a person
33876 whose basic personality we do not know.
33877 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Transcendent Wisdom", translated, edited and
33878 annotated by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
33880 One has to be cautious when one is very successful since at that time there
33881 is danger of becoming prideful and becoming involved in the non-religious, and
33882 one has to be cautious also when one has undergone lack of success and so
33883 forth since there is a danger of becoming discouraged--the life of the mind,
33884 so to speak, dying--due to which harm to one's practice could be incurred.
33885 ...Specifically, in situations of low self-esteem, Shantideva recommends
33886 reflection this way:
33887 "Even very tiny bugs and worms have the Buddha nature and thus, when they
33888 encounter certain conditions, through the power of effort they can achieve
33889 the non-abiding nirvana of a Buddha. Now, I have been born as a human with
33890 the capacity to understand what is to be adopted in practice and what is to
33891 be discarded; thus, there is no reason for me to be discouraged. The great
33892 saints and so forth of the past who achieved a high level were people with
33893 a life-basis such as I have, not something separate."
33894 Through such reflection, a resurgence of will can be generated.
33895 -- "The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace by
33896 H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso", translated and edited by
33897 Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
33899 When we understand the evolution of our unsatisfactory experiences in cyclic
33900 existence, we will see that meditating on emptiness is their antidote. All
33901 knowable things--people and phenomena--appear to our minds to be inherently
33902 existent. We then grasp at them as existing inherently. Our inappropriate
33903 attention focuses on them, and that gives rise to the various disturbing
33904 attitudes of anger, attachment, and so on. These disturbing attitudes
33905 motivate our actions, which in turn leave karmic imprints on our mindstreams.
33906 When these imprints ripen, we meet with suffering.
33907 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage: An
33908 Explanation of the Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas", edited by
33909 Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
33911 The essential point about this condition of potentiality is that, although
33912 there is a causal relationship between the physical world and the world of
33913 mental phenomena, in terms of their own continuum one cannot be said to be the
33914 cause of the other. A mental phenomenon, such as a thought or an emotion,
33915 must come from a preceding mental phenomenon; likewise, a particle of matter
33916 must come from a preceding particle of matter.
33917 Of course, there is an intimate relationship between the two. We know that
33918 mental states can influence material phenomena, such as the body; and,
33919 similarly, that material phenomena can act as contributory factors for certain
33920 subjective experiences. This is something that we can observe in our lives.
33921 Much of our gross level of consciousness is very closely connected to our
33922 body, and in fact we often use terminology and conventions which reflect this.
33923 For example, when we say 'human mind' or 'human consciousness' we are using
33924 the human body as the basis to define a particular mind state. Likewise, at
33925 the gross levels of mind such as our sensory experiences, it is very obvious
33926 that these are heavily dependent upon our body and some physiological states.
33927 When a part of our body is hurt or damaged, for instance, we immediately
33928 experience the impact on our mental state. Nevertheless, the principle
33929 remains that mental phenomena must come from preceding phenomena of the same
33931 If we trace mental phenomena back far enough, as in the case of an
33932 individual's life, we come to the first instant of consciousness in this life.
33933 Once we have traced its continuum to this point of beginning, we then have
33934 three options: we can either say that the first instant of consciousness in
33935 this life must come from a preceding instant of consciousness which existed in
33936 the previous life. Or we can say that this first instant of consciousness
33937 came from nowhere--it just sort of 'popped up'. Or we can say that it came
33938 from a material cause.
33939 From the Buddhist point of view, the last two alternatives are deeply
33940 problematic. The Buddhist understanding is that, in terms of its continuum,
33941 consciousness or mind is beginningless. Mental phenomena are beginningless.
33942 Therefore, the person or the being--which is essentially a designation based
33943 on the continuum of the mind--is also devoid of beginning.
33944 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
33945 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
33947 If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.
33948 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
33950 If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? -- Abraham Lincoln
33952 There is something about the outside of a horse
33953 that is good for the inside of a man.
33954 -- Sir Winston Churchill
33956 Life is a party on death row. Recognizing mortality means we are willing to
33957 see what is true. Seeing what is true is grounding. It brings us into the
33958 present and, eventually, into presence. It also brings us into our bodies,
33959 especially if we combine meditation on impermanence with an energetic
33960 awareness at the base of the spine. At first, the important thing about
33961 impermanence seems to be the limited time we have in this precious life. This
33962 is crucial and foundational, and yet it is not the whole story.
33963 The teachings on impermanence concern the death of a self that never
33964 existed. Our sense of such a false and finite self, which initially is
33965 inseparable from our wish to practice, can dissolve. Understanding
33966 impermanence, Khetsun Rinpoche says, will lead you into the natural clarity of
33967 your own mind. To know impermanence is thus not only a path leading to what
33968 Dzogchen traditions speak of as "unbounded wholeness" (thigle nyag cig), it is
33969 also integral to that wholeness.
33970 -- Anne C. Klein, "Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse: A Story of
33971 Transmission", foreword by Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, preface by Tulku
33972 Thondup Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
33974 Now, you see, world peace through mental peace is an absolute. It is the
33975 ultimate goal. But as for the method, there are many factors that must be
33976 taken into consideration. Under a particular set of circumstances, a certain
33977 approach may be useful while under other circumstances another may be useful.
33978 This is a very complicated issue which compels us to study the situation at a
33979 particular point of time. We must take into account the other side's
33980 motivation, etc., so it is a very complex matter.
33981 But we must always keep in mind that all of us want happiness. War, on the
33982 other hand, only brings suffering--that is very clear. Even if we are
33983 victorious, that victory means sacrificing many people. It means their
33984 suffering. Therefore, the important thing is peace. But how do we achieve
33985 peace? Is it done through hatred, through extreme competition, through anger?
33986 It is obvious that through these means it is impossible to achieve any form of
33987 lasting world peace. Hence, the only alternative is to achieve world peace
33988 through mental peace, through peace of mind. World peace is achieved based
33989 only on a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, on the basis of compassion.
33990 The clear, genuine realization of the oneness of all mankind is something
33991 important. It is something we definitely need. Wherever I go, I always
33992 express these views.
33993 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
33994 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
33996 koan for dependency inversion:
33998 High-level modules should not depend upon low-level modules.
33999 Both should depend upon abstractions.
34001 Abstractions should not depend upon details.
34002 Details should depend upon abstractions.
34004 People harm others only when they are unhappy. No one wakes up in the morning
34005 and says, "I feel so great today! I think I'll go out and harm someone!" When
34006 we can allow ourselves to know the depth of the pain and confusion felt by
34007 those who have harmed us, compassion--the wish that they be free from such
34008 suffering--can easily arise. Thinking in this way does not mean whitewashing
34009 or denying harm that was done. Rather, we acknowledge it, but go beyond
34010 amassing resentment, because we know that grudges help neither ourselves nor
34012 -- Thubten Chodron, "Working with Anger", published by Snow Lion Publications
34014 The reason why the qualities of a teacher are described at such length in
34015 the scriptures is because we should know what to look for when seeking a guru
34016 capable of opening up the Buddhist paths within us. To take up training under
34017 an unqualified teacher can be disastrous. It is said in the tantric
34018 scriptures that one is not unwise to examine a guru for twelve years before
34019 accepting that person as one's teacher. The choice of teachers is an
34020 important one and must be made carefully.
34021 Not only does the guru perform the work of the Buddhas and thus equal them
34022 in activity, in terms of kindness the guru surpasses them. Of all Buddhas of
34023 the past who have manifested as universal teachers, it is said that Buddha
34024 Shakyamuni is kindest to us; for it is with his teachings that we have come
34025 into contact...even though Buddha Shakyamuni is most kind of the past Buddhas,
34026 still we are unable to receive teachings from him or witness his inspiring
34028 Were all the Buddhas and lineage masters of the past to manifest before us
34029 at this very moment, we would not be able to recognize them as enlightened
34030 beings. Due to our not having a sufficiently strong karmic connection with
34031 them, they would be unable to affect us. The guru performs the great kindness
34032 of coming to us in an ordinary form which we can perceive and to which we can
34033 relate, and carries out the work of the Buddhas in our lives. The fact that a
34034 donkey like us is brought into the family of spiritual beings is purely due to
34035 the kindness of the guru. The Buddhas can only come to us through him or her.
34036 Thus if we do not respect the guru and heed his or her teachings, what hope do
34037 we have? We should meditate upon the guru's unexcelled kindness and give
34038 birth to profound appreciation.
34039 The reason why we have been wandering unceasingly in cyclic existence since
34040 time immemorial is because we have not met a spiritual master before; or even
34041 if we have met one we did not cultivate an effective relationship with him or
34042 her. We should determine to take the opportunities afforded by our present
34043 human situation and cultivate a spiritual practice under the guidance of a
34045 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
34046 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
34048 There was once a Spartan boy,
34049 who, one night, stole a fox.
34050 In order not to be caught,
34051 he hid it under his cloak.
34052 He stood stock still as his
34053 elder looked him over,
34054 but all the while the fox
34055 chewed away at his insides.
34056 The boy bit his lip against
34057 the pain until he inevitably fell,
34058 dead to the ground.
34061 An exalting task for all humankind
34062 The West is fascinated by efficiency. And there is no doubt that in many
34063 areas its efficiency is quite admirable. That is why I would like to ask this
34064 question, which seems natural to me: why not apply this technical efficiency
34065 to protect all forms of life? This would be an exalting task for all
34066 humankind, especially as we seem to lack a truly large-scale project or ideal.
34067 It is difficult, yet it is absolutely necessary. If the question of human
34068 survival is not solved, there will be nobody left to solve the problem. And
34069 Buddhism can help here.
34070 -- "The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace: The Essential Life and
34071 Teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama"
34073 If you continue to practice meditation, then your experience will gradually
34074 increase and there will be greater and greater stability and greater and
34075 greater lucidity. However, the experiences that can arise in meditation can
34076 take various different forms. And in spite of the fact that the person has a
34077 real recognition of the mind's nature, there is still the possibility or
34078 probability of fluctuation in experience even after that.
34079 Sometimes you may feel that you have amazing, tremendous meditation, and at
34080 other times you may feel that you have no meditation at all. This
34081 characterizes meditation experience, which fluctuates a great deal.
34082 Realization, which is distinct from experience, does not change, but
34083 experiences can fluctuate a great deal or alternate between good and bad.
34084 There will still be times when you will have what you regard as good
34085 experiences and, in contrast, what you regard as bad experiences. When that
34086 occurs, just keep on looking. Don't get distracted or sidetracked by the
34087 experience. Whatever meditation experience arises, you should recognize that
34088 it is transitory. As is said, "meditation experience is like mist, it will
34090 Experiences are different from the actual fact of the recognition itself.
34091 Because they are ephemeral experiences, they aren't worth investing in. So if
34092 you have a bad meditation experience, do not be alarmed, because it too will
34093 vanish. If you have a good meditation experience, you need to continue; if
34094 you have a bad meditation experience, you need to continue. In either case,
34095 you simply need to continue to rest in this recognition of the mind's nature.
34096 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "Pointing Out the Dharmakaya", published by
34097 Snow Lion Publications
34099 The person witnessing another person's suffering has only one appropriate
34100 response: "How can I help?" When karma comes to fruition and causes suffering,
34101 the response should never be, "This is your karma. It's your destiny, so I
34102 can't help." Your own karma may very well present itself as an opportunity to
34103 help a suffering person. Misunderstanding actions and their consequences can
34105 From the Buddhist perspective, the type of fortune we encounter, happiness
34106 or sorrow, is not due to somebody doing something to us. If I win the
34107 lottery, it is not because Buddha selected me for a bonus. No god or buddha
34108 is responsible for what happens to us....This does not imply that a suffering
34109 person is morally degenerate any more than suffering the consequences of
34110 eating contaminated food does. The suffering we experience is due to karma
34111 accumulated under the influence of delusion and mental afflictions. This is
34112 true for all sentient beings.
34113 The Buddhist response to the non-virtues we all commit while strapped to the
34114 wheel of samsara can be inspiring and encouraging. The Buddhist teaching is
34115 that it is possible to neutralize negative karmic seeds embedded in the stream
34116 of consciousness. Deeds cannot be undone, but it is possible to purify one's
34117 mind-stream so that the impact of karmic seeds will be nullified.
34118 The method used to purify the mind-stream is the "four remedial powers"
34119 [remorse, reliance, resolve, and purification]. The metaphor for the
34120 effectiveness of the four remedial powers is that of burning a seed. Karma,
34121 like a seed, can be scorched in the fire of purification so that it will not
34122 sprout. The seed won't vanish, but it will not sprout.
34123 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point
34124 Mind Training", published by Snow Lion Publications
34126 ...it is said that through the power of believing one's own body, speech,
34127 and mind to be undifferentiable from the deity's exalted body, speech, and
34128 mind all one's physical actions and movements are seals and all one's speech
34129 is mantra. In this way the Vajrapani Initiation Tantra says:
34130 "A son or daughter of lineage* who has seen a mandala, who generates the
34131 mind of enlightenment, who is compassionate, skilled in means and in teaching
34132 the ways of letters--the door of Secret Mantra--should think thus, 'Separate
34133 from speech, there is no mind. Separate from mind, there is no speech.
34134 Separate from mind, there is no divine form. Mind itself is speech; speech
34135 itself is mind; divine form itself is also mind, and speech itself is also
34137 "If a mantra practitioner believes in this way that these are
34138 undifferentiable, he attains purity of mind. At those times when he has a
34139 pure mind, he always views in all ways his own body to be the same as the
34140 deity's body, his own speech to be the same as the deity's speech, and his own
34141 mind to be the same as the deity's mind; then, he is in meditative equipoise."
34142 * One who is a suitable vessel for the teaching.
34143 -- "Deity Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra", by His Holiness the Dalai
34144 Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Pub.
34146 My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but
34147 tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
34148 and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
34149 -- Kodos gives a speech, "Treehouse of Horror VII"
34151 Mind is empty like an illusion;
34152 Separate from body, it cannot achieve.
34153 Body also is like a wall;
34154 Separate from mind it is without activity.
34155 Similarly the yoga of seals....
34158 Mind separate from body cannot openly display activities; body separate from
34159 mind is the same. Rather, actions must be done upon the aggregation of mind
34160 and body. Just so, here when practicing techniques for transforming basic--or
34161 ordinary--body, speech, mind, and activities into those of the fruit stage of
34162 Buddhahood, it is necessary both to cultivate (1) internal meditative
34163 stabilization on a divine body, on a vajra on a moon disc at the heart, on a
34164 seed syllable on a vajra in the throat, and on a vajra at the heart, and (2)
34165 at the same time to construct the appropriate gesture, or seal, with the
34166 hands. These must be done in unison, for it is said in Yoga Tantra ritual
34167 texts that if you fail to construct seals with the hands, the rite is
34168 nullified. Unlike on other occasions, it is not just that if the hand-seals
34169 are constructed, it is better, but if not, there is no fault of nullifying the
34170 rite. Here, they must be done.
34171 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
34172 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by
34173 Snow Lion Publications
34175 Following the Vajrayana teachings, we do not give up or reject anything;
34176 rather we make use of whatever is there. We look at our negative emotions and
34177 accept them for what they are. Then we relax in this state of acceptance.
34178 Using the emotion itself, it is transformed or transmuted into the positive,
34179 into its true face.
34180 When, for instance, strong anger or desire arises, a Vajrayana practitioner
34181 is not afraid of it. Instead he or she would follow advice along the
34182 following lines: Have the courage to expose yourself to your emotions. Do not
34183 reject or suppress them, but do not follow them either. Just look your
34184 emotion directly in the eye and then try to relax within the very emotion
34185 itself. There is no confrontation involved. You don't do anything.
34186 Remaining detached, you are neither carried away by emotion nor do you reject
34187 it as something negative. Then, you can look at your emotions almost casually
34188 and be rather amused.
34189 When our usual habit of magnifying our feelings and our fascination
34190 resulting from that are gone, there will be no negativity and no fuel. We can
34191 relax within them. What we are trying to do, therefore, is to skillfully and
34192 subtly deal with our emotions. This is largely equivalent to the ability of
34193 exerting discipline.
34194 -- Ringu Tulku, "Daring Steps: Traversing the Path of the Buddha", edited and
34195 translated by Rosemarie Fuchs, published by Snow Lion Publications
34197 Although we did not have the fortune to see Buddha Shakyamuni himself in
34198 person, we do have the great fortune of having access to his own precious
34199 teachings, which is actually superior to seeing him in person. The same is
34200 the case with masters like Nagarjuna and his immediate disciples. If we make
34201 the necessary effort, and undertake the practice and study, we can fully enjoy
34202 a benefit equal to that of having met them in person.
34203 ...So visualize in space, in front of you, all the exalted masters,
34204 including Buddha Shakyamuni, Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, eighty mahasiddhas, the
34205 Nyingma masters, Atisha, the Kadampa masters, the five great masters of the
34206 Sakya tradition, the lineages of Lamdre practice, the great masters of the
34207 Kagyu lineage, such as Marpa, Milarepa, and also the great masters of the
34208 Gelugpa lineage, Lama Tsongkhapa, and all of their followers.
34209 Around you also are the protectors who have taken the oath in the presence
34210 of Buddha Shakyamuni to safeguard and protect the precious doctrine of Buddha.
34211 Visualize as well the harmful spirits--actually an embodiment of your own
34212 delusions--from which you are being protected by the guardians. Also
34213 visualize various emanations of the buddhas actively working for the benefit
34214 of all living beings. Surrounding you are all sentient beings...undergoing
34215 the sufferings of their individual realms of existence. Now generate a strong
34216 force of compassion directed towards all these sentient beings, particularly
34218 Having created this mental image, question yourself as to how all these
34219 objects of refuge, the buddhas and the masters of the past, achieved such a
34220 high state of realization and reached a state where they can provide
34221 protection to all living beings. You will find that it is because of their
34222 having made effort in the practice of dharma in general and, in particular,
34223 the practice of bodhicitta*. Think as follows: "I shall, from today, follow
34224 in the footsteps of these great masters, and take the initiative of generating
34226 * The aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
34227 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", translated by Geshe Thupten
34228 Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
34230 To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
34233 I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire
34234 to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
34237 The question then is "How do we cultivate and develop this bodhicitta, the
34238 mind of enlightenment?" The key, and the root, is great compassion.
34239 Compassion here refers to a state of mind that makes it utterly unbearable for
34240 us to see the suffering of other sentient beings. The way to develop this is
34241 through understanding how we feel about our own suffering. When we become
34242 conscious of our own suffering, we have a spontaneous wish to be free from it.
34243 If we are able to extend that feeling to all other beings, through realizing
34244 the common instinctive desire we all have to avoid and overcome suffering,
34245 then that state of mind is called 'great compassion'.
34246 All of us have the potential to develop that kind of compassion, because
34247 whenever we see people who are suffering, especially those close to us, we
34248 immediately feel empathy towards them, and witness a spontaneous response
34249 within our minds. So all we have to do is to bring that potential out, and
34250 then to develop it to become so impartial that it can include all sentient
34251 beings within its embrace, whether friend or foe.
34252 To cultivate this great compassion within ourselves, first of all we need to
34253 develop what is called loving-kindness, a feeling of connectedness or
34254 closeness with all living creatures. This closeness and intimacy should not
34255 be confused with the kind of feeling we normally have toward our loved ones,
34256 which is tainted by attachment...ego and selfishness. On the contrary, we are
34257 seeking to develop a feeling of closeness towards other sentient beings, and
34258 affection for them, by reflecting on the fact that suffering is inherent in
34259 their very nature, on the helplessness of their situation, and on the
34260 instinctive desire they all have to overcome suffering.
34261 The greater the force of our loving kindness towards other beings, the
34262 greater the force of our compassion. And the greater the force of our
34263 compassion, the easier it will be for us to develop a sense of responsibility
34264 for taking upon ourselves the task of working for others. The greater that
34265 sense of responsibility, the more successful we will be in generating
34266 bodhicitta, the genuine altruistic aspiration to attain buddhahood for the
34268 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
34269 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron, Foreword by
34270 Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion Pub.
34272 Understanding the power of the path provides the inspiration that keeps us
34273 going forward; exploring its pain provides the understanding of what holds us
34274 back. It doesn't take long to discover the power, nor to feel the pain.
34275 Waking up hurts. And if we don't understand why, we will run from the pain
34276 and abandon the path. There are countless people who have become spiritual
34277 dropouts, or who are lost in detours because they have not understood
34279 When your arm falls asleep, it prickles and burns as it returns to life.
34280 Frozen fingers sting when they thaw; we jolt awake when the alarm clock rings.
34281 But physical instances of anesthesia are mild compared to the anesthesia born
34282 of ignorance, and so is the level of discomfort upon awakening. The longer
34283 something has been asleep, the more painful it is to wake it up. If your
34284 fingers are merely cold, it is easy to warm them up. But if your fingers are
34285 frozen solid, it hurts like hell when they thaw. According to the traditions,
34286 unless one is already a buddha, an "awakened one," one has been snoring from
34287 beginningless time, and it can really hurt before we completely wake up.
34288 Mingyur Rinpoche writes,
34289 "I'd like to say that everything got better once I was safely settled among
34290 the other participants in the three-year retreat.... On the contrary,
34291 however, my first year in retreat was one of the worst in my life. All the
34292 symptoms of anxiety I'd ever experienced--physical tension, tightness in the
34293 throat, dizziness, and waves of panic--attacked in full force. In Western
34294 terms, I was having a nervous breakdown. In hindsight, I can say that what I
34295 was actually going through was what I like to call a 'nervous breakthrough'."
34296 -- Dr. Andrew Holecek, "The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual
34297 Hardship into Joy", published by Snow Lion Publications
34299 Through our eyes the universe is perceiving itself, and through our ears the
34300 universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witness through which the
34301 universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
34302 -- McMurdo Station Forklift Driver paraphrasing Alan Watts
34304 As human beings we are deeply insecure and we do not know who we truly are.
34305 Of course this problem does not show on the surface of our lives. We are
34306 always telling ourselves who we are, based on this notion that we are separate
34307 from everything else. This sense that "I am separate" is the ground of our
34308 sense of self. It is reinforced by various false identities that we cling to,
34309 notions that "I am this" or "I am that." Whatever beliefs we have about
34310 ourselves are just another extension. Most of the time when we look around,
34311 we immediately see that our surroundings are validating these false
34312 identities. For this very reason, it is a challenging endeavor to deconstruct
34313 this illusion of self.
34314 Every time we look into our mirror we might have some thought about
34315 ourselves. Each of these thoughts adds up. They become the conceptual bricks
34316 we use to keep building this illusory castle of self. Yet, there is a
34317 suspicion that this notion of self might be very fragile and transient, and
34318 this thought is silently lurking somewhere in our consciousness. Most of the
34319 time this suspicion is not brought into the light of awareness, but if it is,
34320 some deep, inner wisdom will arise without choice.
34321 Our suspicion of the fragility of this false notion of self can go in one of
34322 two directions. In general it becomes a source of fear, anxiety, and
34323 insecurity. We often see people who are fearful and overly defensive when it
34324 comes to their own identity. We ourselves tend to become fearful if our
34325 identity is threatened. But at other times the suspicion can go another way.
34326 When that happens, it can be a life-changing revelation that can lead us to
34327 the realization of the highest level of truth. This idea is not some new,
34328 lofty theory. It is timeless wisdom that has been realized by many people in
34329 human history. Buddha taught this wisdom, and in his tradition it is called
34330 anatman or "no self." Anatman, or "no self," is the term used to mean that one
34331 has seen through this false sense of self. One has seen that this false sense
34332 of self is merely an identification with one's roles in life. It is just a
34333 mask, not the truth.
34334 -- Anam Thubten, "No Self, No Problem", edited by Sharon Roe, published by
34335 Snow Lion Publications
34337 It is common worldly knowledge that by believing untrue information to be
34338 true we fall into confusion and are harmed. Similarly, by believing phenomena
34339 to be inherently existent when in fact they are not inherently existent, we
34340 are also harmed. For example, with respect to the different ways in which
34341 there can be a consciousness of 'I', there is a definite difference between
34342 the way the 'I' is apprehended when desire, hatred, pride and so forth are
34343 generated based on this 'I', and the way the 'I' is apprehended when we are
34344 relaxed without any of those attitudes being manifest.
34345 Similarly, there is the mere consciousness that apprehends an article in a
34346 store before we buy it, and there is the consciousness apprehending that
34347 article after it has been bought, when it is adhered to as 'mine' and grasped
34348 with attachment. Both these consciousnesses have the same object, and in both
34349 cases the mode of appearance of the article is the appearance of it as
34350 inherently existent. However, there is the difference of the presence or
34351 absence of our adhering to it as inherently or independently existent.
34352 ...a consciousness conceiving inherent existence precedes any bad
34353 consciousness, leading it on by the nose, and also accompanies, or aids, many
34354 other bad consciousnesses as well. Thus, if there were no ignorance
34355 conceiving inherent existence, then there would be no chance for desire,
34356 hatred and so forth to be generated.
34357 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
34358 Jeffrey Hopkins, with Anne Klein, published by Snow Lion Publications
34362 As practitioners we will face many obstacles and sidetracks on our path to
34363 liberation, and these will provide us with many challenges along the way. We
34364 shouldn't allow our practice to become interrupted due to these obstacles and
34365 sidetracks, such as the appearance and disappearance of the many friends we
34366 will have over the course of our lives.
34367 We also shouldn't allow our practice to become interrupted by a change in
34368 the availability or quality of food and shelter. And we shouldn't allow our
34369 practice to become interrupted by the obstacles and sidetracks presented by
34370 the many distractions of mind that are readily available in the mundane world
34371 of our external environment. We shouldn't allow our practice to be
34372 interrupted by obstacles and sidetracks that arise due to the desire and
34373 attachment we feel for loved ones, or our aversion to enemies, or our
34374 indifference towards others. Finally, we should not allow our practice to
34375 become interrupted by our desire to accumulate wealth, or by our attachment to
34376 our material possessions. Only an advanced practitioner, motivated by deep
34377 bodhichitta, can get through these obstacles and avoid these sidetracks to
34378 reach their goal of liberation from samsara.
34379 -- Lama Dudjom Dorjee, "Heartfelt Advice", published by Snow Lion Pub.
34381 Cultivating an aspiration to help other sentient beings becomes a cause for
34382 wanting to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. These are
34383 the two levels of the awakening mind of bodhichitta.
34384 Such a mind cannot be cultivated in a mere few months or years, but this
34385 does not mean it cannot be cultivated at all. If you continue your practice
34386 to cultivate bodhichitta, a time will come when you will be successful. For
34387 example, in the initial stage you may not even understand the meaning of the
34388 word bodhichitta. You might wonder how you could ever cultivate such a mind.
34389 But through repeated practice and familiarity, you will gradually come closer
34391 It is the nature of conditioned things that they change depending on causes
34392 and conditions. So it is important to recall the advantages and benefits of
34393 such a mind and cultivate a strong determination to achieve it. Make ardent
34394 prayers. Whether you sleep, walk, or sit, you should think: "How good it
34395 would be if I could cultivate such a mind." Try to cultivate bodhichitta even
34396 on an aspirational level. If you spend your days in such repeated and
34397 persistent practice, you can definitely develop it. Make the determination to
34398 cultivate it even if it will take many aeons. As Shantideva prays in his
34399 Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life:
34401 As long as space endures
34402 And as long as sentient beings remain,
34404 To dispel the sufferings of all sentient beings.
34406 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", root text by Kamalashila,
34407 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
34408 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
34410 The theory of dependent-arising can be applied everywhere. One benefit of
34411 applying this theory is that viewing a situation this way gives you a more
34412 holistic picture, since whatever the situation is--good or bad--it depends on
34413 causes and conditions. An event is not under its own power but depends on
34414 many present causes and conditions as well as many past causes and conditions.
34415 Otherwise, it could not come into being.
34416 When you think from this viewpoint, you can see much more of the whole
34417 picture, and from this wider perspective, you can see the reality of the
34418 situation, its interdependence. With the help of this relational outlook, the
34419 action that you take will be realistic.
34420 ...Failure to look at the whole picture means realism is lost. The attitude
34421 that money alone is sufficient leads to unforeseen consequences. Money is
34422 certainly necessary; for instance, if you thought that religious retreat in
34423 meditation alone was sufficient, you would not have anything to eat. Many
34424 factors have to be considered. With awareness of the fuller picture, your
34425 outlook becomes reasonable, and your actions become practical, and in this way
34426 favorable results can be achieved.
34427 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to See Yourself As You Really Are",
34428 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
34430 Fear and Fearlessness.
34432 Perhaps the first reaction we have to our own suffering is fear. Fear
34433 arises in us almost automatically when we experience strong emotions or pain.
34434 We don't have to sit there and generate fear--it just arises. When we
34435 experience a disturbing emotion such as jealousy we think, "No, I don't want
34436 this." We would rather not experience it. However, if we examine fear
34437 closely, we see that it is a thought to which we have been habituating our
34438 mind for a very long time. We have repeated this thought pattern of fear for
34439 many years, and from a Buddhist point of view, many lifetimes.
34440 In just the same way, when we habituate our minds to being fearless, to
34441 being brave and open towards our emotions, fearlessness will also arise
34442 naturally. In order for this to happen, we must train in applying antidotes
34443 to our thought patterns that are caught up in fear. In this way, we transcend
34444 fear first through a conceptual process, which later becomes nonconceptual, a
34445 natural fearlessness. In order to become fearless in this way, we need
34446 determination and the willingness to face our emotions. With that strong
34447 determination and courage, fearlessness will arise effortlessly.
34448 -- "Trainings in Compassion: Manuals on the Meditation of Avalokiteshvara",
34449 trans. by Tyler Dewar under the guidance of The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche,
34450 published by Snow Lion Publications
34452 There is both a reason and a purpose for cultivating the meditative
34453 stabilization observing exhalation and inhalation of the breath. The reason
34454 is mainly to purify impure motivations. What exactly is to be purified? The
34455 main of these are the three poisons--desire, hatred, and obscuration. Even
34456 though we have these at all times and even though the meditator will still
34457 retain them, she or he is seeking to suppress their manifest functioning at
34458 that time. The specific purpose for cleansing impure motivations before
34459 meditation is to dispel bad motivations connected with this lifetime, such as
34460 having hatred toward enemies, attachment to friends, and so forth.
34461 In terms of the practice I am explaining here, even the thought of a
34462 religious practitioner of small capacity is included within impure
34463 motivations; such a person engages in practice mainly for the sake of a good
34464 future lifetime. Similarly, if on this occasion one has the motivation of a
34465 religious practitioner of middling capacity--that of only oneself escaping
34466 from cyclic existence, this is also impure.
34467 What is a pure motivation? To take as one's aim the welfare of all sentient
34468 beings. This is the motivation of a religious practitioner of great capacity.
34469 Meditators should imagine or manifest their own impure motivation in the form
34470 of smoke, and with the exhalation of breath should expel all bad motivation.
34471 When inhaling, they should imagine that all the blessings and good qualities
34472 of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, in the form of bright light, are inhaled into
34473 them. This practice is called purification by way of the descent of ambrosia.
34474 There are many forms of this purification, but the essence of the practice is
34476 -- Geshe Gedun Lodro, "Calm Abiding and Special Insight: Achieving Spiritual
34477 Transformation Through Meditation", translated and edited by Jeffrey
34478 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
34480 Tsongkhapa pays homage to the "foremost holy lamas," for it is in dependence
34481 upon a qualified lama that the three principal aspects of the path are
34483 The high title "lama" alone does not qualify someone as a lama; the good
34484 qualities associated with the title must also be present. The three words--
34485 foremost, holy, and lama--set forth the three qualities of a lama.
34486 "Foremost" describes a person who has diminished emphasis on this lifetime
34487 and is primarily concerned with future lifetimes and deeper topics. Such a
34488 person has a longer perspective than the shortsighted one of those who mainly
34489 look to the affairs of this life and thus, in relation to common beings whose
34490 emphasis is mainly on this life, is the foremost, or a leader.
34491 "Holy" refers to one who, as a result of developing renunciation for all
34492 forms of cyclic existence, is not attached to any of its marvels and is
34493 seeking liberation. A holy person has turned his or her mind away from
34494 attachment outside to the better things of cyclic existence and focused it
34496 In the word "lama", "la" means high, and "ma" is a negative, which indicates
34497 that there is none higher; this is a person who has turned away from self-
34498 cherishing to cherishing others, has turned away from the lower concern for
34499 personal benefit in order to achieve the higher purpose of attaining benefit
34501 -- "Kindness, Clarity, and Insight 25th Anniversary Edition", by The
34502 Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, edited and translated
34503 by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion
34506 ...beginning with an attitude
34507 Of love for all living creatures,
34508 Consider beings, excluding none,
34509 Suffering in the three bad rebirths,
34510 Suffering birth, death and so forth.
34512 The" attitude of love" to which the text refers is the affection which sees
34513 all living beings as lovable. The stronger our affection the more easily
34514 compassion arises and the more intense and steadfast it is. Compassion can
34515 arise without it, but it will not be consistent. Unless we see all living
34516 beings as near, dear, appealing and beloved, we won't care what happens to
34517 them. On the contrary, we may even wish more suffering on those we dislike.
34518 That affection is what a doting mother feels for the apple of her eye, what a
34519 dog-owner feels for a beloved pet--a warm feeling that makes you want to hug
34520 and pat and say, "Adorable!"
34521 At present our feelings of affection are restricted to those we like and,
34522 even then, vanish quite quickly if they do something that goes against our
34523 wishes. It's a tall order to ask us to feel affection toward all living
34524 beings. It doesn't come naturally, which is why we need to train ourselves to
34525 see them in a new way.
34526 -- "Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment", commentary by Geshe Sonam
34527 Rinchen, translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion
34530 Why should one work so hard to please people, doing all sorts of things for
34531 others in order to make them feel happy? If one can't bear one's enemy's
34532 happiness, then why should one do all sorts of things to make anyone else
34534 Shantideva explains an inconsistency regarding this issue. He notes that
34535 when praise is directed toward oneself, when people speak highly of oneself,
34536 one not only feels happy but also expects others to be happy when they hear
34537 this praise. However, this is totally inconsistent with one's attitude toward
34538 others. When people praise others, then not only does one disapprove of
34539 others' happiness but one's own peace of mind and happiness are destroyed as
34540 well. So there seems to be an inconsistency when it comes to relating to
34541 praise directed toward oneself and praise directed toward others.
34542 Then, especially for a Bodhisattva practitioner who has dedicated his or her
34543 life to bringing about joy and happiness in others and leading them to the
34544 ultimate state of happiness, to be jealous of others' happiness and joy is
34545 totally inappropriate. In fact, one should feel that if other sentient beings
34546 of their own accord, from their own efforts, gain any little experience of
34547 happiness and joy here and there, we should be all the more grateful, because
34548 without our helping them, they have been able to achieve these joyful
34549 experiences and happiness.
34550 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
34551 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by
34552 Snow Lion Publications
34554 What is meant by going for refuge is that you are seeking refuge from some
34555 fear. All the objects [Buddha, lama, guru, etc.] in front of you are what is
34556 known as the causal refuge, because they serve as the cause for bringing about
34557 the resultant refuge within you. You should entrust yourself to these objects
34558 from the depth of your heart, and you should see the objects as protectors.
34559 The resultant state of your own future realizations, becoming an arya being
34560 and attaining buddhahood--which depends on your own actualization of the path-
34561 -is called the resultant refuge. Someone in difficulty seeking the assistance
34562 of a high official is analogous to someone seeking refuge in the causal
34564 But depending upon others' protection forever is not a courageous way of
34565 life; therefore, one has to try to achieve a state where one is no longer
34566 dependent upon such a refuge, and this is likened to taking refuge in the
34567 resultant buddha, dharma, and sangha. That is the process of taking refuge by
34568 a person of high faculty and courage. This practice should be done not for
34569 the sake of oneself alone but rather for the sake of all other sentient
34570 beings. When you cultivate such an aspiration focused toward the achievement
34571 of the omniscient state, it is very much like the generation of the
34573 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Union of Bliss and Emptiness: Teachings on the
34574 Practice of Guru Yoga", translated by Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow
34577 Many of the methods of practicing Dharma that are learned during waking can,
34578 upon development of dream awareness, be applied in the dream condition. In
34579 fact, one may develop these practices more easily and speedily within the
34580 Dream State if one has the capacity to dream lucidly. There are even some
34581 books that say that if a person applies a practice within a dream, the
34582 practice is nine times more effective than when it is applied during the
34584 The dream condition is unreal. When we discover this for ourselves within
34585 the dream, the immense power of this realization can eliminate obstacles
34586 related to conditioned vision. For this reason, dream practice is very
34587 important for liberating us from habits. We need this powerful assistance in
34588 particular because the emotional attachments, conditioning, and ego
34589 enhancement which compose our normal life have been strengthened over our
34591 In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like the
34592 images of a dream. If we examine them well, the big dream of life and the
34593 smaller dreams of one night are not very different. If we truly see the
34594 essential nature of both, we will find that there really is no difference
34595 between them. If we can finally liberate ourselves from the chains of
34596 emotions, attachments, and ego by this realization, we have the possibility of
34597 ultimately becoming enlightened.
34598 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light",
34599 ed. & intro. by Michael Katz, published by Snow Lion Publications
34601 Cultivating Memory and Joyful Effort
34603 [This] foundational practice is engaged upon awaking in the morning. It
34604 further cultivates strong intention and also strengthens the capacity to
34605 remember the events of the night.
34606 Begin by reviewing the night. The Tibetan term for this preparation is
34607 literally "remembering." Did you dream? Were you aware that you were in a
34608 dream? If you dreamt but did not attain lucidity, you should reflect, "I
34609 dreamt but did not recognize the dream as a dream. But it was a dream."
34610 Resolve that next time you enter a dream you will become aware of its true
34611 nature while still in the dream.
34612 If you find it difficult to remember dreams, it can be helpful, throughout
34613 the day and particularly before sleep, to generate a strong intention to
34614 remember dreams. You can also record dreams in a notepad or with a tape
34615 recorder, as this will reinforce the habit of treating your dreams as
34616 something valuable. The very act of preparing the notebook or recorder at
34617 night serves to support the intention to recall the dream upon waking. It is
34618 not difficult for anyone to remember dreams once the intention to do so is
34619 generated and sustained, even over just a few days.
34620 If you did have a lucid dream, feel joy at the accomplishment. Develop
34621 happiness relative to the practice and resolve to continue to develop the
34622 lucidity the following night. Keep building intention, using both successes
34623 and failures as occasions to develop ever stronger intent to accomplish the
34624 practice. And know that even your intention is a dream.
34625 --Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep",
34626 published by Snow Lion Publications
34628 On some occasions, people faint. Even when your breath temporarily stops,
34629 during that moment, there is a reduced level of consciousness. Consciousness
34630 is most reduced late in the course of dying. Even after all physical
34631 functions cease, we believe that the "I," or "self," still exists. Similarly,
34632 just at the beginning of life, there must be a subtle form of consciousness to
34633 account for the emergence of consciousness in the individual.
34634 We must explore further the point at which consciousness enters into a
34635 physical location. At conception, the moment when and the site where
34636 consciousness interacts with the fertilized egg is something to be discovered,
34637 although there are some reference to this in the texts.... The Buddhist
34638 scriptures do deal with it, but I am interested to see what science has to say
34639 about this. During this period we believe that without the subtle
34640 consciousness, there would be a life beginning without consciousness. If that
34641 were the case then no one could ever recollect experiences from their past
34642 life. It is also in terms of Buddhist beliefs relating to this topic that
34643 Buddhism expounds its theory of cosmology: how the universe began and how it
34645 Based on this metaphysical reasoning and other arguments, and based on the
34646 testimony of individuals who are able to recollect their experiences in past
34647 lives very vividly, Buddhists make this claim. I am a practitioner, so based
34648 on my own limited experiences, and the experiences of my friends, I cannot say
34649 with one hundred percent certainty that there is a subtle consciousness.
34650 Scientists don't posit consciousness in the same sense that Buddhists do.
34651 At the moment of conception, however, there has to be something that prevents
34652 the sperm and egg from simply rotting, and causes it to grow into a human
34653 body. When does that occur? Why does that occur?
34654 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with
34655 the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara Houshmand,
34656 Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion
34657 Taking the reins is the key to happiness
34659 The state of mind of a Buddhist practitioner should be stable, and should
34660 not be subject to too many conflicting events. Such a person will feel both
34661 joy and pain, but neither will be too weak or too intense. Stability is
34662 developed through discipline. The heart and mind become more full of energy,
34663 more resolute, and therefore less susceptible to being blown about by outside
34665 Deep within the human being abides the wisdom that can support him or her in
34666 the face of negative situations. In this way, events no longer throw him
34667 because he is holding the reins. Similarly, when something good happens it is
34668 also possible to rein it in. Taking the reins is the key to happiness. In
34669 Tibet we have a saying: "If you are beside yourself with joy, tears are not
34670 far behind." This shows how relative what we call joy and pain are.
34671 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner
34672 Peace: The Essential Life and Teachings"
34674 From a Buddhist perspective, busying ourselves with worldly activities is a
34675 form of laziness, because we're lax in self-cultivation. Our lives are so
34676 busy in modern society: Our appointment books are completely full and we're
34677 always running here and there. We often complain there isn't enough time for
34679 However, whenever we have a spare moment, we work overtime or call some
34680 friends to fill in the gap. We always have time to eat, but we hardly ever
34681 have time to nourish ourselves spiritually by attending Dharma classes or
34682 meditating. When the temple has entertainment and free meals, we go; but when
34683 there is meditation or lessons, we're busy.
34684 This hindrance to spiritual progress comes because we're attached to worldly
34685 pleasures: food, money, reputation, amusement, and friends. The harm comes
34686 from our inappropriate way of relating to them. Attached, we selfishly
34687 indulge in them. However, these things in and of themselves aren't bad.
34688 Through pacifying our afflictions, we can enjoy these things with a good
34689 motivation--to improve ourselves for the benefit of others.
34690 -- Ven. Thubten Chodron, "Taming the Mind", published by Snow Lion Pub.
34692 It is important to note that we should make sure that our meditation suits
34693 our mind. If we feel comfortable doing analytical meditation on the various
34694 topics in a progressive way, we should go ahead with it. If, on the other
34695 hand, we find it difficult and it is not compatible with our mind, we should
34696 meditate on whatever topic we like.
34697 If we enjoy meditation on emptiness, we should go ahead with this. If it
34698 suits us and we derive pleasure from meditating principally on the altruistic
34699 intention, we can emphasize this. At some point if we find that we cannot
34700 really get into whatever analytical meditation we have been doing, but doing
34701 prostrations, chanting mantra, visualizing a meditation deity, or reciting
34702 aspirational prayers brings peace and pleasure to our mind, we should do that
34704 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage: An
34705 Explanation of the Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas", edited by
34706 Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
34708 Attaining realization is not such a long path once we become able to
34709 integrate all our movements of energy in our practice, because then every
34710 action is governed by presence and becomes a step on the path and an
34711 expression of virtue.
34712 Practice is not only sitting in meditation, reciting mantras, or chanting.
34713 It is the application of practice in daily life that is most difficult,
34714 working with our energy in every life situation, with every sense perception,
34715 with every person we meet, whether we want to encounter that person or not.
34716 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "Wonders of the Natural Mind: The Essence of
34717 Dzogchen in the Native Bon Tradition of Tibet", published by Snow Lion
34719 When we focus our attention on the passage of breath, we break the usually
34720 continuous flow of thoughts of attachment, hostility and so forth, whatever
34721 they might be. This causes such thoughts to subside for the moment. Thus, by
34722 occupying the mind with our breath, we cleanse it of all positive and negative
34723 conceptual thoughts and thus remain in a neutral state of mind unspecified as
34724 either constructive or destructive. This is the meaning of the line in the
34725 root text, "Thoroughly clean out your state of awareness." This unspecified or
34726 neutral state of mind, cleaned out of all positive and negative conceptual
34727 thoughts, is the most conducive one to work with. Because an unspecified
34728 state of mind like this is unburdened and supple, it is relatively easy to
34729 generate it into a constructive state.
34730 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
34731 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
34734 "You may ask: If there is no sentient being, whose is the goal? We grant
34735 that desire [for liberation, etc.] is indeed delusive. Still, in order to
34736 eradicate suffering, effective delusion, whose result [is understanding of
34737 the ultimate] is not prevented."
34741 If sentient beings do not exist, who is it that attains the fruition of the
34742 spiritual path--full awakening? And while on the path, for whom does one
34743 cultivate compassion?
34746 Sentient beings do exist. It is for them that compassion is felt, and
34747 compassion is cultivated by existent people. Whatever is designated by
34748 delusion is to be acknowledged. Due to cultivating compassion while on the
34749 spiritual path, the fruition of full awakening is attained. Who attains
34750 awakening? That, too, is to be established conventionally, without [ultimate]
34751 examination or analysis. In order to pacify the suffering of oneself and
34752 others, impure appearances that arise due to ignorance are not to be rejected.
34753 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Transcendent Wisdom", translated, edited and
34754 annotated by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
34756 The object of meditation this time is emotion. In other words, we
34757 specifically focus on the emotions that arise from our feelings of good, bad,
34758 and indifferent. In the first of the equanimity meditations, we made the
34759 choice to not follow up these emotions. This time we make the choice to
34760 meditate on them. We might choose to meditate on sensations and feelings that
34761 arise in our immediate, present environment. We might also choose to meditate
34762 on an event or person that sets off strong sensations, feelings, and emotions.
34763 Let's say you choose to base your meditation on an event such as a family
34764 argument. This time you contemplate an aspect of that event and try to
34765 disentangle the sensations, feelings, and emotions. Sensations are what you
34766 feel with your body. Feelings assess whether that sensation is nice, nasty,
34767 or neutral. What emotions arise as a result of those sensations and feelings?
34768 As we now know, equanimity means not getting caught in further
34769 exaggerations: "Oh, I am so bad because this is what I did," "Look how good I
34770 am," "How could anyone love someone like me?" and so on. In this meditation,
34771 equanimity means not judging whether we are good or bad people, but just
34772 noting what happened.
34773 -- Chonyi Taylor, "Enough! A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from
34774 Addictive Patterns", published by Snow Lion Publications
34776 Everyone tries to remove superficial pain, but there is another class of
34777 techniques concerned with removing suffering on a deeper level--aiming at a
34778 minimum to diminish suffering in future lives and, beyond that, even to remove
34779 all forms of suffering for oneself as well as for all beings. Spiritual
34780 practice is of this deeper type.
34781 These techniques involve an adjustment of attitude; thus, spiritual practice
34782 basically means to adjust your thought well. In Sanskrit it is called dharma,
34783 which means "that which holds." This means that by adjusting counterproductive
34784 attitudes, you are freed from a level of suffering and thus held back from
34785 that particular suffering. Spiritual practice protects, or holds back,
34786 yourself and others from misery.
34787 From first understanding your own situation in cyclic existence and seeking
34788 to hold yourself back from suffering, you extend your realization to other
34789 beings and develop compassion, which means to dedicate yourself to holding
34790 others back from suffering. It makes practical sense...by concentrating on
34791 the welfare of others, you yourself will be happier.
34792 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living Well
34793 and Dying Consciously", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
34795 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me eight
34796 times, I must be a f**king idiot.
34797 -- Jon Stewart, on the last eight presidents vowing to end America's
34798 addiction to foreign oil
34800 A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner
34801 waiting for the bus marked "Perfection".
34804 In his closing discussion on loving-kindness, Buddhaghosa asks: "What is the
34805 proximate cause of loving-kindness?" The answer is the observation of
34806 lovableness in the person to whom you are attending.
34807 Bring to mind right now someone whom you find lovable. It could be a person
34808 you have a romance with, or a child, or a dear friend, or a great teacher--
34809 someone to whom your heart would leap like a deer in the forest if this person
34810 were to walk through the door, someone whose presence is so lovable that a
34811 gladness arises on seeing him or her. If you can sense that in a dear friend,
34812 then try to seek out the lovableness of a neutral person. Then, finally, when
34813 you break down all the barriers, see it in a person who has done you injury.
34814 It's a great key if you can seek out something to love, even in the enemy.
34815 Bear clearly in mind that this does not endorse or embrace evil. The crucial
34816 point here is to be able to slice through like a very skilled surgeon,
34817 recognizing vicious behavior that we would love to see annihilated as separate
34818 from the person who is participating in it. The doctor can be optimistic. A
34819 cure is possible: the person is not equivalent to the action or the
34820 disposition. Moreover there is something there that we can hold in affection,
34821 with warmth. That really seems to be a master key that can break down the
34822 final barrier and complete the practice.
34823 One way of approaching this is to look at the person you hold in contempt,
34824 and try to find any quality he might share with someone you deeply admire and
34825 respect. Is there anything at all noble to be seen, anything that would be
34826 akin to what a truly great spiritual being would display? Focus on that:
34827 There is something there that you can love. The rest is chaff, that hopefully
34828 will be blown away quickly, to everyone's benefit. It is as if you could see
34829 a little ray of light from within, knowing that its source is much deeper than
34830 the despicable qualities on the outside. That light is what you attend to.
34832 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Four Immeasurables: Practices to Open the Heart",
34833 edited by Zara Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
34835 Question: I have the strong wish to be reborn in any of the realms in a
34836 position to truly help other sentient beings in that realm. Is it wrong for
34837 me in these circumstances not to have the strong wish to leave the wheel of
34840 Answer: Your wish to stay in order to help is certainly right. One of
34841 Shantideva's prayers, roughly translated is, "As long as there is space, I
34842 will remain with sentient beings, to serve and help them." Therefore, I also
34843 am trying to practice this. Helping others is the real purpose of life; it
34844 will bring the most satisfaction. The one action of helping others out of a
34845 sincere motivation brings two results--satisfaction for yourself and benefit
34846 to others. It is most beautiful.
34847 One might ask whether there is a contradiction between a Bodhisattva's
34848 developing a determination to leave cyclic existence by viewing it as faulty
34849 and a Bodhisattva's wishing to remain in cyclic existence in order to help
34850 others. An answer to this is given in Bhavaviveka's Heart of the Middle Way:
34851 ...because of being under the influence of love and compassion, one is not
34852 captivated by the idea of retreating into solitary peace and, with an attitude
34853 of seeking to bring about the welfare of other sentient beings, remains in
34854 cyclic existence. This attitude is really marvelous. Though you are really
34855 fed up with cyclic existence, still because of a willingness and a
34856 determination to serve others, you voluntarily accept to remain.
34857 However, as is indicated by the frequently cited example of a lotus that is
34858 produced from mud but not polluted by it, a Bodhisattva stays in cyclic
34859 existence but is not affected by its faults. It would indeed be hypocritical
34860 to claim from one's mouth that one had taken up the practice of a Bodhisattva
34861 but actually to be happily stuck in cyclic existence with great attachment.
34863 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet Tenzin Gyatso, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard:
34864 Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey
34865 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
34867 Sutras, tantras, esoteric instructions, and experiences teach
34868 The vital point of deathlessness, awakening without meditating:
34869 How this body of karma fully ripening
34870 Arises as a naturally pure awareness body.
34871 Visualize the fully ripening karmic body as the deity's form
34872 And meditate without fixation on it.
34873 It is itself inseparable from mind.
34874 No essence of mind is established,
34875 So where is something that dies?
34876 "Death" is just a concept.
34877 The hosts of concepts are nonexistent phenomena of samsara and nirvana.
34880 According to this and other statements, since one's own mind in essence has
34881 no real existence whatsoever, it was always unborn. Therefore the great
34882 natural liberation of deathlessness is attained. As for this body of fully
34883 ripening karma, since it is a conglomeration of inert matter, it is not a
34884 basis on which to attribute the designations of birth or death. In fact, the
34885 body even arises as a mere appearance of mind.
34886 When one gains confidence in the realization that the mind is unborn and
34887 undying, then the body appears as the deity's form in mahamudra and one
34888 becomes bound to basic space without erring into the path of deluded
34889 appearance. By this kind of instruction one discovers the kaya of union in
34890 this lifetime. Even just hearing it can cause one to get enlightened in the
34891 intermediate state as the sambhogakaya of the victors. Of the Five Golden
34892 Dharmas, it is said to be like the ripened fruit. (p. 248)
34893 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, "The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part
34894 Four: Esoteric Instructions, A Detailed Presentation of the Process of
34895 Meditation in Vajrayana", translated by Sarah Harding, published by Snow
34898 Buddhas and Bodhisattvas see clearly that our neglect of others, our self-
34899 preoccupation and our disregard for the connection between actions and their
34900 effects are responsible for all our miseries. The feeling that it doesn't
34901 matter what we do as long as we can get away with it kills our chances of
34902 liberation and enlightenment. Our selfishness robs us of worldly and
34903 supramundane good qualities, leaving us naked and empty-handed. It separates
34904 us from happiness now and in the future and fetters us to suffering.
34905 Resolve never again to let yourself be dominated by this mean and selfish
34906 way of thinking and do everything in your power to combat it. Your happiness
34907 begins the moment you recognize self-cherishing as your chief foe. There are
34908 many good reasons why cherishing others makes sense. Shantideva says:
34909 The state of Buddhahood is accomplished
34910 Equally through living beings and Victorious Ones.
34911 What kind of behavior then is it to revere
34912 Victorious Ones but not living beings?
34913 ...If we truly want to please Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and all those noble
34914 beings in the world whom we admire and whose sole guiding principles are their
34915 affection, love and compassion for others, we can do nothing better than to
34916 cherish living beings. (p. 100)
34917 -- "The Three Principal Aspects of the Path", an oral teaching by Geshe
34918 Sonam Rinchen, translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow
34921 How Purification Works
34923 During Nyungne [fasting] practice, true purification is possible primarily
34924 because of the power of Chenrezig's compassion and blessing, as well as our
34925 faith, devotion, and correct motivation to do the practice. When such causes
34926 and conditions come together, a result inevitably occurs, and this result is
34927 understood as the interdependently-arising nature of all phenomena.
34928 For the most part, enlightened and unenlightened phenomena all arise due to
34929 this interdependently-arising nature. As a spiritual practitioner, the basic
34930 qualities one must bring to the practice are faith, devotion, and a trust in
34931 the power of the practice and Chenrezig. These qualities stem from our own
34932 pure nature of mind, a purity that is identical to Chenrezig's heart, that is,
34933 unceasing love and compassion. When these two things are combined together,
34934 our devotion and faith and Chenrezig's love and compassion, one could say
34935 miracles happen; a true purification takes place.
34936 It has been said that when one is sitting before the mandala of Chenrezig,
34937 one should believe that although Chenrezig is not physically visible to us, in
34938 fact he is really there in front of us. Just as we would be very careful of
34939 our thoughts and behavior if we were in the presence of a powerful and
34940 clairvoyant enlightened guru, in the same way we must generate vigilance so
34941 that we don't act shamefully in front of this great being. If we develop such
34942 vigilance and noble habit, then our negativities will automatically decrease.
34944 -- Wangchen Rinpoche, "Buddhist Fasting Practice: The Nyungne Method of
34945 Thousand-Armed Chenrezig", published by Snow Lion Publications
34947 Reflect on the basic pattern of our existence. In order to do more than
34948 just barely survive, we need shelter, food, companions, friends, the esteem of
34949 others, resources, and so on; these things do not come about from ourselves
34950 alone but are all dependent on others. Suppose one single person were to live
34951 alone in a remote and uninhabited place. No matter how strong, healthy, or
34952 educated this person were, there would be no possibility of his or her leading
34953 a happy and fulfilling existence.... Can such a person have friends? Acquire
34954 renown? Can this person become a hero if he or she wishes to become one? I
34955 think the answer to all these questions is a definite no, for all these
34956 factors come about only in relation to other fellow humans.
34957 When you are young, healthy, and strong, you sometimes can get the feeling
34958 that you are totally independent and do not need anyone else. But this is an
34959 illusion. Even at that prime age of your life, simply because your are a
34960 human being, you need friends, don't you? This is especially true when we
34961 become old and need to rely more and more on the help of others: this is the
34962 nature of our lives as human beings.
34963 In at least one sense, we can say that other people are really the principal
34964 source of all our experiences of joy, happiness, and prosperity, and not only
34965 in terms of our day-to-day dealings with people. We can see that all the
34966 desirable experiences that we cherish or aspire to attain are dependent upon
34967 cooperation and interaction with others. It is an obvious fact.
34968 Similarly, from the point of view of a Buddhist practitioner, many of the
34969 high levels of realization that you gain and the progress that you make on
34970 your spiritual journey are dependent upon cooperation and interaction with
34971 others. Furthermore, at the stage of complete enlightenment, the
34972 compassionate activities of a buddha can come about spontaneously only in
34973 relation to other beings, for those beings are the recipients and
34974 beneficiaries of those enlightened activities. (p.5)
34975 -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, "The Compassionate Life"
34977 The difficulty with a purely materialistic interpretation of life is that,
34978 in addition to ignoring an entire dimension of the mind, it does not deal
34979 effectively with the problems of this life. A materialistic mind is an
34980 unstable mind, for its happiness is built on transient, physical
34981 circumstances. Mental disease is as high among the affluent as it is among
34982 the poor, which is a clear indication of the limitations of the approach.
34983 Although it is essential to maintain a reasonable material basis on which to
34984 live, the emphasis in one's life should be on cultivating the mental and
34985 spiritual causes of happiness. The human mind is very powerful and our
34986 worldly needs are not so great that they must demand all of our attention,
34987 especially in light of the fact that materialistic success solves so few of
34988 the many challenges and problems that confront men and women throughout their
34989 lives, and it does nothing for them at death.
34990 On the other hand, if one cultivates spiritual qualities such as mental
34991 harmony, humility, non-attachment, patience, love, compassion, wisdom and so
34992 forth, then one becomes equipped with a strength and intelligence able to deal
34993 effectively with the problems of this life; and because the wealth one is
34994 amassing is mental rather than material, it will not have to be left behind at
34995 death. There is no need to enter the after-death state empty-handed. (31)
34996 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
34997 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
34999 The bardo* of this life does not last forever. We know that, like a guest
35000 in a hotel, our mind is only temporarily sheltered in this body. As we face
35001 the challenges of this life and the impending challenges of the bardos to
35002 come, how does engaging in the three-stage process of study, contemplation and
35003 meditation help us? By applying ourselves to these three, we acquire the
35004 skills to stabilize our mind and we develop actual insight into how our mind
35005 functions. First we gain an understanding of the nature of mind; then, we
35006 experience that nature; and finally, we arrive at the ultimate benefit, which
35007 is fully realizing that nature.
35008 When we practice these stages of the path, it is like accumulating the exact
35009 things we will need to take with us on our trip. When we are ready to pack
35010 our suitcase, we will have what we need without looking further. We will not
35011 have to go out at the last minute and buy a map or a guidebook. We will not
35012 have to worry about whether we are forgetting something crucial.
35013 We have knowledge and experience that has blossomed into realization;
35014 therefore we can handle any situation. We have confidence in ourselves, in
35015 the teachings, and the guidance of our lineage teachers. At this point, we
35016 can let go of all our doubt and hesitation. We can simply relax and be who we
35017 are, wherever we are. (p.58)
35018 * in-between state, interval
35019 -- The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "Mind Beyond Death", published by Snow
35022 The thoughts that in this year and month
35023 I will put right all my tasks and plans
35024 And then start a perfect dharma practice
35025 Is in fact the devil which brings all downfalls.
35027 The lack of death awareness prevents one from undertaking the practice of
35028 dharma. This is very true: If one is not aware of the eventuality of death,
35029 one will be totally concerned and preoccupied with the affairs of this
35030 lifetime alone, and with actions that are just for the benefit of this
35031 lifetime. Such ventures may take all one's time and energy, but no matter how
35032 important they appear to be, since they are directly related to this lifetime
35033 alone, their benefits are limited--once one leaves the present body, their
35034 benefit ends. Even though one might have a best friend, when one has to leave
35035 the body, one cannot take the friend along.
35036 ...Think that after twenty or thirty years even the Dalai Lama will also be
35037 no more. While I am alive, there will be people who are, from the depths of
35038 their hearts, prepared to give their lives for my sake, but on the day when I
35039 have to leave, I cannot take even one among them with me. Neither will I be
35040 able to take any of my possessions, even the body which I have always
35041 preserved and protected. This also will be left behind. At that time of my
35042 death, what will benefit is only the positive seeds that are imprinted upon my
35043 consciousness. No other factors will help at that time. (p.106)
35044 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", translated by Geshe Thupten
35045 Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
35047 At the beginning of the process of deity meditation and mantra repetition
35048 one meditates on emptiness, settling the non-inherent existence of oneself and
35049 the deity through a reasoning such as that of dependent-arising--the fact that
35050 both oneself and the deity arise in dependence on their respective bases of
35051 designation. One's own final nature and the final nature of the deity are the
35052 same, an emptiness of inherent existence.
35053 To perform deity yoga one does not just withdraw ordinary appearances and
35054 then appear as a deity but causes the mind realising emptiness itself to
35055 appear as a deity. Thus, it is essential initially to meditate on emptiness,
35056 cleansing all appearances in emptiness. One then uses that wisdom
35057 consciousness realising emptiness as the basis of emanation of a divine body.
35058 This must be done at least in imitation of a consciousness actually doing
35059 this, for meditation on a truly existent divine body, instead of helping, will
35060 only increase adherence to inherent existence. Meditated properly, the
35061 appearance of a divine figure is the sport of the ultimate mind of
35062 enlightenment, first in imitation and later in fact. (p.39)
35063 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Deity
35064 Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow Lion Pub.
35066 If one could attain the state of perfect buddhahood that is free from all
35067 faults, that sees directly all aspects of the qualities to be cultivated and
35068 faults overcome in the quest for enlightenment, and that is physically adorned
35069 with the marks and signs of perfection, the mere perception of which is
35070 beneficial, then one would be beyond the distinction of feeling attraction or
35071 aversion toward the infinite sentient beings. One would regard all beings
35072 with an equal compassion, and would have the ability to really benefit them.
35073 Think, "I should make every effort to attain this all-beneficial state."
35074 In brief, the motivation should be, "For the ultimate benefit of the
35075 sentient beings, who are as infinite as the sky is vast, I must attain the
35076 state of a peerless, perfect, pure buddha." This is the aspirational aspect of
35078 -- Glenn Mullin, "The Practice of Kalachakra", foreword by H.H. the Dalai
35079 Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
35081 After suffering severe puncture wounds without shooting any goop on my
35082 opponent, I realized I was simply outgunned. Never bring caulk to a
35084 -- Stephanie S. Thompson
35086 My cat Elea added a trick to her repertoire this morning.
35087 I sleep in a bit on the weekend, and both cats protest by
35088 visiting the bed every few minutes until I get up.
35089 Elea, being toothless, is afflicted with a mean case of drool when
35090 she's hungry. So this morning I got a "drool shower" since she
35091 sat next to my face and shook her head vigorously,
35092 flinging drool everywhere (especially onto my face).
35093 I know this wasn't just a fluke because a few minutes later
35094 she came back and did it again.
35097 On Arcadia Asylum, pioneering creator in Second Life...
35098 "Nope, she can't log into Arcadia, Aley Arai, nor Lora Lemon. She's great
35099 at building, but she doesn't think she should have to pay the Lindens for
35100 anything, so she doesn't, and they get mad about that and close her
35103 The important thing is the obvious thing nobody is saying.
35104 -- William S. Burroughs
35106 Our fundamental nature--what we term 'the buddha nature', the very nature of
35107 our mind, is inherently present within us as a natural attribute. This mind
35108 of ours, the subject at hand, has been going on throughout beginningless time,
35109 and so has the more subtle nature of that mind. On the basis of the
35110 continuity of that subtle nature of our mind rests the capacity we have to
35111 attain enlightenment. This potential is what we call 'the seed of
35112 buddhahood', 'buddha nature', 'the fundamental nature', or 'tathagatagarbha'.
35113 We all have this buddha nature, each and every one of us. For example, this
35114 beautiful statue of Lord Buddha here, in the presence of which we are now
35115 sitting, is a representation that honours someone who attained buddhahood. He
35116 awakened into that state of enlightenment because his nature was the buddha
35117 nature. Ours is as well, and just as the Buddha attained enlightenment in the
35118 past, so in the future we can become buddhas too.
35119 ...In any case, there dwells within us all this potential which allows us to
35120 awaken into buddhahood and attain omniscience. The empowerment process draws
35121 that potential out, and allows it to express itself more fully. When an
35122 empowerment is conferred on you, it is the nature of your mind--the buddha
35123 nature--that provides a basis upon which the empowerment can ripen you.
35124 Through the empowerment, you are empowered into the essence of the buddhas of
35125 the five families. In particular, you are 'ripened' within that particular
35126 family through which it is your personal predisposition to attain buddhahood.
35128 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
35129 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron, Foreword by
35130 Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion Pub.
35132 For achieving calm abiding... your mind must have two qualities:
35133 -great clarity of both the object and the consciousness itself
35134 -staying one-pointedly on the object of observation.
35135 Two factors prevent these from developing--laxity and excitement. Laxity
35136 prevents the development of clarity, and excitement prevents the stability of
35137 staying with the object.
35138 That which interferes with the steadiness of the object of observation and
35139 causes it to fluctuate is excitement, which includes any scattering of the
35140 mind to an object other than the object of meditation. To stop that, withdraw
35141 your mind more strongly inside so that the intensity of the mode of
35142 apprehension of the object begins to lower. If you need a further technique
35143 to withdraw the mind, it helps to leave the object of meditation temporarily
35144 and think about something that makes you more sober, such as the imminence of
35145 death. Such reflections can cause your heightened mode of apprehension of the
35146 object, the mind's being too tight, to lower or loosen somewhat, whereby you
35147 are better able to stay on the object of observation.
35148 It is not sufficient just to have stability; clarity is also needed. That
35149 which prevents clarity is laxity, which is a case of the mind's becoming too
35150 relaxed, too loose, lacking intensity--the tautness of the mind having become
35151 weak, caused by over-withdrawal inside. Heaviness of mind and body can lead
35152 to becoming lax, which can lead to a type of lethargy in which, losing the
35153 object of observation, you have as if fallen into darkness; this can lead even
35154 to sleep. When this begins to occur, it is necessary to raise, to heighten,
35155 this excessive declination of the mind by making it more taut, more tight. To
35156 accomplish this, it helps to brighten the object of meditation or, if that
35157 does not work, to leave the object of meditation temporarily and think on
35158 something that makes you joyous, such as the wonderful opportunity that a
35159 human lifetime affords for spiritual practice. If that does not work, you can
35160 even leave off meditating and go to a high place or where there is a vast
35161 view. Such techniques cause your deflated mind to heighten, to sharpen.
35162 While holding the object of observation with mindfulness, investigate with
35163 introspection from time to time to see whether the mind has come under the
35164 influence of laxity or excitement and determine the best practice for lowering
35165 or heightening it. In time, your will develop a sense of the proper level of
35166 tautness of the mind such that you will be able to catch laxity and excitement
35167 just before they arise and prevent their arising. (p.50)
35168 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
35169 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow
35172 The position of the body [during meditation] is very important because the
35173 channels within the body will follow the external disposition of the body.
35174 The way the body is placed will set the channels; and the winds, of course,
35175 flow inside the channels, so if they are properly set, the winds will flow
35176 properly. Mind follows the wind. To focus the mind properly, the winds must
35177 also be functioning properly. (p.39)
35178 -- Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, "The Practice of Mahamudra", translated
35179 by Robert Clark, ed. by Ani K. Trinlay Chodron, published by Snow Lion
35181 The real source of my suffering is self-centeredness: my car, my possession,
35182 my well-being. Without the self-centeredness, the suffering would not arise.
35183 What would happen instead? It is important to imagine this fully and to focus
35184 on examples of your own. Think of some misfortune that makes you want to lash
35185 out, that gives rise to anger or misery. Then imagine how you might respond
35186 without suffering. Recognize that we need not experience the misery, let
35187 alone the anger, resentment, and hostility. The choice is ours.
35188 Let's continue with an example. You see that there is a dent in the car.
35189 What needs to be done? Get the other driver's license number, notify the
35190 police, contact the insurance agency, deal with all the details. Simply do it
35191 and accept it. Accept it gladly as a way to strengthen your mind further, to
35192 develop patience and the armor of forbearance. There is no way to become a
35193 Buddha and remain a vulnerable wimp.
35194 Patience does not suddenly appear as a bonus after full enlightenment. Part
35195 of the whole process of awakening is to develop greater forbearance and
35196 equanimity in adversity. Santideva, in the sixth chapter of his Guide to the
35197 Bodhisattva's Way of Life, eloquently points out that there is no way to
35198 develop patience without encountering adversity, and patience is indispensable
35199 for our own growth on the path to awakening. (p.66)
35200 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
35201 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
35203 While the great adept [Tangtong Gyalpo] did not stray from vajralike
35204 meditative concentration on the peak of glorious Riwoche, the ornamental wheel
35205 of his inexhaustible enlightened body, speech, and mind manifested in three
35206 great regions of Kham.
35207 At Gyalmorong, a person who had received the Path with the Result at Sakya,
35208 and who meditated single-mindedly on the Time of the Path during four sessions
35209 and on the Profound Path Guruyoga, saw the great adept to be Vajradhara, the
35210 lord of all spiritual families, and made countless prostrations.
35211 ...A person who recited a thousand of the heart-mantra of Tara every day,
35212 declared, "This isn't Avalokiteshvara. It's Tara."
35213 Also, a person said, "This is the Great Adept of Iron Bridges. O great
35214 adept, why do different visual manifestations appear to us?" The great adept
35216 By bringing the vital winds
35217 and mind under control,
35218 taking control of how things appear to myself,
35219 overwhelming how things appear to others,
35220 and positioning magical bodies,
35221 I display whatever will tame sentient beings
35222 according to their various inclinations.
35224 -- Cyrus Stearns, "King of the Empty Plain: The Tibetan Iron Bridge Builder
35225 Tangtong Gyalpo", a Tsadra Foundation Series book, published by Snow Lion
35227 When I was a boy, Ling Rinpochay, who was then my junior tutor, was always
35228 very stern; he never smiled, not even a little. This bothered me a lot. By
35229 wondering why he was so humorless, I examined more and more what I was doing
35230 in my own mind. This helped me develop self-awareness with regard to my
35231 motivation. By my early twenties when I had matured, Ling Rinpochay
35232 completely changed; he always had a big smile when we were together.
35233 Effective practice of the morality of individual liberation depends upon
35234 sound, long-term motivation. For example, one should not become a monk or a
35235 nun to avoid having to work at a worldly job for food and clothing. Also, it
35236 is not sufficient merely to seek to avoid difficulty in this lifetime. To be
35237 motivated by such trifling purposes does not help to achieve freedom from
35238 cyclic existence--the ultimate reason to practice the morality of individual
35240 This is confirmed by Buddha's life story. One day Shakyamuni slipped
35241 outside the palace wall to experience life for himself. For the first time he
35242 saw a sick person, an old person, and a corpse. Deeply troubled by the
35243 suffering of sickness, aging, and death, he came to the conclusion that
35244 worldly life is without substance. Later, inspired by several religious
35245 practitioners, Buddha became captivated by the possibility of a higher, more
35246 meaningful, spiritual life. At that point he escaped from the palace, leaving
35247 his ordinary life behind to pursue that vision.
35248 What does this teach us? Like Buddha we need to begin by becoming concerned
35249 about the suffering of cyclic existence and by turning away from temporary
35250 distractions. Influenced by this new attitude, we must take up a system of
35251 morality by renouncing cyclic existence and by taking vows of pure behavior
35252 through seeking to avoid the ten nonvirtues. (p.29)
35253 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
35254 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
35256 Tsong-ka-pa's intention in praising Buddhism is not to insult other
35257 teachers. Statements of the greatness of Buddhism are made in order to
35258 develop one-pointedness of mind toward practice, for one who is able to
35259 practise Buddhism must generate effort to do so. It is necessary for him to
35260 have confidence in Buddha's teaching from the round orb of his heart.
35261 There is a Tibetan saying that one cannot sew with a two-pointed needle or
35262 achieve aims with a two-pointed mind. Similarly, if a practitioner is
35263 hesitant, he will not put great force into the practice of any one system.
35264 Tsong-ka-pa states that Buddhism is the best in order that persons who would
35265 be helped more through engaging in the Buddhist path than through another
35266 system might not be diverted to another path. (p.48)
35267 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
35268 published by Snow Lion Publications
35270 At the level of conventional truth we all naturally possess both the desire
35271 and the potential to overcome suffering and to attain happiness. In this
35272 context, we can reflect upon the Buddha's teachings on the Four Noble Truths
35273 and the Two Truths, and on the basis of such reflection we gradually develop
35274 an understanding of how we can gain freedom from suffering and of the
35275 potential we possess within ourselves for accomplishing such a goal.
35276 We can reflect further that: 'Just like me, all other sentient beings
35277 possess this same desire and potential to be happy and overcome suffering',
35278 and ask ourselves: 'If I continue to be guided by my own self-centredness and,
35279 through my single-pointed concern for my own well-being, continue to ignore
35280 the well-being of others, what will the consequences be?'
35281 Then we can reflect: 'From beginningless lifetimes I have harboured this
35282 self-cherishing attitude and have grasped onto the notion of an intrinsically
35283 real, enduring self. I have nurtured these two thoughts of self-cherishing
35284 and self-grasping deep in my heart as if they are twin jewels. But where has
35285 this way of being led me? By pursuing the dictates of my self-grasping and
35286 self-centredness, have I actually managed to attain the fulfilment of my self-
35287 interest? If it were possible, surely by now I should have achieved my goal.
35288 But I know that this is not the case.'
35289 We should then compare ourselves to enlightened beings such as the Buddha
35290 Shakyamuni who achieved total victory over all defilements and perfected all
35291 qualities of goodness. We should then ask ourselves: 'How did the Buddha
35292 accomplish this?' Through contemplation we will come to recognise that, at a
35293 certain point in his existence, the Buddha reversed the normal way of thinking
35294 and being. In the place of self-cherishing he cultivated the thought of
35295 cherishing the well-being of other sentient beings, and in place of self-
35296 grasping he cultivated the wisdom realising the absence of self-existence. In
35297 this way he attained full awakening. (p.30)
35298 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
35299 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
35301 In the history of the Nyungne tradition, many practitioners have been able to
35302 overcome incurable disease through the practice of Nyungne. We could say
35303 miracles like this literally do take place, although in the Buddhist
35304 understanding, overcoming great obstacles and disease would be considered
35305 blessings. A miracle is something else. It is the enlightened power that is
35306 demonstrated by enlightened masters. A true miracle in the Buddhist sense
35307 would be like the miracle of Milarepa entering into a little horn while his
35308 student, Rechungpa, sees him in his usual size yet he is inside the horn. Or
35309 like the miracle of Milarepa sitting on a lake and people seeing that he
35310 hasn't become any larger nor has the lake shrunk in size, yet he is completely
35311 covering it. These are real, enlightened miracles.(p.13)
35312 -- Wangchen Rinpoche, "Buddhist Fasting Practice: The Nyungne Method of
35313 Thousand-Armed Chenrezig", published by Snow Lion Publications
35315 [In listening to teachings one] of the defects is to listen in a way that is
35316 like a container with holes. This means that even though we are listening to
35317 the teachings, we do not retain their contents. In this case we lack
35318 mindfulness and memory. Practice of Dharma means that we should be able to
35319 benefit from what we have heard. It is not a pastime, like listening to a
35320 story. The teachings give us guidance on how to live meaningful lives and how
35321 to develop proper attitudes. So in order to benefit from the teachings, we
35322 must retain them with mindfulness.
35323 In all kinds of learning processes, listening, reading, etc., we must pay
35324 full attention and should endeavor to remember their contents. When our
35325 interest is halfhearted, we only remember half the points, and we retain them
35326 for only a short time. We should reflect and think about whatever we have
35327 heard, over and over again. In this way, the knowledge will stay in our mind
35328 for a long time. Another technique for remembering instructions is debate as
35329 it is practiced in the traditional debating schools. (p.22)
35330 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", root text by Kamalashila,
35331 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
35332 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
35334 We are duped by maya. The whole display of our senses has tricked us into
35335 believing it and thus seduces us into the world of suffering. And the
35336 illusionist is that old trickster, one's own mind. But when this illusory
35337 nature is recognized to be just that, one is released from the bondage of the
35338 magic show, at which time it becomes a wonderful spectacle, even a display of
35339 the unimpeded creativity and freedom of mind. Then maya itself is both the
35340 medium for this realization and the expression of it.
35341 This conscious and intentional method of relating to all phenomena as
35342 illusion is thus cast in a totally positive light on the spiritual path, a
35343 complete turn-around from the original negative valuation of it as deceit.
35344 Now illusion is seen as illumination and opportunity. The nature of our
35345 relationship with it is the salient point, rather than its own nature, which
35346 certainly does not exist anyway, in any way.
35348 Since everything is an illusory display,
35349 it is possible to attain enlightenment.
35350 The transformation of the maya concept from something to escape to something
35351 to engage may be loosely correlated with the shift of emphasis on
35352 understanding emptiness that emerged in the mahayana teachings. A further
35353 development may be seen in the vajrayana teachings with the esoteric
35354 instruction known as Illusory Body (sgyu lus). This occurs as one of the Six
35355 Dharmas of Niguma and in other configurations of completion stage practices in
35356 many lineages. (p.40)
35357 -- Sarah Harding, "Niguma, Lady of Illusion", a Tsadra Foundation Series
35358 book, published by Snow Lion Publications
35360 Afflictions are classed as peripheral mental factors and are not themselves
35361 any of the six main minds [eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mental
35362 consciousnesses]. However, when any of the afflicting mental factors becomes
35363 manifest, a main mind [a mental consciousness] comes under its influence, goes
35364 wherever the affliction leads it, and 'accumulates' a bad action.
35365 There are a great many different kinds of afflictions, but the chief of them
35366 are desire, hatred, pride, wrong view and so forth. Of these, desire and
35367 hatred are chief. Because of an initial attachment to oneself, hatred arises
35368 when something undesirable occurs. Further, through being attached to oneself
35369 the pride that holds one to be superior arises, and similarly when one has no
35370 knowledge of something, a wrong view that holds the object of this knowledge
35371 to be non-existent arises.
35372 How do self-attachment and so forth arise in such great force? Because of
35373 beginningless conditioning, the mind tightly holds to 'I, I' even in dreams,
35374 and through the power of this conception, self-attachment and so forth occur.
35375 This false conception of 'I' arises because of one's lack of knowledge
35376 concerning the mode of existence of things. The fact that all objects are
35377 empty of inherent existence is obscured and one conceives things to exist
35378 inherently; the strong conception of 'I' derives from this. Therefore, the
35379 conception that phenomena inherently exist is the afflicting ignorance that is
35380 the ultimate root of all afflictions. (p.26)
35381 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
35382 Jeffrey Hopkins, with Anne Klein, published by Snow Lion Publications
35384 With regard to awareness of the present moment, our mind is utterly
35385 insubstantial and yet has this characteristic of luminosity (Tib. salwa).
35386 "Luminosity" here simply means the cognitive capacity, the fact that our mind
35387 can know, experience, feel, and so on. This awareness always occurs in the
35388 present. When we are not thinking of the past or thinking of the future, when
35389 we're letting our mind simply rest in the direct experience of the present
35390 moment, then this awareness or lucidity emerges as an unfabricated
35392 Initially we do this very briefly, for one moment, two moments, and so on,
35393 but as we work with this, it starts to take on a momentum. However, it's
35394 important not to interfere with the naturalness of this awareness by
35395 appraising what is occurring, which means that we shouldn't think, "Well, this
35396 is happening, that is happening, I'm aware of this, I'm aware of that." Nor
35397 should we judge what's happening by thinking, "Well, this is good, this is
35398 what's supposed to be happening," or, "This is bad, this isn't what's supposed
35400 On the other hand, we do need to "plant the watchman of mindfulness and
35401 alertness," which means that we maintain some intentional awareness of what is
35402 occurring. Here, mindfulness means a simple, direct recollection of what
35403 we're trying to do. In other words, mindfulness is recollecting that we are
35404 trying to rest in a direct experience of the present moment. Alertness then
35405 is that faculty of mind that becomes aware when we become distracted from this
35406 present experience. However, this watchfulness or, this watchman, has to be
35407 very relaxed and gentle. It can't be too heavy-handed, otherwise the whole
35408 thing becomes a conceptual judgement. The technique of mind is to rest in
35409 this awareness of the present moment with a gentle watchman of mindfulness and
35411 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "Pointing Out the Dharmakaya", foreword by
35412 the Dalai Lama, introduction by Lama Tashi Namgyal, published by Snow
35415 The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet. -- William Gibson
35417 Complete spiritual fulfillment requires the ability to act compassionately,
35418 and that involves making practical distinctions. Therefore, Tsong-kha-pa
35419 insists upon the clarifying power of analysis that is not ultimate, analysis
35420 that operates within the constraints and boundaries of conventional fact and
35421 language so as to illuminate what does and what does not exist, what is and
35422 what is not helpful.
35423 Not all useful analysis need immediately reduce everything to emptiness. In
35424 other words, we can learn valuable, practical things by analyzing which car is
35425 good to drive, which action is good to do, which seed is good to plant,
35426 without at each step interrogating the final ontological status of the car,
35428 ...A pervasive sense that things are real and solid and exist just as they
35429 appear is woven right into the fabric of the world as we experience it. While
35430 tables do exist, we have yet to see them just as they are. Our very
35431 perception of them--while a valid source of information--is at the same time
35432 contaminated with a layer of distortion. That distortion is the appearance of
35433 the table as something that is able to be there on its own power, something
35434 that exists in and of itself.
35435 Thus when we begin to see, or even to suspect, that things lack essence and
35436 are not at all as we had supposed, we may feel terrified, as though our world
35437 is coming apart at the seams or evaporating beneath our feet. We calm those
35438 fears by again remembering that it is not that there is nothing. There is
35439 dependent arising, just as there has always been. Analysis threatens nothing
35440 but the false overlay, the distorting superimposition, which has caused us and
35441 others so much misery. (p.43)
35442 -- Guy Newland, "Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa's
35443 Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path", published by Snow Lion Pub.
35445 The play of this divine mind,
35446 The union of bliss, the supreme father, and emptiness,
35447 Is unlimited and thus beyond concept.
35448 -- The Seventh Dalai Lama, Kelsang Gyatso
35450 Cultivate a state of mind focused on bliss and emptiness as forcefully as
35451 possible. The wisdom of bliss and emptiness is compared to space, which is
35452 non-obstructive and expansive. Because offerings are the manifestation of the
35453 wisdom of bliss and emptiness, these substances are called "offerings of
35454 Samantabhadra (All-Good)."
35455 Generally speaking, a bodhisattva named Samantabhadra is renowned for his
35456 elaborate offerings to the buddhas and bodhisattvas. But here the term all-
35457 good (samantabhadra) refers most appropriately to the wisdom of bliss and
35458 emptiness. It is all-good from the viewpoint of emptiness and also from the
35459 viewpoint of bliss. This emptiness is the ultimate truth and also the
35460 ultimate virtue. And the wisdom of great bliss is the clear light wisdom:
35461 With a feeling of joy, imagine that offerings having such a nature pervade
35462 entire space. (p.64)
35463 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Union of Bliss and Emptiness: Teachings on the
35464 Practice of Guru Yoga", translated by Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow
35467 The spiritual path is truly simple. It is simple because it is not about
35468 acquiring, accumulating, or achieving anything. It is all about giving up
35469 what we don't need. It's about giving up what isn't useful instead of
35470 acquiring things with the idea of going somewhere or achieving something.
35471 That was the old game. That game which we have been playing for a long time
35472 is like a vicious circle. It has no end.
35473 Sometimes the spiritual search itself prevents us from seeing the truth that
35474 is always one with us. We have to know when to stop the search. There are
35475 people who die while they are searching for the highest truth with
35476 philosophical formulas and esoteric techniques. For them spiritual practice
35477 becomes another egoic plot which simply maintains and feeds delusions.
35478 Amazing! Buddha, God, truth, the divine, the great mystery, whatever you have
35479 been searching for, is here right now. (p.37)
35480 -- Anam Thubten, "No Self, No Problem", edited by Sharon Roe, published
35481 by Snow Lion Publications
35483 Practice of the morality of individual liberation, whether lay or monastic,
35484 leads to contentment.... Examine your attitudes toward food, clothes, and
35485 shelter. By reducing expectations you will promote contentment. The extra
35486 energy which is released should be devoted to meditation and to achieving
35487 cessation of problems, corresponding to the fourth and third noble truths. In
35488 this way, contentment is the basis, and the resulting action is called "liking
35489 meditation and abandonment."
35490 We should be contented in material areas, for those are bound by limitation,
35491 but not with regard to the spiritual, which can be extended limitlessly.
35492 Though it is true that a discontented person who owned the whole world might
35493 want to own a tourist center on the moon, that person's life is limited, and
35494 even the amount that can be owned is limited. It is better right from the
35495 beginning to be contented.
35496 However, with regard to compassion and altruism there is no limit, and thus
35497 we should not be content with the degree that we have. We are just the
35498 opposite; in the spiritual field we are content with slight amounts of
35499 practice and progress, but materially we always want more and more. It should
35500 be the other way around. Everyone needs to practice this, whether lay or
35502 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
35503 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
35505 If we view the world's religions from the widest possible viewpoint and
35506 examine their ultimate goal, we find that all of the major world religions,
35507 whether Christianity or Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, are dedicated to the
35508 achievement of permanent human happiness. They are all directed toward that
35509 goal. All religions emphasize the fact that the true follower must be honest
35510 and gentle, in other words, that a truly religious person must always strive
35511 to be a better human being. To this end, the different world religions teach
35512 different doctrines which will help transform the person. In this regard, all
35513 religions are the same, there is no conflict. This is something we must
35514 emphasize. We must consider the question of religious diversity from this
35515 viewpoint. And when we do, we find no conflict.
35516 ...Different kinds of food have different tastes: one may be very hot, one
35517 may be very sour, and one very sweet. They are opposite tastes, they
35518 conflict. But whether a dish is concocted to taste sweet, sour, or hot, it is
35519 nonetheless made in this way so as to taste good. Some people prefer very
35520 spicy, hot foods with a lot of chili peppers. Many Indians and Tibetans have
35521 a liking for such dishes. Others are very fond of bland tasting foods. It is
35522 a wonderful thing to have variety. It is an expression of individuality; it
35523 is a personal thing. Likewise, the variety of the different world religious
35524 philosophies is a very useful and beautiful thing. (p.13)
35525 -- "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists by the Dalai Lama", edited
35526 by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
35528 The basic principles and precepts of all true religions are very pure. What
35529 you see as impure is simply the inability of those who adhere to them. So as
35530 Buddhists, for instance, if you fail to embrace and internalize the basic
35531 principles and precepts of the practice, then your mind is always going to be
35532 overrun by the five mental afflictions. These negative afflictions are
35533 desire, hatred, jealousy, pride, and ignorance. They are the basic obstacles
35534 which impede you from making any true progress on the path. It is, in fact,
35535 the function of the preliminary training to prepare the field of the mind so
35536 that you are actually able to put to rest the gross delusions and give rise to
35537 your innermost qualities. This allows you to actualize your true bodhicitta
35538 nature, the mind which cares about others more than self.
35539 Leaving aside the idea of the so-called spiritual path, or religion, if you
35540 are able to uproot these delusions, the stones and boulders, from the field of
35541 your mind, then you will become an honorable person, respected in the world,
35542 with an easier, flexible attitude toward yourself and others. If you are
35543 able, through your development of wisdom and skillful means, to unite the
35544 teachings with your life, then true results will be achieved. (p.96)
35545 -- Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche, "Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga",
35546 trans. by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro, published by Snow Lion
35548 What premises or grounds do we have for accepting that mental afflictions
35549 can be ultimately rooted out and eliminated from our mind? In Buddhist
35550 thought, we have three principal reasons for believing that this can happen.
35551 One is that all deluded states of mind, all afflictive emotions and thoughts,
35552 are essentially distorted in their mode of apprehension, whereas all the
35553 antidotal factors such as love, compassion, insight, and so on not only are
35554 undistorted, but they also have grounding in our varied experience and in
35556 Second, all these antidotal forces also have the quality of being
35557 strengthened through practice and training. Through constant familiarity, one
35558 can enhance their capacity and increase their potential limitlessly. So the
35559 second premise is that as one enhances the capacity of these antidotal forces
35560 and increases their strength, one is able to correspondingly reduce the
35561 influences and effects of delusory states of mind.
35562 The third premise is that the essential nature of mind is pure; in other
35563 words, there is the idea that the essential nature of mind is clear light or
35565 So it is on these three premises that Buddhism accepts that delusions, all
35566 afflictive emotions and thoughts, can be ultimately eliminated through
35567 practice and meditation. (p.38)
35568 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
35569 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published
35570 by Snow Lion Publications
35572 As we become aware of the working of our mind, we'll find ourselves
35573 grappling with an inner trickster. Pay attention! The mind in which anger
35574 arises is also the mind that holds it, hides it, fans it, justifies it, or
35575 suppresses it. That's why this first step is crucial--before we can
35576 understand, befriend, tame, and transform our anger, we have to recognize it
35577 clearly and acknowledge it frankly. This is no small task.
35578 Self-awareness is a precondition for understanding and healing our anger.
35579 If we become aware of the workings of our mind we can discover the means by
35580 which we create our anger and the key to healing it. If we become aware that
35581 we are harboring irrational beliefs, ideas with false premises, mistaken
35582 assumptions or flawed logic, we can examine them and correct them. If we
35583 discover that we cherish ideas which are not in harmony with the realities of
35584 life and nature we can learn to relax into existence. If we find that we
35585 harbor desires, hopes, and expectations which cannot be achieved we have the
35586 option of letting them go.
35587 ...To develop awareness is to take a journey within--into the heart of our
35589 -- Ron Leifer, M.D., "Vinegar into Honey: Seven Steps to Understanding and
35590 Transforming Anger, Aggression, and Violence", published by Snow Lion
35592 A kind heart is the essential cause of happiness. Being kind to others is
35593 the nicest thing we can do for ourselves. When we respect others and are
35594 considerate of their needs, opinions and wishes, hostility evaporates. It
35595 takes two people to fight, and if we refuse to be one of them, there is no
35597 ...A kind heart is the root of harmony and mutual respect. It prevents us
35598 from feeling estranged or fearful of others. It also protects us from
35599 becoming angry, attached, closed-minded, proud or jealous. When opportunities
35600 arise to help others we won't lack courage or compassion. If political
35601 leaders had impartial minds and kind hearts, how different our world would be!
35602 As all problems arise from the self-cherishing attitude, it would be wise
35603 for each of us, as individuals, to exert ourselves to subdue it. World peace
35604 doesn't come from winning a war, nor can it be legislated. Peace comes
35605 through each person eliminating his or her own selfishness and developing a
35606 kind heart...we can each do our part beginning today. The beneficial result
35607 in our own lives will immediately be evident. (p.76)
35608 -- Thubten Chodron, "Open Heart, Clear Mind", foreword by His Holiness
35609 the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
35611 In order to have strong consideration for others' happiness and welfare, it
35612 is necessary to have a special altruistic attitude in which you take upon
35613 yourself the burden of helping others. In order to generate such an unusual
35614 attitude, it is necessary to have great compassion, caring about the suffering
35615 of others and wanting to do something about it. In order to have such a
35616 strong force of compassion, first you must have a strong sense of love which,
35617 upon observing suffering sentient beings, wishes that they have happiness--
35618 finding a pleasantness in everyone and wishing happiness for everyone just as
35619 a mother does for her sole sweet child.
35620 In order to have a sense of closeness and dearness for others, you first
35621 train in acknowledging their kindness through using as a model a person in
35622 this lifetime who was very kind to yourself and then extending this sense of
35623 gratitude to all beings. Since, in general, in this life your mother was the
35624 closest and offered the most help, the process of meditation begins with
35625 recognizing all other sentient beings as like your mother. (p.44)
35626 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness,
35627 Clarity, and Insight 25th Anniversary Edition", edited and translated
35628 by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow
35631 Most people feel cozy enough in samsara. They do not really have the
35632 genuine aspiration to go beyond samsara; they just want samsara to be a little
35633 bit better. It is quite interesting that "samsara" became the name of a
35634 perfume. And it is like that. It seduces us into thinking that it is okay:
35635 samsara is not so bad; it smells nice! The underlying motivation to go beyond
35636 samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centers. There are
35637 many people who learn to meditate and so forth, but with the underlying motive
35638 that they hope to make themselves feel better. And if it ends up making them
35639 feel worse, instead of realizing that this may be a good sign, they think
35640 there is something wrong with Dharma. We are always looking to make ourselves
35641 comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall
35642 painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won't be a
35644 ...There are two basic reasons we follow a spiritual path and look for
35645 liberation. One reason is that we want to be free. Let's take the
35646 traditional example of a burning house: your whole house is on fire, and you
35647 run out from it. But all your family--your partner, your children, your
35648 parents, even your pet dog--are all still inside. What are you going to do?
35649 You don't just say, "Well, I'm out. So too bad. Do your best to get out,
35650 too." Naturally this leads to the second basic reason for following a
35651 spiritual path: we will try to pull them out as well. (p.71)
35652 -- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, "Into the Heart of Life", foreword by H.H. the
35653 Gyalwang Drukpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
35655 "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form."
35657 We are empty, or rather the matter of which we are composed is empty. But I
35658 must emphasize that emptiness does not mean nothingness. Some commentators
35659 have been mistaken when they have accused Buddhism of being nihilistic. We
35660 believe that the world in which we live is part of a flux, a stream of events.
35661 This does not mean it is nothing. Everything depends on everything else.
35662 Nothing exists on its own. On account of all the influences that come to bear
35663 upon them, things appear, exist, and disappear, and then reappear again. But
35664 they never exist independently. Form is therefore empty, by which we mean it
35665 is not separate and independent. Form depends on a multitude of different
35666 factors. And emptiness is form because all forms emerge from emptiness, from
35667 this absence of independent existence. Emptiness exists only to give rise to
35669 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner
35670 Peace: The Essential Life and Teachings".
35672 When we understand the empty nature of our own mind, then the consequences
35673 of merit and sin will not be realized. In the state of emptiness, there
35674 exists no objective merit or sin.
35675 ...The nature of the mind is like a mirror; merits and sins are like the
35676 reflections in this mirror; and reflections in no way affect or modify the
35677 nature of the mirror. When we are in a state of contemplation, we are living
35678 in the condition of the mirror. At the time when all phenomena are exhausted
35679 and pass into the nature of reality, then our virtuous and vicious deeds will
35680 cause no benefit or harm to us. There is no basis for effect--all
35681 limitations, all frames of reference, all solid ground having been eliminated.
35682 But if we do not understand the nature of the mind and intrinsic awareness
35683 through direct personal experience, it will be a very dangerous situation for
35685 Indeed, it is not sufficient merely to understand these teachings
35686 intellectually; one must first practice and attain realization from this
35687 practice. Otherwise the virtuous and the vicious acts we commit in this life
35688 will create and accumulate karma, leading us again inevitably into
35689 transmigration. From the present time until we realize the ultimate
35690 exhausting of all phenomena into the nature of reality, our behavior must be
35691 refined; it must be heedful and scrupulous. Otherwise our view is only so
35692 much empty intellectual talk. (p.66)
35693 -- "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness", translation and
35694 commentary by John Myrdhin Reynolds, foreword by Namkhai Norbu, published
35695 by Snow Lion Publications
35697 The attainment of shamata is a serenely stilled state of mind, settled on
35698 mind itself. Although the attainment of such a meditational state focused on
35699 mind is the foundation for developing the highest attainments and is, of
35700 course, very excellent, by itself it is insufficient for reaching those goals.
35701 When we achieve a mind focused on mind with the perfect placement of
35702 absorbed concentration, free from all faults of dullness or flightiness, we
35703 increasingly experience an element of bliss accompanying our meditation. When
35704 we experience serene joy, on both a physical and mental level, brought on by
35705 the force of total absorption of mind on mind, we achieve a meditational state
35706 that fulfills the definition of shamata.
35707 Our ordinary mind is like raw iron ore that needs to be made into a steel
35708 sword. Progressing through the stages for attaining shamata is like forging
35709 the iron into steel. All the materials are there at our disposal. But since
35710 the mind wanders after external objects, then although it is the material for
35711 attaining shamata, it cannot yet be used as this product. We have to forge
35712 our mind through a meditational process. It is like putting the iron ore into
35714 To fashion the steel into a sword, or in this analogy to fashion the mind
35715 into an instrument that understands voidness, our serenely stilled and settled
35716 mind needs to come to decisive realization of voidness as its object. Without
35717 such a weapon of mind, we have no opponent with which to destroy the
35718 disturbing emotions and attitudes. (p.142)
35719 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
35720 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
35722 The Yolmo Valley has many different aspects that are beneficial to
35723 practitioners. Ian Baker writes:
35724 Chatral Rinpoche said that specific [places] in Yolmo are conducive to
35725 particular kinds of practice. Places with waterfalls inspire reflection on
35726 impermanence. Places with steep cliffs where the rocks are dark and jagged
35727 are good for meditating on wrathful deities. Places with rolling hills and
35728 flowering meadows support meditation on peaceful deities....
35729 Chatral Rinpoche clarified that the beyul [hidden lands] that Padmasambhava
35730 established in Tibet are not literal arcadias, but paradises for Buddhist
35731 practice, with multiple dimensions corresponding to increasingly subtle levels
35732 of perception. Beyond Yolmo's visible terrain of mountains, streams, and
35733 forests, he said, lies an inner level, corresponding to the flow of intangible
35734 energies in the physical body. Deeper still, the subtle elements animating
35735 the environment merge with the elements present within the practitioner--the
35737 Finally, at the beyul's innermost level--yangsang--lies a paradisiacal, or
35738 unitary dimension revealed through an auspicious conjunction of person, place,
35739 and time.... Chatral Rinpoche contended that yangsang is not merely a
35740 metaphor for the enlightened state, but an ever-present, if hidden, reality.
35742 -- Chatral Rinpoche, "Compassionate Action", edited and annotated by Zach
35743 Larson, published by Snow Lion Publications
35745 Distinguishing between constructive and destructive emotions is right there
35746 to be observed in the moment when a destructive emotion arises--the calmness,
35747 the tranquillity, the balance of the mind are immediately disrupted. Other
35748 emotions do not destroy equilibrium or the sense of well-being as soon as they
35749 arise, but in fact enhance it--so they would be called constructive.
35750 Also there are emotions that are aroused by intelligence. For example,
35751 compassion can be aroused by pondering people who are suffering. When the
35752 compassion is actually experienced, it is true that the mind is somewhat
35753 disturbed, but that is more on the surface. Deep down there is a sense of
35754 confidence, and so on a deeper level there is no disturbance. A consequence
35755 of such compassion, aroused by intelligent reflection, is that the mind
35757 The consequences of anger--especially its long-term effects--are that the
35758 mind is disturbed. Typically, when compassion moves from simply being a
35759 mental state to behavior, it tends to manifest in ways that are of service to
35760 others, whereas when anger goes to the point of enactment it generally, of
35761 course, becomes destructive. Even if it doesn't manifest as violence, if you
35762 have the capacity to help, you would refrain from helping. That too would be
35763 a kind of destructive emotion. (p.158)
35764 -- "Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?" A Scientific Dialogue
35765 with the Dalai Lama narrated by Daniel Goleman
35767 I love smiles. That is a fact. How to develop smiles? There are a variety
35768 of smiles. Some smiles are sarcastic. Some smiles are artificial-diplomatic
35769 smiles. These smiles do not produce satisfaction, but rather fear or
35770 suspicion. But a genuine smile gives us hope, freshness. If we want a
35771 genuine smile, then first we must produce the basis for a smile to come.
35772 —- H.H. the Dalai Lama
35774 Suffering is something very concrete, which everyone knows and wants to
35775 avoid if possible, and the Buddha therefore began his teaching by talking
35776 about it in his famous formulation of the Four Noble Truths.
35777 The first truth draws our attention to the fact that we suffer, pointing out
35778 the existence of the basic dissatisfaction inherent in our condition; the
35779 second truth explains the cause of dissatisfaction, which is the dualistic
35780 state and the unquenchable thirst (or desire) inherent in it: the subject
35781 reifies its objects and tries to grasp them by any means, and this thirst (or
35782 desire) in turn affirms and sustains the illusory existence of the subject as
35783 an entity separate from the integrated wholeness of the universe.
35784 The third truth teaches that suffering will cease if dualism is overcome and
35785 reintegration achieved, so that we no longer feel separate from the plenitude
35786 of the universe. Finally, the fourth truth explains that there is a Path that
35787 leads to the cessation of suffering, which is the one described by the rest of
35788 the Buddhist teachings.
35789 All the various traditions are agreed that this basic problem of suffering
35790 exists, but they have different methods of dealing with it to bring the
35791 individual back to the experience of primordial unity. (p.47)
35792 -- Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, "The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra,
35793 and Dzogchen", compiled and edited by John Shane, published by Snow Lion
35795 To disciples of increasing purity, ability, and rarity the Buddha gave more
35796 private guidance in the subtle mysteries. It appears that such teachings are
35797 included in the Mahayana sutras. There is no certainty, however, that all of
35798 the tantras were taught while the historical Buddha was alive. To an
35799 extremely small number of pure disciples the Buddha could appear today. They
35800 could encounter Vajradhara, the King of the Tantras, and he could reveal
35801 tantras and quintessential guidance to them.
35802 This is possible even though more than twenty-five hundred years have gone
35803 by since the historical Buddha passed away. There is no possibility, after
35804 the Buddha's death, of additions being made to his public discourses. But I
35805 think that teachings to disciples of pure action do not necessarily have to be
35806 given during the historical Buddha's lifetime. (pg.44)
35807 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Transcendent Wisdom", translated, edited and
35808 annotated by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
35811 Since the five perfections without wisdom
35812 Cannot bring perfect enlightenment,
35813 Along with skillful means cultivate the wisdom
35814 Which does not conceive the three spheres [as real]
35815 This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.
35816 -- Gyelsay Togmay Sangpo
35818 Practice of the five perfections without the understanding of reality
35819 remains contaminated, and though it may yield boundless happiness, it doesn't
35820 lead to omniscience. Love and compassion without the understanding of reality
35821 cannot help us to escape from worldly existence.
35822 On the other hand, we may easily remain trapped in a state of personal peace
35823 if we have understood reality but lack enough love and compassion. It is
35824 therefore the practice of Bodhisattvas to combine the two--skillful means and
35825 wisdom. Which of us can say we don't want to possess knowledge, kindness and
35826 pure conduct? Our text is a manual of instruction on how to gain these
35827 qualities and become a fully developed human being. (p.70)
35828 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas",
35829 translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
35831 "The Buddhas have already achieved all their own goals, but remain in the
35832 cycle of existence for as long as there are sentient beings. This is because
35833 they possess great compassion. They also do not enter the immensely blissful
35834 abode of nirvana like the Hearers. Considering the interests of sentient
35835 beings first, they abandon the peaceful abode of nirvana as if it were a
35836 burning iron house. Therefore, great compassion alone is the unavoidable
35837 cause of the non-abiding nirvana of the Buddha."
35840 Compassion's importance cannot be overemphasized. Chandrakirti paid rich
35841 tribute to compassion, saying that it was essential in the initial,
35842 intermediate, and final stages of the path to enlightenment.
35843 Initially, the awakening mind of bodhichitta is generated with compassion as
35844 the root, or basis. Practice of the six perfections and so forth is essential
35845 if a Bodhisattva is to attain the final goal.
35846 In the intermediate stage, compassion is equally relevant. Even after
35847 enlightenment, it is compassion that induces the Buddhas not to abide in the
35848 blissful state of complacent nirvana. It is the motivating force enabling the
35849 Buddhas to enter non-abiding nirvana and actualize the Truth Body, which
35850 represents fulfillment of your own purpose, and the Form Body, which
35851 represents fulfillment of the needs of others. Thus, by the power of
35852 compassion, Buddhas serve the interests of sentient beings without
35853 interruption for as long as space exists. This shows that the awakening mind
35854 of bodhichitta remains crucial even after achieving the final destination.
35856 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, root text by Kamalashila, "Stages of Meditation",
35857 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
35858 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
35860 [During sleep and waking states] there are physiological processes that
35861 correspond to different mental states, and these are associated with
35862 subjectively experienced energies in the body.
35863 In the waking state, these energies tend to be drawn into a locus in the
35864 center of the head, at the level of the forehead. In the dreaming stage,
35865 these energies will be even more drawn to a point in the throat. In the deep
35866 sleep state, these energies are more drawn into the heart. The location is
35867 not the physical heart, the organ, but the heart center which is right in the
35868 center of the chest.
35869 Certain events are experienced in meditation that seem to corroborate this
35870 theory. For example, in meditation, it is possible to bring your awareness
35871 into the heart cakra, and sometimes when this happens, the person will faint.
35872 On other occasions, the meditative awareness, finely concentrated, may be
35873 brought into the area of the navel. And at this juncture, it has been found
35874 experientially that heat is produced by such concentration. If you look at
35875 the anatomy of the body, you don't find these cakra points. (p.106)
35876 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with
35877 the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism", edited by Zara Houshmand,
35878 Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Pub.
35880 When you meditate with concentration, there are three particular experiences
35881 that arise: bliss, clarity, and nonthought.
35882 The experience of meditative bliss is greater than ordinary worldly
35883 happiness. Sometimes when you are meditating, a feeling of blissfulness
35884 suddenly arises from the subtle state of your mind and pervades your entire
35885 body. This bliss is healthy and brings out your inner qualities. Some people
35886 use drugs to induce blissfulness and visions, but drugs are external supports
35887 that cannot bring lasting happiness. The bliss experienced in meditation can
35888 last for many days, according to your ability to meditate. When you
35889 experience this kind of bliss, on the outside you might look very poor, but
35890 inside you remain very joyful.
35891 The second main experience in meditation is clarity. Sometimes while
35892 meditating you can suddenly feel that your mind is very clear and bright.
35893 Even if you are meditating in the dark, you do not feel heavy or tired.
35894 Sometimes your body feels very light and your mind is very clear, and many
35895 kinds of reflections appear. Clarity brings great wisdom and the ability to
35896 read other people's minds, as well as to see your own past and future lives.
35897 The third main experience is nonthought, or a state of equanimity without
35898 distractions. Beginners can also experience this. Nonthought is more settled
35899 than the experiences of bliss and clarity. If you have thoughts, they
35900 suddenly dissolve and you can remain continuously in meditation. As your
35901 ability to meditate develops, your mind becomes more and more settled, so that
35902 you can meditate for one hour or one week or one month without being
35903 distracted by thoughts. You simply remain in the natural state for as long as
35905 Bliss, clarity, and nonthought are the main qualities of concentration.
35906 However, it is important not to be attached to them or concerned about whether
35907 they arise or not; one should simply continue to practice. (p.29)
35908 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche,
35909 "The Buddhist Path: A Practical Guide from the Nyingma Tradition of
35910 Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Publications
35912 The Buddha's teachings can be divided into two main categories: the
35913 scriptures and realization. A verse states:
35915 The teachings of the Teacher have two aspects:
35916 Scripture and realization presented as they truly are.
35917 There is nothing else to do but
35918 Sustain them, speak of them, and practice them.
35920 When we practice listening, reflecting, and meditating, the teachings will
35921 free us from the heavy darkness of suffering. They are like a never-setting
35922 sun whose luminous rays reach to the farthest corners of this world. Among
35923 the eighty-four thousand teachings of the Buddha are those found in Tibet that
35924 maintain the unity of the sutra and mantra traditions. These teachings are
35925 like a tree trunk with numerous branches: a variety of lamas hold lineages
35926 within diverse traditions.
35927 ...In showing how to cut through the delusion of duality, these teachings
35928 open up to every living being the possibility of attaining true mastery over
35929 the immense and profound gates to the eighty-four thousand teachings. They
35930 are precious because they make nonconceptual wisdom manifest and bring forth
35931 the amrita of all-pervading emptiness. Like placing a perfect fruit in the
35932 palm of our hand, these teachings bring about two kinds of wisdom: the wisdom
35933 that sees the multitude of all phenomena distinctly and the wisdom that sees
35934 clearly into their nature.
35935 Relying on an appropriate path allows the fruition of practice to manifest.
35936 This result is possible because buddha nature is found in the mindstream of
35937 all living beings. (p.160)
35938 -- "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the Seventeenth
35939 Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje", by Michele Martin, published by Snow Lion
35941 All is neither real nor delusive--
35942 Held to be like [a reflection of] the moon on water by the learned.
35943 Just this ordinary mind
35944 Is called "dharmadhatu" and "Heart of the victors."
35945 --Venerable Rangjung Dorje
35947 ...Thus, seeming reality consists of the adventitious stains that are like
35948 [mistakenly seeing] a [white] conch as being yellow. Ultimate reality is the
35949 tathagata heart, which is like the [natural] white of the conch. Except for
35950 the mere appearances from the perspective of a mistaken [perceiving] subject,
35951 within the object--the conch--there is nothing white or yellow to be added or
35952 to be removed. Therefore, the pith instruction is to rest naturally and
35954 In brief, what are called "samsara" and "nirvana" are set up from the point
35955 of view of mere seeming appearances, while the nature of both--luminosity free
35956 from reference points--is called tathagata heart. Consequently, in terms of
35957 the definitive meaning, mere appearances and their nature cannot be separated,
35958 just like fire and its heat. For this reason, the mother [sutras] say:
35959 "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Emptiness is nothing other than
35960 form. Form is nothing other than emptiness." (p.165)
35961 -- "Gone Beyond: The Prajnaparamita Sutras, The Ornament of Clear
35962 Realization, and Its Commentaries in the Tibetan Kagyu Tradition", Volume One
35963 translated and introduced by Karl Brunnholzl, a Tsadra Foundation Series book,
35964 published by Snow Lion Publications
35966 In the Mahayana 'cause and effect' refer to totally supreme emptiness and
35967 supreme immutable bliss. The Brief Explication of Initiations (Shekhoddesha)
35968 [included in the Kalachakra cycle] says:
35970 That bearing the form of emptiness is the cause,
35971 That bearing immutable compassion is the effect.
35972 Emptiness and compassion indivisible
35973 Are called the mind of enlightenment.
35975 The indivisibility of these two is a Cause Vehicle in the sense of being the
35976 means by which one progresses, and it is an Effect Vehicle in the sense of
35977 being that to which one is progressing. Such a Vajra Vehicle has reference to
35978 Highest Yoga Tantra and cannot occur in the lower tantras. For the supreme
35979 immutable bliss can only arise when one has attained the branch of meditative
35980 stabilisation (in the system of the Kalachakra) and thus the branches of
35981 mindfulness and those below must be the means of achieving it. The three
35982 lower tantras do not have all the factors that are included in these causal
35984 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Tantra in Tibet",
35985 published by Snow Lion Publications
35987 ...one of the things you can learn from history is that men have learned
35988 to live with machinery at least as well as, and probably a good deal better
35989 than, they have learned to live with one another.
35990 -- E. E. Morison, from "Computers and the World of the Future"
35992 Everything is perfect in the universe--even your desire to improve it.
35997 I encourage you to conduct your own research on the results of practicing in
35998 various environments. Tibetan yogis are especially attracted to places with
35999 an enormous amount of open space and distant vistas. I have greatly enjoyed
36000 meditating in the high desert of the eastern Sierra Nevada range, where the
36001 views extend to peaks sixty miles away. The ability to direct the attention
36002 to such distant points gives a very expansive feeling to the intervening
36004 In such a spacious environment, allow your awareness to come out, with your
36005 eyes open and your gaze resting vacantly in the space in front of you. The
36006 experience in a vast space is very different from that in a tiny room. Gazing
36007 up at a clear night sky studded with stars is a wonderful way to experience
36008 the sheer enormity of space.
36009 It is important to distinguish between the contents of a space and the space
36010 itself. Colors and shapes constitute the contents of visual space. These are
36011 aspects or representations of ordinary phenomena in the visual field.
36012 Attending to the space of the mind means attending to that space from which
36013 all such contents emerge, in which they are present, and into which they
36014 dissolve; it is the space that lingers in between discrete events. (p.220)
36015 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness",
36016 published by Snow Lion Publications
36018 "Through analytical meditation, you come to a point of clarity and decisive
36019 insight, and at this point it is beneficial to abide in that revelation. Your
36020 insight will grow gradually like a sprout. Simply be present and settle your
36021 mind in the absolute nature of reality. Remain in a state of meditative
36022 equipoise, and do not think of this as a waste of your time. If you think you
36023 should rather be actively engaged in such practices as circumambulations or
36024 the stage of generation, it is the time for you to be simply present in
36025 meditative equipoise. But do not just sit and space out."
36028 In some scholarly discursive meditations in the sutra tradition, one
36029 continually seeks out the mind, and there is a tradition in which
36030 investigation is needed. Here, in the tradition of Mahamudra and Atiyoga, it
36031 is enough to seek and investigate during this phase of Dharma practice, but
36032 afterwards it is not necessary to continue the search. In the Katok
36033 tradition, the investigation of the mind is said to takes months, for one
36034 examines for three days each of the points of the mind's color and shape as
36035 well as the exterior and the interior of the body. Our tradition does not
36036 take so long, so it is important for you to seek out the mind without even a
36037 moment's distraction. (p.100)
36038 -- Karma Chagme, "A Spacious Path to Freedom: Practical Instructions on the
36039 Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga", commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche, trans. by B.
36040 Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications
36042 When the root of duality--dualistic clinging, dualistic perceptions, deluded
36043 perceptions--is severed, all the leaves, the branches, and even the tree trunk
36044 of samsara and nirvana naturally wither on their own and topple in their own
36045 time. Then this great spreading tree of samsara and nirvana, of duality, of
36046 worldliness, of conditioned being, does not need to be chopped down: it is
36047 already as if dead. We can relax; done is what had to be done, as the Buddha
36049 This is the whole point of the Dharma, of spiritual awakening, of
36050 Buddhahood; this is its ultimate evolution or unfolding. If we aspire to
36051 experience such an awakening, there is nothing else to do except recognize the
36052 true nature of our primordial awareness, our own essential being, our own
36053 birthright, which is within. This is the intrinsic nature of our own heart-
36054 mind, also known as bodhicitta or bodhi-mind. It is our own being, our own
36055 nature, this renowned buddha-nature. It is not a Buddha anywhere else. (p.103)
36056 -- Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche and Lama Surya Das, "Natural Great Perfection:
36057 Dzogchen Teachings and Vajra Songs", published by Snow Lion Publications
36059 A common [Tibetan Buddhist] motif is the "Wheel of Life," symbolizing the
36060 workings of cyclic existence. This is frequently found at the doorway to a
36061 main assembly hall and serves to remind the inhabitants of the dangers of
36062 mundane existence. This striking image has a large central circle divided
36063 into two halves. The top half has three sections, representing the three
36064 "happy transmigrations"--humans, demi-gods, and gods. The lower half also has
36065 three sections, indicative of the three bad transmigrations--animals, hungry
36066 ghosts, and hell beings. A pigeon symbolizes the mental affliction of desire,
36067 a snake represents hatred, and a pig--symbol of ignorance--holds the tails of
36068 the first two in its mouth. These three afflictions are the primary factors
36069 that bind people to cyclic existence, causing them to transmigrate helplessly
36070 from birth to birth.
36071 The theme of cause and effect is further illustrated by twelve sections
36072 around the rim of the wheel, symbolizing the twelve links of dependent arising
36073 (a summary of the process of transmigration). The whole wheel is held in the
36074 jaws of the Lord of Death, indicating that death is inevitable for those who
36075 are caught up in this cycle. Outside of the wheel are buddhas and
36076 bodhisattvas, often shown teaching the dharma, which provides an avenue of
36077 escape for those who are perceptive enough to recognize this and follow their
36078 instructions. (p.239)
36079 -- John Powers, "Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow Lion
36082 Is Anger Beneficial?
36084 We generally consider something beneficial if it promotes happiness. But
36085 when we ask ourselves, "Am I happy when I'm angry?" the answer is undoubtedly
36086 no. We may feel a surge of physical energy due to physiological reasons, but
36087 emotionally we feel miserable. Thus, from our own experience, we can see that
36088 anger does not promote happiness.
36089 In addition, we don't communicate well when we're angry. We may speak
36090 loudly as if the other person were hard of hearing or repeat what we say as if
36091 he had a bad memory, but this is not communication. Good communication
36092 involves expressing ourselves in a way that the other person understands. It
36093 is not simply dumping our feelings on the other. Good communication also
36094 includes expressing our feelings and thoughts with words, gestures, and
36095 examples that make sense to the other person. Under the sway of anger,
36096 however, we neither express ourselves as calmly nor think as clearly as usual.
36097 Under the influence of anger, we also say and do things that we later
36098 regret. Years of trust built with great effort can be quickly damaged by a
36099 few moments of uncontrolled anger.... If we could tame our anger, such
36100 painful consequences could be avoided.(p.23)
36101 -- Thubten Chodron, "Working with Anger", published by Snow Lion Pub.
36103 Why should we want to help our enemies or to give them happiness? Here are
36104 various useful ideas to consider. One approach is to think that the harm they
36105 have done us is, in fact, the result of our own past negative actions through
36106 which we have set ourselves up as a target for their harm. We could also
36107 consider how those who harm us are totally driven by their disturbing
36109 If someone in our family, someone we love dearly, becomes insane and tries
36110 to harm us, we wouldn't think of taking revenge but would try to help them
36111 regain a normal state of mind. Living beings, our mothers, are crazed by
36112 their disturbing emotions. Those who harm us are in particular need of our
36113 love and compassion. (p.52)
36114 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "The Bodhisattva Vow", translated and edited by
36115 Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
36117 On top of the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, and death, we encounter
36118 the pains of facing the unpleasant, separating from the pleasant, and not
36119 finding what we want. The basic problem lies with the type of mind and body
36120 that we have. Our mind-body complex serves as a basis for present sufferings
36121 in the form of aging, sickness, and death, and promotes future suffering
36122 through our usual responses to painful situations.
36123 By reflecting on birth and on the nature of mind and body, you will be moved
36124 from the depths of your heart to seek relief, thinking, "If I could only be
36125 free from a life driven by afflictive emotions and karma!" Without such
36126 reflection on pain, your knowledge of your own condition will be limited,
36127 which itself will put a limit on your compassion. As Tsonghkapa says:
36128 "If you do not cultivate a genuine sense of disenchantment with cyclic
36129 existence--whose nature is a mind-body complex under the sway of afflictive
36130 emotions and karma--you will have no chance to develop a genuine attitude
36131 intent on liberation, and there will be no way to develop great compassion for
36132 beings wandering in cyclic existence. Therefore, it is crucial to reflect on
36133 your situation." (p.151)
36134 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Becoming Enlightened", trans. and ed. by
36135 Jeffrey Hopkins, PhD
36137 When I was a young boy, Tantra was just a matter of blind faith. At age
36138 twenty-four I lost my own country, and then after coming to India started
36139 really reading Tsongkhapa's explanations on emptiness. Then, after moving to
36140 Dharamsala, I put more effort into the study and practice of the stages of the
36141 path, emptiness, and Tantra. So it was only in my late twenties after gaining
36142 some experience of emptiness that deity yoga made sense.
36143 One time in the main temple in Dharamsala I was performing the ritual of
36144 imagining myself as a deity of Highest Yoga Tantra, called Guhyasamaja. My
36145 mind continuously remained on the recitation of the ritual text, and when the
36146 words "I myself" came, I completely forgot about my usual self in relation to
36147 my combination of mind and body: Instead, I had a very clear sense of "I" in
36148 relation to the new, pure combination of mind and body of Guhyasamaja that I
36149 was imagining. Since this is the type of self-identification that is at the
36150 heart of Tantric yoga, the experience confirmed for me that with enough time I
36151 could definitely achieve the extraordinary, deep states mentioned in the
36152 scriptures. (p.188)
36153 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
36154 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
36156 In Buddhism, one speaks of three different levels of understanding, which
36157 are sequential--an understanding arrived at through learning and studying, an
36158 understanding developed as a result of deep reflection and contemplation, and
36159 an understanding acquired through meditative experience.
36160 There is a definite order in the sequence of this three. So on the basis of
36161 study and learning--which is the first level--we deepen our understanding of a
36162 given topic by constantly reflecting upon it until we arrive at a point where
36163 we gain a high degree of certainty or conviction that is firmly grounded in
36164 reason. At this point, even if others were to contradict our understanding
36165 and the premises upon which it is based we would not be swayed, because our
36166 conviction in the truth has arisen through the power of our own critical
36167 reflection. This is the second level of understanding which, however, is
36168 still at the level of the intellect.
36169 If we pursue this understanding further and deepen it through constant
36170 contemplation and familiarity with the truth, we reach a point where we feel
36171 the impact at the emotional level. In other words, our conviction is no
36172 longer at the level of mere intellect. This is the third level of
36173 understanding, which is experiential, and this is referred to in the Buddhist
36174 texts as an understanding derived through meditative experience.... You will
36175 need to deepen your understanding still further by engaging in regular
36176 meditation so that you can progress to the third level of understanding.
36177 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
36178 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
36180 Shortly after attaining enlightenment under the bodhi tree, the Buddha gave
36181 a sermon in Varanasi sharing the fruits of his realization. This sermon is
36182 referred to as the "first turning of the wheel of Dharma." The word Dharma
36183 here refers to the Buddha's teachings themselves. It was this sermon in which
36184 the Buddha developed what would become the framework for the entirety of his
36185 teachings: the four noble truths.
36186 These four truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of its origin, the
36187 truth of the possibility of its cessation, and the truth of the path that
36188 leads to that cessation. In essence, the four noble truths say that we all
36189 naturally desire happiness and do not wish to suffer--and that the suffering
36190 we wish to avoid comes about as a result of a chain of causes and conditions
36191 begun even before our birth. If we are to pursue our aspiration to gain
36192 freedom from suffering, we need to clearly understand the causes and
36193 conditions that give rise to suffering and strive to eliminate them.
36194 Additionally, we must clearly understand the causes and conditions that give
36195 rise to happiness as well, and actively practice them. This is the essence of
36196 the four noble truths.
36197 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's
36198 Heart of Wisdom Teachings", translated & edited by Geshe Thupten Jinpa
36200 In Dzogchen, while thoughts are active, rigpa permeates them all, so that
36201 even at the very moment when powerful thoughts like attachment and aversion
36202 are arising, there remains a pervasive quality of clear light rigpa.
36203 Dodrupchen says, "in Dzogchen, since the clear light's natural way of being is
36204 like the sun and its rays, inseparable, if you are able, through this, to
36205 bring out the radiance of genuine mind, you will be able to maintain the
36206 experience of clear light in meditation, without it fluctuating, or coming and
36208 Longchen Rabjam speaks of self-arising wisdom, which is in fact rigpa:
36209 "Self-arising wisdom is rigpa that is empty, clear and free from all
36210 elaboration, like an immaculate sphere of crystal. Its very being is such
36211 that it never explores objects of the senses."
36212 This "self-arising wisdom" is rigpa, which in essence is primordially pure.
36213 Longchenpa describes it as "empty and clear". To call it empty is to refer to
36214 its essence, primordially pure. To call it clear is to speak of its nature,
36215 spontaneously present. As such, it is "free from all elaboration", and free
36216 from the elaborations of adventitious phenomena. So it is like a flawless
36217 crystal sphere, and truly "its very being is such that it never explores
36218 objects of the senses". (p.180-5)
36219 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
36221 There is an Indian saying: if you are struck by a poisonous arrow, it is
36222 important first to pull it out, there is no time to ask who shot it, what sort
36223 of poison it is and so on. First handle the immediate problem, and later we
36224 can investigate. Similarly, when we encounter human suffering, it is
36225 important to respond with compassion rather than question the politics of
36226 those we help. Instead of asking whether their country is enemy or friend, we
36227 must think, "These are human beings, they are suffering, and they have a right
36228 to happiness equal to our own."
36229 Our attitude towards suffering is very important because it can affect how
36230 we cope with it when it arises. Our usual attitude consists of an intense
36231 aversion and intolerance of our own pain and suffering. However, if we can
36232 transform our attitude, adopt an attitude that allows us greater tolerance of
36233 it, this can do much to help counteract feelings of mental unhappiness,
36234 dissatisfaction and discontent. (p.92)
36235 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Pocket Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by
36238 Why should we want to help our enemies or to give them happiness? Here are
36239 various useful ideas to consider. One approach is to think that the harm they
36240 have done us is, in fact, the result of our own past negative actions through
36241 which we have set ourselves up as a target for their harm. We could also
36242 consider how those who harm us are totally driven by their disturbing
36244 If someone in our family, someone we love dearly, becomes insane and tries
36245 to harm us, we wouldn't think of taking revenge but would try to help them
36246 regain a normal state of mind. Living beings, our mothers, are crazed by
36247 their disturbing emotions. Those who harm us are in particular need of our
36248 love and compassion. (p.52)
36249 -- Geshe Sonam Rinchen, "The Bodhisattva Vow", translated and edited by
36250 Ruth Sonam, published by Snow Lion Publications
36252 If you are totally concerned and preoccupied with the affairs of this
36253 lifetime, there is a great danger of causing your own downfall. If by such
36254 concern you were able to achieve the desired happiness, that is okay, but this
36256 We all let ourselves be caught in this web of preoccupation with the
36257 activities and confusion of this lifetime. Having too much worldly
36258 involvement ends in confusion. We spend our whole lives thinking that this
36259 might be better than that, I should do this, or perhaps something else is
36260 better and I should do that. If you reflect upon the underlying
36261 dissatisfaction, then you will be able to find that, well, after all, whatever
36262 they might be, the affairs of this lifetime are not that important, because
36263 they yield a limited benefit. This does not mean that you should not work for
36264 your own livelihood, but it does indicate that you should not be preoccupied
36265 with that alone. (p.107)
36266 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Bliss", translated by Geshe Thupten
36267 Jinpa, edited by Christine Cox, published by Snow Lion Publications
36269 Do you understand who the enemy is? You do not need to beat anyone up, and
36270 you do not need a weapon to kill your enemy. You do not need money to buy a
36271 weapon. It is all very easy.
36272 How is liberation accomplished? The offering of liberation is accomplished
36273 by abandoning the dualistic mind of discursive thoughts. The sharp weapon of
36274 primordial wisdom, which completely annihilates the dualistic mind, is the
36275 means for achieving this separation. This "weapon" has been part of your
36276 continuum for a long time now. With this weapon you can completely devastate
36277 the dualistic mind, leaving not even a trace behind, thus liberating the mind
36278 into the sphere of unborn truth. The enemy will never return. This is called
36280 I must emphasize that primordial wisdom is not something you can buy, get
36281 from your best friend or have handed to you by a buddha in heaven. It is not
36282 something that someone else has but you do not. Abandon such concepts.
36283 Primordial wisdom does not come from an external source. It is simply your
36284 true nature. It is something that you and everyone else have as the very
36285 essence of your mind.
36286 You should know what your qualities and capabilities are. (p.79)
36287 -- Gyatrul Rinpoche, "The Generation Stage in Buddhist Tantra", published
36288 by Snow Lion Publications
36290 With regard to ordinary study, except for the fact that there is a limit to
36291 our lifetime, it is not that you arrive at a point where there is no more room
36292 in your brain. No matter how much you study, even if you study a hundred
36293 thousand million words, the mind can still retain them. This indicates that
36294 the basis of these qualities, consciousness, is stable and continuous.
36295 The other day, I made a joke to someone who was asking about the brain. I
36296 said that if, like a computer, you needed a cell for each moment of memory,
36297 then as you become more and more educated, your head would have to get bigger
36299 Because of these reasons--that compassion, wisdom, and so forth are
36300 qualities that depend on the mind, and the mind is stable and continuous--they
36301 can be developed to a limitless degree.
36302 It is from this point of view that it is said that the conception of
36303 inherent existence can be extinguished. When one removes the conception of
36304 inherent existence, one thereby also ceases the afflictive emotions generated
36305 in dependence upon that ignorance. Also, since the ignorance that drives
36306 contaminated actions has ceased, this class of actions ceases. Once the
36307 motivator of the action and the actions cease, the results of those actions
36308 will cease. That is how the third noble truth--true cessation--comes to be.
36310 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, "The Dalai Lama at
36311 Harvard: Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and
36312 edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
36314 "Accumulating merit" can be approached from a psychological perspective that
36315 lends itself to experiential verification or from a spiritual dimension that
36316 requires some faith. "Merit" can be understood as "spiritual power" that
36317 manifests in day-to-day experience. When merit, or spiritual power, is
36318 strong, there is little resistance to practicing Dharma and practice itself is
36320 Tibetans explain that people who make rapid progress in Dharma, gaining one
36321 insight after another, enter practice already having a lot of merit. By the
36322 same theory, it is possible to strive diligently and make little progress.
36323 Tibetans explain this problem as being due to too little merit. Merit is the
36324 fuel that empowers spiritual practice.
36325 How do you accumulate merit? Engaging in virtue of any sort, with your
36326 mind, your speech, or your body results in merit. Just as merit can be
36327 accumulated, it can also be dissipated by doing harm. In general, mental
36328 afflictions dissipate merit. The mental affliction that is like a black hole
36329 sucking up merit, worse than all the others, is anger. Attachment or sensual
36330 craving can get you in a lot of trouble, but it doesn't have the debilitating
36331 impact upon spiritual practice that anger does. Remember the warrior
36332 metaphor--standing at the gateway of the mind, vigilant, spear ready. The
36333 spear is for mental afflictions, especially anger. Nip anger in the bud. (p.208)
36334 -- B. Alan Wallace, "Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind
36335 Training", published by Snow Lion Publications
36337 It is necessary to alternate stabilising meditation and analytical
36338 meditation... by merely cultivating non-conceptuality and non-analysis it is
36339 impossible to enter into the yoga of signlessness.
36340 Even after emptiness has been realised, powerful and repeated analysis is
36341 needed. Merely to set one's mind on the meaning of emptiness is the mode of
36342 cultivating calm abiding observing emptiness; in order to cultivate special
36343 insight it is necessary to analyse again and again. These two modes of
36344 meditation--stabilising and analytical--are alternated until analysis itself
36345 induces even greater stablisation, at which point stabilisation and wisdom are
36346 of equal strength, this being a union of calm abiding and special insight.
36347 In Performance as well as in Action Tantra the meditative stabilisation
36348 which is a union of calm abiding and special insight is used to gain feats for
36349 the sake of aiding sentient beings and accumulating merit quickly. (p.42)
36350 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Deity
36351 Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra", published by Snow Lion Pub.
36353 Seeking a Place of Refuge.
36355 A spiritual aspirant requires a model, something he or she can look up to as
36356 an ideal and thus find guidance and inspiration. In Buddhism this is the
36357 Triple Gem, or the Three Jewels of Refuge: the Buddhas, Dharma and Sangha.
36358 When we think of the fully enlightened Buddhas--the beings who have purified
36359 their minds of all stains and obscurations and who have expanded their wisdom
36360 to the limits of existence--we feel very attracted and awed; but somehow there
36361 always seems to be a great distance between the Buddhas and us. Therefore,
36362 there is the refuge of Sangha, the community of spiritual aspirants, the
36363 assembly of practitioners dwelling in the various stages of practice and
36365 These beings provide us with a perspective on the path. We have to look up
36366 to the Sangha, but not as far as to the Buddhas. The Sangha make us think,
36367 "This person is not that far ahead of me. If I just make a bit more
36368 effort...." They give us confidence for spiritual practice. Sometimes they
36369 make us feel like we can even race them to enlightenment. These are the
36370 Sangha of spiritual friends.
36371 Thoughts of the Buddhas make us numb with admiration; thoughts of the Sangha
36372 cause us to jump to it and to apply ourselves with zeal to the spiritual path.
36373 This path and the methods for traversing it are the third Jewel of Refuge, the
36374 Dharma. This is the collection of teachings to be practiced and the
36375 realizations to be attained. (p.97)
36376 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
36377 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
36379 Suppose there is this religious group building thousands of childcare
36380 facilities and hospices.... Although these religious workers are doing a lot
36381 of caring work, there is no wish to enlighten sentient beings. Their aim is
36382 just to provide food and education. At the same time, imagine there is one
36383 hermit living somewhere in the mountains of the Himalayas who is doing none of
36384 this. In fact, within close range of him, there are a lot of babies dying,
36385 yet outwardly he is doing nothing about it. Inwardly, however, he is actually
36386 meditating, "May all sentient beings be enlightened!" and he continues to do
36387 this every day. Purely because of the enlightenment aspect, this person is
36388 worthier of homage than the first group. Why? Because it is so difficult to
36389 truly and genuinely wish for the enlightenment of others. It is much easier
36390 to give people food and educate them.
36391 Most of us don't really appreciate this fact. We have never before
36392 genuinely wished for someone else to achieve enlightenment. Likewise, if
36393 someone were to come over and say to us: "Here you go, you have a ticket for
36394 enlightenment. There is only one ticket." I don't think we would even think
36395 about giving it to someone else! We'd grab it and go for it. Enlightenment
36396 is such a valuable thing.
36397 Actually, enlightenment is much too large a subject, so let's not take that
36398 as an example. Instead, let's say someone comes along with a potion that
36399 promises you clairvoyance or omniscience. We would drink it ourselves, not
36400 even sharing half of it with others!
36401 Just think how often we are jealous when someone is a better practitioner.
36402 How often do we get jealous when someone receives a better or a higher
36403 teaching than we do? If you have genuine bodhichitta, you should be happy,
36404 shouldn't you? After all, isn't that what you wished for? Their getting
36405 enlightenment means your wish is at last coming true. Their receiving higher
36406 teachings, or becoming better practitioners, means that your aspiration is
36407 finally being fulfilled! But we don't feel this way, instead we feel jealous
36408 or envious. Some of us may be so-so Dharma practitioners, so we don't really
36409 feel jealous or envious, but we still feel left behind. Who cares? If you
36410 are a genuine bodhisattva, you shouldn't care about these things. (p.123)
36411 -- "Entrance to the Great Perfection: A Guide to the Dzogchen Preliminary
36412 Practices", compiled, translated, and introduced by Cortland Dahl,
36413 published by Snow Lion Publications
36415 It is very difficult to help somebody overcome his or her problems when the
36416 problems are unstructured, when in a certain way this person does not have any
36417 problems, though deep inside all the problems are there. It is very difficult
36418 for a human being whose problem is confused, whose ego is ill-defined and
36419 without foundation, to really purify, clarify, and develop anything.
36420 The same principle applies to praying. As long as we have our self, our
36421 ego, we pray to the Buddha: "Please bless me so that my prayers for the
36422 benefit of all sentient beings be fulfilled." Otherwise our prayer does not
36423 follow any line or direction. It would be like going to a big five-star hotel
36424 with five hundred rooms and not knowing your room number, or taking an
36425 elevator without knowing which floor to go to--this would be a big problem.
36426 This is the reason for calling upon the great compassion of the Buddha and
36427 asking him to consider our prayers. The reason is not that the Buddha only
36428 listens to someone who prays to him; rather, without praying to the Buddha we
36429 are not developed enough to have the condition necessary to receive his
36430 blessing. Rain might be falling for ten thousand years, yet if our cup is
36431 upside down it will remain empty. Through praying we open up, we turn our cup
36432 to let the water get inside. (p.48)
36433 -- XII Khentin Tai Situpa Rinpoche, "The Third Karmapa's Mahamudra Prayer",
36434 translated and edited by Rosemarie Fuchs, published by Snow Lion Pub
36436 Catproof is an oxymoron, childproof nearly so. -- unknown
36438 In Tibetan there is no word for "emotion."
36439 Bearing in mind that the fundamental goal of Buddhist practice is the
36440 achievement of nirvana, when you study the mind what you're really concerned
36441 with is what specific mental states impede the accomplishment of that end.
36442 That's what the six primary states and twenty derivative states (the
36443 unwholesome mental factors) all have in common. Some are emotions and some
36444 are not, but it doesn't really matter. What's important is they all share
36445 that common factor of being impediments.
36446 In contrast, modern psychology does not have the aim of nirvana. My
36447 conjecture, in terms of trying to understand why the West places such a strong
36448 emphasis on identifying emotion, is that, going back to the Enlightenment,
36449 even as far back as Aquinas, there is an enormous priority placed on reason
36450 and intelligence. What can impede reason? Emotion.
36451 You have two categories that are set in opposition to each other. The fact
36452 that there is a specific term for emotion in Western thought does not
36453 necessarily imply that there was a special emphasis placed on understanding
36454 the nature of emotion. Perhaps initially the motive for labeling something as
36455 emotion was to enhance reason by identifying something that is unreasonable,
36456 something that is irrational. (p.159)
36457 -- "Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue
36458 with the Dalai Lama", narrated by Daniel Goleman, foreword by the Dalai
36461 The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader.
36462 -- Standard textbook cookie
36465 Your Holiness and other teachers tell us to be sincerely joyful about
36466 others' worldly achievements, happiness, and acquisitions. But if we know
36467 with certainty that a person has acquired or achieved something through
36468 unskillful or non-virtuous means, such as lying, stealing, cheating, harming,
36469 in what manner should that happiness for them be experienced and expressed?
36472 One's attitude toward superficial successes that are achieved through wrong
36473 means of livelihood such as lying, stealing, cheating, and so on, should not
36474 be the same as for achievements and happiness which are genuine. However,
36475 here you must bear in mind that if you examine this carefully, you will find
36476 that although the immediate circumstances that gave rise to a person's joy and
36477 happiness may be a wrong means of livelihood, that is merely the immediate
36478 circumstance: the actual cause of that happiness is the individual's merit in
36480 So one has to see the difference between immediate circumstances and long-
36481 term causes. One of the characteristics of karmic theory is that there is a
36482 definite, commensurate relationship between cause and effect. There is no way
36483 that negative actions or unwholesome deeds can result in joy and happiness.
36484 Joy and happiness, by definition, are the results or fruits of wholesome
36485 actions. So, from that point of view, it is possible for us to admire not so
36486 much the immediate action, but the real causes of joy. (p.119)
36487 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
36488 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by
36489 Snow Lion Publications
36491 At all times, do not lose courage in your inner awareness; uplift yourself,
36492 while assuming a humble position in your outer demeanor. Follow the example
36493 of the life and complete liberation of previous accomplished masters (siddha).
36494 Do not blame your past karma; instead, be someone who purely and flawlessly
36495 practices the Dharma. Do not blame temporary negative circumstances; instead,
36496 be someone who remains steadfast in the face of whatever circumstances may
36498 In brief, taking your own mind as witness, make your life and practice one,
36499 and at the time of death, with no thought of anything left undone, do not be
36500 ashamed of yourself. This itself is the pith instruction of all practices.
36501 Eventually, when the time of death arrives, completely give up whatever
36502 wealth you possess, and do not cling to even one needle. Moreover, at death,
36503 practitioners of highest faculty will be joyful; practitioners of middling
36504 faculty will be without apprehension; and practitioners of the lowest faculty
36505 will have no regrets. When realization's clear light becomes continuous day
36506 and night, there is no intermediate state (bardo): death is just breaking the
36507 enclosure of the body.
36508 If this is not the case, but if you have confidence that you will be
36509 liberated in the intermediate state, whatever you have done in preparation for
36510 death will suffice. Without such confidence, when death arrives, you can send
36511 your consciousness to whichever pure land you wish and there traverse the
36512 remaining paths and stages to become enlightened. (p.58)
36513 -- "Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche's Heart Advice", translated by Ron Garry,
36514 a Tsadra Foundation Series book, published by Snow Lion Publications
36516 There are many different forms of bodywork that can purify and heal in the
36517 context of preparing for tantric practice. Trauma held in the body from early
36518 experiences is cleared only when we are able to work therapeutically in the
36519 body. Whether it is body-centered therapy or the various practices of
36520 acupuncture, osteopathy, homeopathy, and so on, if the practice releases and
36521 transforms trauma, then it is beneficial as a preliminary to any further
36522 tantric practice. I often suggest to people I teach that they follow some
36523 form of body-energy healing in order to further their release of trauma.
36524 Also, after trauma has been released, it is often extremely useful to then
36525 explore some form of psychotherapy.
36526 We should not assume that the traditional practices will do it all for us.
36527 It is simply idealistic and naive to think that all our ills can be resolved
36528 by doing the traditional preliminary practices or, indeed, by classical
36529 "dharma practice" alone. We should consider a healthy body-mind-life
36530 relationship as a necessary part of our practice. When we get this balance
36531 right, we create the basis for a sound dharma practice.
36532 The practice of tantra in particular needs this healthy, balanced basis
36533 because when we work with tantric practices, we stimulate processes in the
36534 body that are often very powerful. If we have a sound base for practice and
36535 have a level of emotional and energetic maturity, then the effects of tantra
36536 can be held and grounded without creating the potential for problems to arise.
36537 Without a sound relationship to the body, the practice of tantra has no real
36538 base from which to unfold.(p.53)
36539 -- Rob Preece, "Preparing for Tantra: Creating the Psychological Ground
36540 for Practice", published by Snow Lion Publications
36542 During a visit to America, Winston Churchill was invited to a buffet luncheon
36543 at which cold fried chicken was served. Returning for a second helping, he
36544 asked politely, "May I have some breast?" "Mr. Churchill," replied the
36545 hostess, "in this country we ask for white meat or dark meat." Churchill
36546 apologized profusely. The following morning, the lady received a magnificent
36547 orchid from her guest of honor. The accompanying card read: "I would be most
36548 obliged if you would pin this on your white meat."
36552 What are the methods for causing one's own mind to become the practices?
36553 Initially, one should take refuge and think about actions and their effects.
36554 The refuge is the Three Jewels: Buddha, his Doctrine and the Spiritual
36557 [Buddha] When a sentient being purifies the taints of his own mind as well
36558 as their latent predispositions, he is free of all defects that act as
36559 obstructions. Thus, he simultaneously and directly knows all phenomena. Such
36560 a being is called a Buddha, and he is a teacher of refuge, like a physician.
36562 [Dharma] The Doctrine jewel is the superior paths--the chief right paths
36563 which remove the taints as well as their latent predispositions--and the
36564 absences which are states of having removed what is to be removed. The
36565 Doctrine is the actual refuge, like medicine.
36567 [Sangha] The Spiritual Community jewel is all persons, whether lay or
36568 ordained, who have generated a superior path in their continuum. They are
36569 friends helping one to achieve refuge, like nurses.
36571 The three refuges that have been achieved and presently exist in other
36572 beings' continuums are one's own causal refuge; one relies on a protector just
36573 as a weak person takes refuge in a stronger person. The three refuges that
36574 one will attain in the future are one's own effect refuge. One who relies on
36575 the Three Jewels from the point of view of knowing that he is to attain them,
36576 must cause them to be generated in his own continuum.(p.35)
36577 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Buddhism of Tibet", translated and edited by
36578 Jeffrey Hopkins, with Anne Klein, published by Snow Lion Publications
36580 Buddhism was extremely helpful to me during the process of my sister's
36581 lingering death two years ago. She was forty-five years old and had very few
36582 spiritual aspirations. She was actually fearful and closed to any suggestions
36583 that she might find comfort in expanding her degree of awareness and
36584 understanding. At first I was extremely upset by her attitude, but then I
36585 realized it was not for me to decide what she should or should not do with the
36586 last few months of her life. I was with her for support and comfort and not
36587 to force her to view her life in a way which was foreign and threatening to
36589 Enabling a person to accomplish a sense of having lived purposefully and
36590 with significance is a major goal of caregivers and loved ones. Being able to
36591 support someone during their dying trajectory, regardless of what they are
36592 thinking or feeling is probably one of the most valuable services one person
36593 can offer to another. But, it is difficult to stay close to someone who is
36594 dying. Not trying to evade an open encounter with the intense psychic pain
36595 that usually accompanies the recognition of impending death is one of the most
36596 valuable contributions that a nurse or any other caregiver or loved one can
36597 make to the patient who wishes to discuss his or her circumstances. Facing
36598 forthrightly the situation of dying, however, requires feeling comfortable
36599 with one's own feelings about death and the frailty of being human.
36600 Buddhism has taught me that death need not be approached only as a tragedy;
36601 it is also an event from which a profound understanding can unfold. (p.44)
36602 -- "Buddhism through American Women's Eyes", edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo,
36603 published by Snow Lion Publications
36605 Offerings should not be influenced by fluctuations of motivation and they
36606 should not be procured by devious means--offerings procured through wrong
36607 means are not good offerings. They should be arranged with proper motivation.
36608 As explained in the precepts of refuge, you should make offerings of the first
36609 portion of your food or drink of the day, whether it be food, milk or tea.
36610 Offerings should be made of what is edible; it is not helpful to arrange a
36611 torma that could not be eaten and then to say OM AH HUM, OM AH HUM. If you
36612 can in reality transform something into delicious food just by reciting OM AH
36613 HUM three times, then it is alright! On the other hand, if your offerings
36614 remain as mere tsampa (roasted barley flour) after having repeated OM AH HUM a
36615 thousand times, it will not help much. The offerings should be the best you
36616 can afford. At least you can offer the first portion of your daily food, as
36617 no one can live without food! Our offerings should be something which is
36618 edible.... [Even] if you make water offerings in a proper manner, you can
36619 generate great merit.(p.35)
36620 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Union of Bliss and Emptiness: Teachings on the
36621 Practice of Guru Yoga", translated by Thupten Jinpa, published by Snow
36624 Hundreds of people may be more popular, powerful, and wealthy than we are,
36625 but from the point of view of the Dharma, no one is more fortunate. We have a
36626 very precious opportunity to make the best of our lives by working toward the
36627 attainment of buddhahood. We have obtained this precious human birth and have
36628 come in contact with the teachings and spiritual friends. All the favorable
36629 conditions are available--we could not ask for more. Yet this is only for a
36630 very short period of time. Within this very short time, the best thing we can
36631 do for ourselves is commit ourselves fully and wholeheartedly to practicing
36632 the disciplines, which are an essential part of the practice of the teachings.
36633 ...The practice of discipline is very profound. In terms of the
36634 effectiveness of the practice of the Dharma, there is a hundredfold difference
36635 between someone who follows some level of discipline and someone who does not.
36636 Whether visualizing a deity, practicing basic meditation, or reciting mantras,
36637 the benefit is a hundredfold greater when we have the ground of discipline.
36638 The teachings of the Buddha say that if we take dust from the footprint of a
36639 person who embodies discipline and put it on our heads, it is a blessing.
36640 Even the king of the devas would do that, because of the sacredness of
36641 discipline. There is a tradition, followed to this day in India, of touching
36642 the feet of a holy person or touching the doorstep before entering his or her
36643 door, and then touching our foreheads. This is not merely a cultural
36644 tradition, but is acknowledging something very profound.(p.73)
36645 -- Khenpo Karthar, "Dharma Paths" 2nd Edition, translated by Ngödup Burkhar
36646 and Chöjor Radha, edited by Laura M. Roth, published by Snow Lion
36649 According to the lower schools of Buddhist thought, when a being, like
36650 Sakyamuni Buddha, attains mahaparinirvana and passes away, he ceases to exist,
36651 there is no further continuity of consciousness. Therefore, according to the
36652 Vaibhasika school, for example, after this point there is no more being, no
36653 more consciousness. Only the name remains. And yet, they believe that this
36654 being who has now disappeared can influence the course of those who follow him
36655 due to the virtues that he created in the past.
36656 This is not accepted by the higher schools of thought, however, that instead
36657 believe that there are two kinds of bodies, those that are pure in nature and
36658 those that are impure. The latter is more gross, whereas a body that has been
36659 purified is more subtle. Now, for example, when Sakyamuni Buddha gave up his
36660 body, there still remained the more subtle one. So, according to these
36661 schools of thought, at the stage of Buddhahood, there are two bodies: a mental
36662 body and a physical one. I don't know whether the English word "body" is the
36663 most appropriate one. In Sanskrit, the words used to signify these two bodies
36664 of the Buddha are dharmakaya and rupakaya. The first is of the nature of
36665 mind, whereas the latter is material. So when the Buddha passes away, there
36666 is still this more subtle body, which is of the nature of mind, and since the
36667 mental continuum is also present, we can say that the personality is still
36668 there. Even today, the Buddha remains as a living being. I think this is
36669 better, don't you?(p.91)
36670 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Answers: Discussions with Western Buddhists",
36671 edited by Jose Ignacio Cabezon, published by Snow Lion Publications
36673 Blame everything on one thing. It simplifies life incredibly, and yet it
36674 truly is not simplistic. If we believe from our hearts that all of our
36675 misfortunes can be attributed to self-centeredness, this must radically
36676 transform our lives.
36677 Do we have reservations? Isn't there some part of the mind that says,
36678 "Self-centeredness is not such a bad idea. It got me my job, a good salary,
36679 my house and car. How can this be my enemy?" On the surface self-centeredness
36680 may seem like an aide who looks after our interests. There is one powerful
36681 answer to this: insofar as self-centeredness dominates our lives, it brings us
36682 into conflict with virtually everyone else. Because most people are dominated
36683 by self-centeredness, their interests are at odds with our own. There is
36684 bound to be conflict, and conflict gives rise to suffering.
36685 Imagine what life would be like without self-centeredness. Would we give
36686 away all our possessions, waste away from malnutrition, and die prematurely of
36687 disease? No. This would be a partial lack of self-centeredness combined with
36688 a large part of stupidity. If we are to serve others effectively, we must
36689 take care of ourselves. A bodhisattva has no self-centeredness, but there
36690 have been people in all stations of life, including kings, who are
36691 bodhisattvas. If we free ourselves of self-centeredness and really concern
36692 ourselves with the cherishing of others, then our own welfare comes as a kind
36694 -- B. Alan Wallace, "The Seven-Point Mind Training", edited by Zara
36695 Houshmand, published by Snow Lion Publications
36697 When we achieve a mind focused on mind with the perfect placement of
36698 absorbed concentration, free from all faults of dullness or flightiness, we
36699 increasingly experience an element of bliss accompanying our meditation. When
36700 we experience serene joy, on both a physical and mental level, brought on by
36701 the force of total absorption of mind on mind, we achieve a meditational state
36702 that fulfills the definition of shamata.
36703 Our ordinary mind is like raw iron ore that needs to be made into a steel
36704 sword. Progressing through the stages for attaining shamata is like forging
36705 the iron into steel. All the materials are there at our disposal. But since
36706 the mind wanders after external objects, then although it is the material for
36707 attaining shamata, it cannot yet be used as this product. We have to forge
36708 our mind through a meditational process. It is like putting the iron ore into
36710 To fashion the steel into a sword, or in this analogy to fashion the mind
36711 into an instrument that understands voidness, our serenely stilled and settled
36712 mind needs to come to decisive realization of voidness as its object. Without
36713 such a weapon of mind, we have no opponent with which to destroy the
36714 disturbing emotions and attitudes.(p.142)
36715 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama and Alexander Berzin, "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
36716 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
36718 Focusing the mind on the object of meditation is like planting a seed for
36719 the arisal of the realization.... Even in the beginning stages one might
36720 become impatient, thinking, "I really want to get this done quickly." One
36721 might think that by exerting more effort, by adding more and more stuff, by
36722 changing things this way or that way the process can be made to go faster.
36723 The good gardener knows that too much water or fertilizer is harmful, not
36724 helpful. The mature meditator must understand this as well. The Kadampa
36725 masters of old gave this counsel: First, pay great heed to getting the proper
36726 causes and conditions together. Next, engage in the practice without
36727 agitation and without anxiety. Then, with the mind at ease, carry on to the
36729 --Gen Lamrimpa, "How to Practice Shamatha Meditation: The Cultivation of
36730 Meditative Quiescence", translated by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow
36733 The Need for Reasoning
36735 All Buddhist schools agree that the analytical reasoning process which leads
36736 to an inference (a conceptual realization) derives from basic, shared, direct
36737 perception. As an example let us consider the following reasoning:
36739 A plant does not inherently exist because of being a dependent-arising.
36741 You begin by reflecting on the fact that a plant is a dependent-arising
36742 because its production depends on certain causes and conditions (such as a
36743 seed, soil, sunlight, and water), but eventually the reasoning process must be
36744 supported by direct perception, or it cannot stand. We can see with our eyes
36745 that plants change; they grow; mature, and finally dry up. In this sense,
36746 inference is blind, since it must eventually rely on direct perception.
36747 Inference depends on reasoning, which in turn rests on basic, shared,
36748 indisputable experience through direct perception. (p.153)
36749 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
36750 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
36752 The root of all qualities of the Bodhisattva vehicle is caring for sentient
36753 beings. We admire and respect the Buddha because he has reached the state
36754 free of all faults and possessing all good qualities, knows the method to
36755 reach that state, and teaches it to us. If we do as the Buddha did, by
36756 meditating on love and compassion for all sentient beings, not harming or
36757 getting angry with them, we too can become a Buddha.
36758 Our enlightenment depends on the Buddhas and on sentient beings, and from
36759 this point of view, they are equally important to us. Thus when we look at
36760 any sentient being, we should recognize that she is indispensable to our
36761 attainment of enlightenment. Our enlightenment comes from cherishing sentient
36762 beings; it does not come from cherishing only ourselves. Understanding this,
36763 whenever we encounter people in our lives, it becomes easy to feel, "May this
36764 person be happy and free from suffering."
36765 Caring for sentient beings means freeing them from the suffering of
36766 unfortunate rebirths and of cyclic existence in general, teaching the Dharma
36767 to those who want to hear it, providing the means for them to eliminate the
36768 causes which bring suffering temporarily and ultimately, not harming them, not
36769 lying to them, not creating discord among them, not speaking harshly to them,
36770 and so on. Through caring about them now, excellent results will follow, for
36771 us and for them.(p.179)
36772 -- Geshe Jampa Tegchok, "Transforming Adversity into Joy and Courage: An
36773 Explanation of the Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas", edited by
36774 Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
36776 The term 'karma' literally means 'action', and more specifically refers to
36777 the process of cause and effect, where the intention of an agent or being is
36778 involved. So here karma means an intentional act committed or carried out by
36779 a being who possesses a sentient nature and who is also capable of having a
36780 sentient experience.
36781 ...Buddhist texts state that only a buddha's omniscient mind can penetrate
36782 the subtlest aspects of the workings of karma, and know at the most
36783 microscopic level which specific causes and conditions give rise to which
36784 specific consequences. At our level, we can only recognise that an intimate
36785 relationship exists between the external elements of the material world and
36786 the internal elements of our mental world; and, based on that, we can learn to
36787 detect varying levels of subtlety within our mental and emotional experiences.
36789 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
36790 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
36792 All attachment and aversion come from what we have mentally created. We
36793 have made an image and that is our mind as we normally experience it. In
36794 order to solve this problem in a more profound and permanent way, we have to
36795 look at our mind and see its true nature. In our innate, unfabricated nature,
36796 which is the basic state of our mind, there is no problem. We make all our
36797 problems by creating concepts and all kinds of mental conditioning.
36798 Seeing the true nature of mind means experiencing the way the mind is when
36799 we do not fabricate and contrive anything. We need to look at our mind when
36800 it is devoid of our creations and free from mental elaborations. If we can
36801 see this state of mind, there is no grasping, no grasped object, and no
36802 subject doing the grasping. There is simply perception or seeing, which in
36803 itself does not cause a problem.
36804 When the true nature of mind is seen, there are just appearances without any
36805 evaluation. One thing arises in the mind and then another thing arises. The
36806 arising that is pleasant is no better than the one that is unpleasant. They
36807 are simply different manifestations of the mind. There is no need to grasp
36808 one and reject the other. Once this is seen clearly, we see the true nature
36809 of mind. This is something that we need to experience directly. When we see
36810 the truth, we become liberated from our struggle within the nets of aversion
36811 and attachment.(p.97)
36812 --Ringu Tulku, "Daring Steps: Traversing the Path of the Buddha", edited and
36813 translated by Rosemarie Fuchs, published by Snow Lion Publications
36815 In general, most non-Buddhist religions meditate on the deity as being
36816 outside the physical body. In these cases the deity takes the form of a
36817 refuge, or of a protector or messenger. Thus do they meditate, and of course
36818 this is fine. In the Buddhist tradition, however, the deity is not meditated
36819 on as being outside the physical body. One meditates on the deity as being
36820 one's own essence expressing itself through oneself arising as the deity. One
36821 therefore thinks, "I am the deity," and with this conviction one meditates.
36822 Why is it justifiable to meditate in this manner? As previously seen, the
36823 five afflictions are actually self-expressions of the five kinds of primordial
36824 awareness; thus our own mind is in essence exactly the same as the mind of a
36825 Buddha. In the philosophical treatises this is sometimes referred to as
36826 'sugatagarbha' or 'buddha-nature'.
36827 Because all beings possess this innately pure buddha-nature, they are pure
36828 by nature and not at all impure. Being pure by nature it is perfectly
36829 justified to meditate that you are the deity, because this is exactly how it
36831 --Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "Everyday Consciousness and Primordial
36832 Awareness", translated and edited by Susanne Schefczyk, published by Snow
36835 In day to day life if you lead a good life, honestly, with love, with
36836 compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to
36837 nirvana....We must implement these good teachings in daily life. Whether you
36838 believe in God or not does not matter so much; whether you believe in Buddha
36839 or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in
36840 reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.
36841 And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter.
36842 These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion,
36843 without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that
36844 others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human
36845 dignity. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human
36846 capacities. We must share in other peoples' suffering; even if you cannot
36847 help with money, to show concern, to give moral support and express sympathy
36848 are themselves valuable. This is what should be the basis of activities;
36849 whether one calls it religion or not does not matter.... In my simple
36850 religion, love is the key motivation.(p.20)
36851 -- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, "Kindness,
36852 Clarity, and Insight 25th Anniversary Edition", edited and translated by
36853 Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion
36855 All beings suffer in the same way as we do, and some are even more deeply
36856 immersed in sorrow. Yet all of these beings wish to experience only happiness
36857 and to avoid all suffering, frustration, and pain. They wish lasting
36858 happiness but do not know how to cultivate its causes, and they wish to avoid
36859 misery but automatically collect only causes of further misery. As Shantideva
36860 said, "Although seeking happiness, they destroy their own causes of happiness
36861 as they would an enemy. And although seeking to avoid misery, they treat its
36862 causes as they would a close friend."
36863 Were the countless sentient beings unrelated to us, or were they not to mind
36864 their sufferings, perhaps there would be no need for us to bother with their
36865 welfare. In reality, however, all are related to us and not one of them
36866 wishes to suffer. Over the billions of lifetimes that we have experienced
36867 since beginningless time, we have known all the living beings again and again.
36868 Sometimes they have been parents to us, sometimes friends or mates, sometimes
36869 enemies. Without exception, each of them has been even a mother to us again
36870 and again, performing all the kindnesses of a mother. How can we be
36871 indifferent to them?
36872 Wishing them to have only happiness and its causes and to be free of
36873 suffering and its causes, we ourselves should generate a sense of
36874 responsibility for their well-being. Finally, as only an omniscient
36875 Enlightened One is effectively able to benefit beings in deep, lasting, and
36876 ultimate ways, we must quickly attain enlightenment. This is the wishing
36877 bodhimind, the inner basis of Mahayana practice.(p.136)
36878 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
36879 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
36881 Recalling our interconnectedness, we begin to recognize our total
36882 interdependence and that whatever we enjoy in our life comes through others--
36883 through their efforts, their work, their hardships.
36884 It does not necessarily require that others had a specific intention to
36885 enable us to enjoy the things of our life. If we think of this in terms of
36886 the obvious examples like food and clothing, we can immediately see the global
36887 meaning of this contemplation. Our food comes from all over the world and if
36888 we consider the people and other creatures involved in its production,
36889 picking, packaging, transportation, and selling so that we can enjoy it, the
36890 numbers are vast. It is through their labor, their efforts, their struggles
36891 that we enjoy what we eat. Often their lives are terribly hard, and to feed a
36892 family they must work for very little--yet we enjoy the fruits of their labor.
36893 This is something to feel a huge gratitude for.
36894 If we begin to look more closely at our Western life, we can see how much we
36895 are dependent upon people in considerably poorer circumstances all over the
36896 world for what we consume. What we often don't consider is the impact of this
36897 consumption on those who produce it. In this meditation, it can be very
36898 useful to spend some time dwelling upon this so that we really feel the
36899 profound depth of appreciation for our interdependence upon others for our
36900 lives. This can counter the tendency to take our good fortune for granted and
36901 can open up a sense of gratitude for the kindness of those around. If guilt
36902 arises, it can be used to increase our awareness of the responsibility we have
36904 Gradually, we may begin to see the complete interdependent nature of our
36905 relationship with the countless other beings around us. We cannot overlook
36906 this connectedness to others and the kindness and benefit we have gained
36907 through them. When we come to feel this deeply, we will be able to hold
36908 others dear and automatically respond to others with a greater sense of care
36910 -- Rob Preece, "The Courage to Feel: Buddhist Practices for Opening to
36911 Others", published by Snow Lion Publications
36913 If you cannot stop worrying over something in the past or what might happen in
36914 the future, shift your focus to the inhalation and exhalation of your breath.
36915 Or recite this mantra: om mani padme hum (pronounced "om mani padmay hum").
36916 Since the mind cannot concentrate on two things simultaneously, either of
36917 these meditations causes the former worry to fade.(p.133)
36918 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful
36919 Life", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
36921 When serving society or others in general, it is very important to set a
36922 proper motivation at the start of each day. When we wake up each morning, we
36923 reflect, 'Today I am not going to come under the power of either attachment or
36924 hostility. Today I am going to be of benefit and help to others.' Thus we
36925 consciously set the tone for the entire day so that we go through it within
36926 the context of a pure, altruistic motivation and attitude.
36927 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, excerpted from "The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of
36928 Mahamudra", published by Snow Lion Publications
36930 We all have a certain style for doing things--how we drive, how we cook, how
36931 we dress. Some of us are shy or cautious, others assertive or flamboyant.
36932 We've refined that style over the years based on how successful it is, but
36933 it's not usually something of which we're completely aware. As long as it
36934 gets the job done, as long as we get the appropriate feedback from others, our
36935 style goes unnoticed, and when questioned we'll say, "That's just the way I
36937 When we begin meditation, it is inevitable that we will meditate with the
36938 same style with which we do everything else, because it's who we think we are.
36939 Furthermore, this style has proven to be reasonably successful in our other
36940 activities. However, in this case, it is not at all appropriate. If there is
36941 any style, there is a hidden agenda and an implicit judgment of the various
36942 phenomena of meditation. There is not the true detachment or choiceless
36943 awareness of real meditation. Our style contains our unacknowledged attitudes
36945 ...What's the problem in meditating with an attitude? First, a large amount
36946 of energy goes into maintaining the attitude. To make this clearer, if we are
36947 trying to be aware of our breathing, 100 percent of our attention should be on
36948 our breathing. If we're thinking, "I'm a shy person and I'm a little afraid
36949 of what's going on here," even if we're not consciously aware of that thought,
36950 it will be taking our energy away from the breathing and keeping it tied up in
36951 the world of ego. Consequently, this energy is not available for our
36952 practice. And your evaluation of your practice and progress will be based on
36953 your agenda rather than on the Buddha's teaching.
36954 Of course, no one is a perfect meditator. It's not like we have to wait
36955 until we have a perfect attitude before we begin. If that were the case, we
36956 would never start..With time, the purity of your attitude will grow...refining
36957 one's approach is a lifetime's work and is at the same time the practice
36959 -- Bruce Newman, "A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism", published by
36960 Snow Lion Publications
36962 Developing a sense of good cheer in the face of adversity, you can
36963 specifically use adversity as the support for refuge and true spiritual
36964 development. I am discussing how you relate to your suffering, how you relate
36965 to your adversity, as it affects you in life and on the path.
36966 Now, as you know, whenever you are suffering by way of the body, speech, and
36967 mind, be it physical illness or a mental affliction, this is a very big deal
36968 to you. Usually it appears as something major. Even if it's minor, you make
36969 it into some great distress. If you lose a little money or if someone speaks
36970 nastily to you, it invokes a strong reaction. This is called "appearances
36971 arising as the enemy." When your habituation to adversity reaches such a
36972 point that you actually fall prey to appearances arising as the enemy, it
36973 means that you no longer have patience for suffering.
36974 ...If you can't bear the minor aspects of adversity in this, the best
36975 rebirth in cyclic existence, the precious human rebirth, what will you do when
36976 you're reborn in the three lower realms? Samsara is so vast, so deep and
36977 limitless, and the number of sentient beings within samsara are equal to that.
36978 All of them want to be free; all of them desire liberation. You should
36979 consider then how unnecessary or pointless it is to think that your small
36980 problems in this fortunate life are so great, when in fact they really are
36982 Any rebirth in this ocean of cyclic existence will by nature bring this type
36983 of discontent or suffering. Since you've been in this cycle of rebirths from
36984 beginningless time until now and you are still not free, it points out the
36985 fact that help is needed. Refuge is necessary. Adversity then becomes the
36986 support for training in refuge, which demonstrates that adversity is used to
36987 your advantage.(p.44)
36988 -- Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche, "Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga",
36989 trans. by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro, published by Snow Lion Pub.
36991 The practice of Dharma is to pacify the afflictions and concepts that fill
36992 our minds. When we blend the teachings with our minds, the power of the
36993 Dharma can act upon and pacify afflictions and concepts. If on the outside we
36994 look like Dharma practitioners while on the inside our Dharma practice has not
36995 diminished our afflictions or concepts, we merely call ourselves practitioners
36996 without actually being one. This is not to say that outer behavior, our
36997 reflection in the world, is not important, but what is crucial is to train in
36999 What we tame are the three main afflictions: ignorance, attachment, and
37000 aversion. Ignorance, the root of the two others, is defined as the continual
37001 fixation on our self that we assume to be permanent and independent. This
37002 ego-clinging is the main cause for our cycling in samsara. We wish to be in
37003 paradise for our own advantage; we wish to erase all suffering for our own
37004 advantage. We cling to this "I" of ours, thinking that it is so special that
37005 we should not be bothered with problems but enjoy wealth, power, and charisma.
37006 If we honestly look into our minds, it is quite easy to see this kind of
37007 coarse and obvious grasping to a self.
37008 There are also subtle forms of fixating on the self ("I") and what belongs
37009 to it ("mine"), like the quick thought of ourselves before another one comes.
37010 When practicing Dharma, we are taming this coarse and subtle clinging to an
37011 ego. If this does not happen, we will merely be able to suppress the
37012 afflictions temporarily, distancing ourselves for the time being. To cut
37013 through them completely, we must steadily apply ourselves to practice.(p.187)
37014 -- "Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the Seventeenth
37015 Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje", by Michele Martin, published by Snow
37018 "The mantra of the perfection of wisdom--the mantra of great knowledge,
37019 the unexcelled mantra, the mantra equal to the unequalled, the mantra
37020 that quells all suffering--is true because it is not deceptive."
37023 The perfection of wisdom is called "the mantra of great knowledge" because
37024 thoroughly understanding its meaning eliminates the three poisons of craving,
37025 hatred, and delusion. It is called the "unexcelled mantra" because there is
37026 no greater method than the perfection of wisdom for saving one from the
37027 extremes of cyclic existence and the isolated peace of individual nirvana. It
37028 is called the mantra "equal to the unequalled" because the Buddha's
37029 enlightened state is unequalled, and, through the deepest realization of this
37030 mantra, one attains a state equal to that state. Finally, the perfection of
37031 wisdom is known as the "mantra that quells all suffering" because it quells
37032 manifest sufferings and also removes all propensities for future suffering.
37033 The perfection of wisdom is the ultimate truth, thus the statement "it is
37034 true." In the realm of the ultimate truth, there is no disparity, as there is
37035 in conventional reality, between appearance and reality, and thus this
37036 manifest ultimate truth is "not deceptive." This nondeceptiveness also
37037 suggests that, through actualization of this mantra, the perfection of wisdom
37038 can enable one to attain total freedom from suffering and its causes. From
37039 this perspective too, we can say that it is the truth.
37040 "The mantra of the perfection of wisdom is proclaimed: tadyatha gate gate
37041 paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha! Shariputra, the bodhisattvas, the great
37042 beings, should train in the perfection of wisdom in this way."
37043 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's Heart
37044 of Wisdom Teachings", translated & edited by Geshe Thupten Jinpa
37046 For as long as space endures
37047 And for as long as sentient beings remain,
37048 Until then may I too abide,
37049 To dispel the misery of the world.
37050 -- Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life
37052 Global Responsibility
37054 Occasionally I notice that people are making a convenient distinction
37055 between ethics on the personal level and ethics on the wider social level. To
37056 me, such attitudes are fundamentally flawed, as they overlook the
37057 interdependence of our world.
37058 That individual ethics--or rather their absence--can have an impact on the
37059 lives of many is powerfully demonstrated by the global financial crisis that
37060 began in 2008, the repercussions of which are still being felt around the
37061 world. It revealed the way unbridled greed on the part of a few can adversely
37062 affect the lives of millions. So, just as in the wake of the 9/11 attacks we
37063 started to take the dangers of religious extremism and intolerance seriously,
37064 so too, in the wake of the financial crisis, should we take the dangers of
37065 greed and dishonesty seriously. When greed is seen as acceptable, even
37066 praiseworthy, there is clearly something wrong with our collective value
37068 In this age of globalization, the time has come for us to acknowledge that
37069 our lives are deeply interconnected and to recognize that our behavior has a
37070 global dimension. When we do so, we will see that our own interests are best
37071 served by what is in the best interests of the wider human community. By
37072 contrast, if we concentrate exclusively on our inner development and neglect
37073 the wider problems of the world, or if, having recognized these, we are
37074 apathetic about trying to solve them, then we have overlooked something
37075 fundamental. Apathy, in my view, is itself a form of selfishness. For our
37076 approach to ethics to be truly meaningful, we must of course care about the
37077 world. This is what I mean by the principle of global responsibility, which
37078 is a key part of my approach to secular ethics.(p.84)
37079 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole
37080 World", trans. by Thupten Jinpa Langri
37082 Speech that is not harmful is the meaning of "right speech." It is wise
37083 speech. Wise people can still be quite firm and decisive when that is what is
37084 needed. It means finding generous and productive ways of saying things.
37085 There are times when we need to be strict, but we do not have to denigrate or
37086 harm the person or child who is out of line. Firm speech can also be wise
37088 Wise speech is another tool that can be practiced. We can begin by
37089 practicing wise speech to ourselves--replacing the inner voice of guilt that
37090 is putting us down and opening a space to listen to our deeper needs.
37091 What can I say which will be helpful to someone? What tone of voice will I
37092 use? And when is it wise to say nothing? Imagine yourself actually saying
37093 something helpful and supportive. Imagine the difference it would make in
37094 your life if you could say just one helpful thing to one person. Imagine your
37095 life if your speech always came from wisdom.(p.136)
37096 -- Chonyi Taylor, "Enough! A Buddhist Approach to Finding Release from
37097 Addictive Patterns", published by Snow Lion Publications
37099 The famous nineteenth-century dzogchen master Paltrul Rinpoche explained self-
37100 liberation concretely and precisely:
37102 The practitioner of self-liberation is like an ordinary person as far as
37103 the way in which the thoughts of pleasure and pain, hope and fear,
37104 manifest themselves as creative energy. However, the ordinary person,
37105 taking these really seriously and judging them as acceptable or rejecting
37106 them, continues to get caught up in situations and becomes conditioned by
37107 attachment and aversion.
37109 Not doing this, a practitioner, when such thoughts arise, experiences
37110 freedom: initially, by recognizing the thought for what it is, it is freed
37111 just like meeting a previous acquaintance; then it is freed in and of
37112 itself, like a snake shedding its skin; and finally, thought is freed in
37113 being unable to be of benefit or harm, like a thief entering an empty
37116 ...Freeing or liberating thought does not mean ignoring, letting go of, being
37117 indifferent to, observing, or even not having thoughts. It means being
37118 present in hope and fear, pain and pleasure, not as objects before us, but as
37119 the radiant clarity of our natural state. Thus anger, for example, when
37120 experienced dualistically, is an irritation which we may indulge in or reject,
37121 depending on our conditioning. Either way we are caught up in it and act out
37122 of it. But when aware of anger as a manifestation of clarity, its energy is a
37123 very fresh awareness of the particulars of the situation. However, these
37124 particulars are no longer irritating.(p.77)
37126 -- Longchenpa, "You Are the Eyes of the World", translated by Kennard Lipman
37127 and Merrill Peterson, introduction by Namkhai Norbu, published by Snow
37130 In this practice one recollects negativity, contemplates its nature,
37131 generates apprehension of its karmic implications, and resolves to purify
37132 one's mind of the negative traces. On the basis of this resolve one takes
37133 refuge, develops the bodhimind and enters the Vajrasattva meditation or
37134 whatever method is being used. One can also do exercises such as prostrations
37135 and so forth. This concentration of purifying energies destroys the potency
37136 of negative karmic imprints like the germ of a barley seed roasted in a fire.
37137 Here it is important to begin the meditation session with a contemplative
37138 meditation and then to transform this into settled meditation for a prolonged
37139 period of time. One abides in the settled meditation until it begins to lose
37140 intensity, and then temporarily reverts to contemplative meditation in order
37141 to invigorate the mind, returning to fixed meditation once a contemplative
37142 atmosphere has been restored.
37143 Generally our mind is habituated to directing all of our energies into
37144 things that benefit this life alone, things of no spiritual consequence. By
37145 performing these types of meditations, our natural attachment to the
37146 meaningless activities of this life subsides and we begin to experience an
37147 inner appreciation for spiritual values. When spontaneously one's mind
37148 appreciates spiritual rather than mundane goals one has become an active
37149 practitioner of initial perspective.(p.117)
37150 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
37151 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
37153 When doing lamrim meditations, it is important to know clearly the state of
37154 mind you want to reach as a conclusion to the meditation. Lamrim texts
37155 describe the purpose of each meditation, and we want to make sure that our
37156 mind arrives at that conclusion and not at an incorrect or irrelevant
37157 conclusion. For example, when meditating on the disadvantages of the self-
37158 centered thought, our mind may twist that meditation and conclude, "I'm a
37159 horrible person because I'm so selfish." This is the wrong conclusion to reach
37160 from that meditation. The Buddha didn't teach the disadvantages of self-
37161 centeredness so that we would deride ourselves.
37162 If you meditate on a lam rim topic and arrive at an incorrect conclusion,
37163 the meditation hasn't been done correctly. In the above case, thinking, "I'm
37164 a bad person because I'm so selfish," indicates that we have misunderstood the
37165 purpose of the meditation and probably have fallen into an old pattern of
37166 putting ourselves down. Stop and ask yourself,
37167 "What conclusion does the Buddha want me to reach from this meditation? He
37168 wants me to ascertain that the self-centered mind is the actual 'enemy' that
37169 destroys my happiness. Self-centeredness is not an intrinsic part of me; it
37170 is not who I am. It's an incorrect, but deeply entrenched, thought that
37171 creates problems for me. I can free myself from it. Since I want to be
37172 happy, I will realize this selfish attitude for what it is and will stop
37173 following it! Instead, I will cultivate love and compassion for all beings."
37174 This is the conclusion you want to reach.(p.58)
37175 -- Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Guided Meditations on the Stages of the
37176 Path", foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion
37178 Greed is a form of desire. However, it is an exaggerated form of desire,
37179 based on overexpectation. The true antidote of greed is contentment.
37180 For a practicing Buddhist, for a Dharma practitioner, many practices can act
37181 as a kind of counterforce to greed: the realization of the value of seeking
37182 liberation or freedom from suffering, recognizing the underlying
37183 unsatisfactory nature of one's existence, and so on. These views also help an
37184 individual to counteract greed. But in terms of an immediate response to
37185 greed, one way is to reflect upon the excesses of greed, what it does to one
37186 as an individual, where it leads. Greed leads one to a feeling of
37187 frustration, disappointment, a lot of confusion, and a lot of problems.
37188 When it comes to dealing with greed, one thing which is quite characteristic
37189 is that although it arises from the desire to obtain something, it is not
37190 satisfied by obtaining it. Therefore, it becomes limitless or boundless, and
37191 that leads to trouble. The interesting thing about greed is that although the
37192 underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, as I pointed out, even after
37193 obtaining the object of one's desire, one is still not satisfied. On the
37194 other hand, if one has a strong sense of contentment, it doesn't matter
37195 whether one obtains the object or not; either way, one is still content.(p.32)
37196 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a
37197 Buddhist Perspective", translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa, published by
37198 Snow Lion Publications
37200 We will hereby start scouring the net for people who say git is hard to
37201 understand and use, and just kill them. They clearly are just polluting
37207 What is the Bodhisattva's Way of life? It is the way of life that follows
37208 naturally from having cultivated the awakening mind of bodhicitta.
37209 Omniscience is achieved only through the process of purifying the disturbing
37210 emotions within your mind. It cannot be achieved merely through wishes and
37211 prayers. We have to train in eliminating all the specific disturbing emotions
37212 within your mind. We have to train in eliminating all the specific disturbing
37213 emotions by relying on specific antidotes.
37214 All the activities of a Bodhisattva can be included in two major categories:
37215 the practice of skillful means and the practice of wisdom. If the practices
37216 of giving, ethics, and so forth are to be perfected, they should be supported
37217 and influenced by the practice of wisdom. Without the practice of wisdom, the
37218 first five of the six perfections cannot actually become practices of
37219 perfection. In order to cultivate such wisdom, you must first cultivate the
37220 genuine unmistaken philosophical view that is known as the view of the Middle
37221 Way, or Madhyamika.
37222 ...even when you have understood the wisdom realizing emptiness, that alone
37223 will not become a powerful antidote to ignorance if it is not supported by
37224 other practices such as giving, ethics, patience, and so forth. Mere
37225 understanding of selflessness is not sufficient to defeat the disturbing
37227 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Stages of Meditation", root text by Kamalashila,
37228 translated by Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and
37229 Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications
37231 The many tantras of both the Ancient and New traditions unanimously agree
37232 that these, and others, are the consequences of violating the pledges.
37234 Means of Restoration
37235 The proclaimers' vows, like a clay pot, once broken cannot be repaired;
37236 The awakening mind commitments, like gold or silver, can be restored;
37237 The tantric pledges, like a dented vessel, are restored by the
37238 practitioner's strength.
37241 When is it possible to restore a vow that has been transgressed? All the
37242 tantras and transmissions state that if a monk has incurred a defeat with
37243 concealment, the transgressed vow, like a broken clay pot, cannot be repaired.
37244 An awakening mind commitment that has been transgressed is like a cracked gold
37245 or silver vase which can still be soldered by a blacksmith. A violated vow or
37246 pledge in this Secret Mantra system is likened to a dented golden vessel,
37247 which can be straightened out by the practitioner's own strength.
37248 Pledges are restored through action, precious substances, earnest desire,
37249 contemplation, and reality.
37250 The Great Cleansing can purify all transgressions.(p.296)
37251 -- Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, "Treasury of Knowledge--Book Five: Buddhist
37252 Ethics", trans. by the Kalu Rinpoche Translation Group, under the
37253 direction of Ven. Bokar Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications
37255 How to Become a Receptacle Suitable for Cultivating the Paths.
You are
37256 made into a vessel suitable for cultivating the path through entering a
37257 mandala such as that of the Vajra Element, receiving initiation, and receiving
37258 the pledges and vows.
37259 Concerning this, there are two types: those who merely enter a mandala and
37260 those who enter and receive initiation, of which there are two types. The
37261 former are those who cannot hold the vows of the five lineages but who hold
37262 the Bodhisattva vows; only the initiation of a student is granted to them.
37263 However, to those who can hold both Bodhisattva and mantra vows the full
37264 initiation of a vajra master is granted.(p.78)
37265 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
37266 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by
37267 Snow Lion Publications
37269 Awareness as virtue. Beyond choosing more virtuous forms of speech, you can
37270 also try to cultivate awareness of the subtle vibration underlying your speech
37271 and of how your speech manifests from there. Is your voice creating the right
37273 In dzogchen the concept of virtuous speech is taken to its highest level.
37274 For example, the A-Tri system of dzogchen offers a group of successive
37275 practices in which one learns to maintain awareness while engaging in various
37276 virtuous, neutral, and nonvirtuous activities.
37277 One initially tries to stay present amid virtuous activity such as praying
37278 or chanting mantras. Once that experience is stabilized, one integrates
37279 presence with neutral speech, such as conversing casually with a friend about
37280 cooking or gardening. Finally, one tries to integrate with negative speech
37281 such as lying, arguing, or giving insults. It is easier if you can establish
37282 your intent for self-awareness before you get drawn into an angry argument.
37283 For example, think of how courtroom lawyers argue a case: although they may
37284 use strong, sharp language, they are never driven by their emotions--every
37285 word is carefully chosen for its impact and is guided by intent, if not
37287 From this perspective "nonvirtuous speech" might be defined as speech that
37288 is driven and not guided and through which you lose connection with your self.
37289 In dzogchen practice you aim to arrive at a place where all activity of body,
37290 speech, and mind becomes an expression of contemplative awareness and an aid
37291 to spiritual development--therefore virtuous in the truest sense of the word.
37293 -- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "Tibetan Yogas of Body, Speech, and Mind",
37294 edited by Polly Turner, published by Snow Lion Publications
37296 Bodhisattvas give solely out of concern for others, without a self-
37297 cherishing attitude. That is the proper way of giving. Courageous
37298 Bodhisattvas risk even their lives to help others, and so, when we are in
37299 relatively better, more comfortable situations, we must certainly practice
37300 giving. Even if they are threatened, the courageous ones will not engage in
37301 improper actions. Instead, after examining the situation carefully, when they
37302 find that certain actions are correct and justified, on the basis of reason,
37303 they engage in them even at the risk of their lives. That is the way of the
37304 decent, civilized and courageous ones, who do not follow misleading paths.(p.20)
37305 -- H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries by H.H. the
37306 Dalai Lama XIV on the Jatakamala, Garland of Birth Stories", translated
37307 by Tenzin Dorjee, edited by Dexter Roberts
37309 Merely understanding the mind is not good enough. Recognizing it as the
37310 source of happiness and suffering is good, but great results come only from
37311 looking inward and meditating on the nature of the mind. Once you recognize
37312 its nature, then you need to meditate with joyful effort. Joyful meditation
37313 will actualize the true nature of the mind, and maintaining the mind in this
37314 natural state will bring enlightenment. This type of meditation reveals the
37315 innermost, profound wisdom that is inherent in the mind.
37316 Meditation can transform your body into wisdom light, into what is known as
37317 the rainbow body of wisdom. Many masters in the history of the Nyingma
37318 lineage have achieved this, as can anyone who practices these methods of
37319 meditation. The wisdom aspect of our nature exists at all times in each of
37320 us. You have always had this nature and it can be revealed through
37321 meditation. When you maintain the mind in its natural state, wonderful
37322 qualities shine out like light from the sun. Among these qualities are
37323 limitless compassion, limitless loving-kindness, and limitless wisdom.
37324 -- Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche,
37325 "The Buddhist Path: A Practical Guide from the Nyingma Tradition of
37326 Tibetan Buddhism", published by Snow Lion Publications
37328 In order for the wisdom of special insight to remove impediments to proper
37329 understanding, and to remove faulty mental states at their very roots, we need
37330 concentrated meditation, a state of complete single-mindedness in which all
37331 internal distractions have been removed.
37332 Single-minded meditation involves removing subtle internal distractions such
37333 as the mind's being either too relaxed or too tight. To do so we must first
37334 stop external distractions through training in the morality of maintaining
37335 mindfulness and conscientiousness with regard to physical and verbal
37336 activities--being constantly aware of what you are doing with your body and
37337 your speech. Without overcoming these obvious distractions, it is impossible
37338 to overcome subtler internal distractions. Since it is through sustaining
37339 mindfulness that you achieve a calm abiding of the mind, the practice of
37340 morality must precede the practice of concentrated meditation.(p.23)
37341 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life",
37342 translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
37344 Buddha means one who is fully enlightened. In other words, a buddha has
37345 fully awakened from the sleep of delusion. He is free from all obscurations,
37346 both gross and subtle, and has revealed the two intrinsic wisdom awarenesses.
37347 Buddhahood is the spontaneously established, uncompounded nature that does not
37348 depend on any other conditions. A buddha has perfect wisdom, has perfectly
37349 accomplished the nature of compassion, and has every ability to manifest all
37350 excellent activities.
37351 There are many buddhas in the past, present, and future. In fact, there are
37352 as many buddhas as there are particles of dust. Basically, the term buddha
37353 refers to anyone whose mind is fully awakened and who is free from all
37354 suffering and its causes. When we point to Buddha Shakyamuni as a buddha, he
37355 is an example of this. A buddha has four forms, all of which emanate from the
37357 1. Nirmanakaya is a buddha who has emanated in a physical form. A
37358 nirmanakaya can emanate anywhere as anything animate or inanimate--as a human
37359 being, an animal, or even a bridge, if necessary...
37360 2. Sambhogakaya is the expression of the complete, perfect manifestation
37361 of the Buddha's excellent, infinite qualities, called the enjoyment body--
37362 splendid and glorious. All the buddhas appear and manifest in the limitless
37363 buddha fields in this form...
37364 3. Dharmakaya is one's own perfection, fully free from all delusion and
37365 suffering. It is infinite and transcends all boundaries...
37366 4. Svabhavikakaya is the indivisible nature of the other three forms.(p.165)
37367 -- Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen, "A Complete Guide to the Buddhist Path",
37368 edited by Khenmo Trinlay Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications
37370 Boundless joy is the joy you should feel when you see gifted and learned
37371 beings who are happy, famous or influential. Instead of feeling uneasy and
37372 envious of their good fortune, rejoice sincerely, thinking, "May they continue
37373 to be happy and enjoy even more happiness!" Pray too that they may use their
37374 wealth and power to help others, to serve the Dharma and the Sangha, making
37375 offerings, building monasteries, propagating the teachings and performing
37376 other worthwhile deeds. Rejoice and make a wish: "May they never lost all
37377 their happiness and privileges. May their happiness increase more and more,
37378 and may they use it to benefit others and to further the teachings."
37379 Pray that your mind may be filled with boundless equanimity, loving-
37380 kindness, compassion and joy--as boundless as a Bodhisattva's. If you do so,
37381 genuine bodhichitta will certainly grow within you.
37382 The reason these four qualities are boundless, or immeasurable, is that
37383 their object--the totality of sentient beings--is boundless; their benefit--
37384 the welfare of all beings--is boundless; and also their fruit--the qualities
37385 of enlightenment--is boundless. They are immeasurable like the sky, and they
37386 are the true root of enlightenment.(p.49)
37387 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "The Excellent Path to Enlightenment",
37388 translated and edited by The Padmakara Translation Group, published by
37389 Snow Lion Publications
37391 Regarding an online merchant... I think I have bought a couple things from
37392 them before, and my "cornholio sense" is not tingling (a power I got from
37393 being bitten by a radioactive asshole), so I don't think they were jerks when
37394 I used them last time.
37397 External circumstances are not what draw us into suffering. Suffering is
37398 caused and permitted by an untamed mind. The appearance of self-defeating
37399 emotions in our minds leads us to faulty actions. The naturally pure mind is
37400 covered over by these emotions and troubling conceptions. The force of their
37401 deceit pushes us into faulty actions, which leads inevitably to suffering.
37402 We need, with great awareness and care, to extinguish these problematic
37403 attitudes, the way gathering clouds dissolve back into the sphere of the sky.
37404 When our self-defeating attitudes, emotions, and conceptions cease, so will
37405 the harmful actions arising from them.
37406 As the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa says, "When arising, arising within space
37407 itself; when dissolving, dissolving back into space." We need to become
37408 familiar with the state of our own minds to understand how to dissolve ill-
37409 founded ideas and impulses back into the deeper sphere of reality. The sky
37410 was there before the clouds gathered, and it will be after they have gone. It
37411 is also present when the clouds seem to cover every inch of the sky we can
37413 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving
37414 Relationships", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
37416 Usually the reason that we can't experience transcendent bliss is because
37417 our consciousness is actually chained by the illusion called "I." It is
37418 chained because this concept literally ties our consciousness to the prison of
37419 duality, the prison of concepts and ideas. What most people experience is
37420 that their consciousness is chained by that illusion.
37421 But now and then there are people who find the so-called spiritual path.
37422 This is another quite strange and sneaky way that ego can actually keep
37423 binding our consciousness once again to another form of prison, the prison of
37424 duality, the prison of concepts and ideas. Transcendent bliss comes from
37425 breaking every chain.
37426 Breaking all chains, losing every concept, every idea, sounds very
37427 frightening to the ego's mind. But actually when we let go of every concept,
37428 we land on this infinite ground of eternal bliss, and that bliss is not some
37429 kind of religious or mystical experience, some altered state of consciousness.
37430 That bliss is not the result of doing something to our consciousness, rather
37431 it is the pure state of our consciousness.(p.74)
37432 -- Anam Thubten, "The Magic of Awareness", edited by Sharon Roe, published
37433 by Snow Lion Publications
37435 The all-base consciousness* works like a savings bank. Continuously money
37436 is paid into the bank and continuously it is taken out again. In the same way
37437 karmic imprints are absorbed by the all-base, are stored there, and can
37438 therefore be brought forth again.
37439 Learning, for example, occurs through the mind consciousness. The mind
37440 consciousness itself vanishes. Nevertheless, on the next day we have a memory
37441 of what we learned. At this time of remembrance, the mind consciousness of
37442 what we learned is no longer actually present, since it has ceased to exist.
37443 Yet, still we did not forget what we learned previously. What we learned was
37444 seized by the all-base in the form of karmic imprints, and stored. Due to the
37445 'all-base of complete ripening' these imprints can be re-awakened, so that the
37446 mind consciousness perceives them afresh. This is why we learn things. It is
37447 similar with strong mental afflictions.
37448 ...The example of the savings bank is particularly effective, especially in
37449 the context of karmic actions. Whoever puts money into the bank can get it
37450 out again later, often including interest!(p.37)
37452 * The all-base consciousness is the general basis for the whole mind, all
37453 aspects of the mind.
37455 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, "Everyday Consciousness and Primordial
37456 Awareness", translated and edited by Susanne Schefczyk, published by
37457 Snow Lion Publications
37459 Q: How can Dzogchen help us in our daily jobs and careers?
37461 HHDL: In the first place, it is quite difficult to have an experience of
37462 Dzogchen. But once you do have that experience, it can be extremely
37463 beneficial in dealing with your day to day life, your job, and your career.
37464 This is because that kind of experience will give you the ability to prevent
37465 yourself from being overwhelmed by circumstances, good or bad. You will not
37466 fall into extreme states of mind: you will not get over-excited or depressed.
37467 Your attitude toward circumstances and events will be as if you were someone
37468 observing the mind, without being drawn away by circumstances.
37469 For example, when you see a reflection of a form in a mirror, the reflection
37470 appears within the mirror but it is not projected from within. In the same
37471 way, when you confront the situations of life, or deal with others, your
37472 attitude too will be mirror-like.
37473 Also, when a reflection appears in the mirror, the mirror does not have to
37474 go after the object that is reflected: it simply reflects, spontaneously, on
37475 the surface. The same with you: since there is no attachment or agitation at
37476 having these 'reflections' in your mind, you will feel tremendous ease and
37477 relief. You are not preoccupied by what arises in the mind, nor does it cause
37478 you any distress. You are free from conceptuality or any form of
37479 objectifying. And so it really does help you, in allowing you to be free from
37480 being caught up in the play of emotions like hatred, attachment, and the like.
37482 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great
37483 Perfection", translated by Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron, foreword by
37484 Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney, published by Snow Lion Pub.
37486 The quality of one's rebirth in the next life is determined by the quality
37487 of one's mental activity in this life. Generally speaking, we have no power
37488 to choose how we are born; it is dependent on karmic forces. However, the
37489 period near the time of death is very influential in terms of activating one
37490 from among the many karmas that a person has already accumulated, and,
37491 therefore, if one makes particular effort at generating a virtuous attitude at
37492 that time, there is an opportunity to strengthen and activate a virtuous
37493 karma. Moreover, when one has developed high realization and has gained
37494 control over how one will be reborn, it is possible to take what is called
37495 "reincarnation" rather than mere rebirth.(p.42)
37496 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, "The Dalai Lama at Harvard:
37497 Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace", translated and edited by Jeffrey
37498 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
37500 Without an acute awareness of our personal suffering and a deep, heartfelt
37501 determination to be completely rid of both this suffering and its causes,
37502 there is no way to begin the spiritual quest authentically. For just as
37503 Prince Siddhartha's sudden and unexpected visions of old age, sickness and
37504 death shocked him out of mistaking the world to be a pleasure palace, so too
37505 must all spiritual seekers confront the unsatisfactory nature of their lives
37506 so directly that they become thoroughly disenchanted with the ordinary human
37508 If we do not take a long, hard look at the uncomfortable truths of our
37509 impermanent existence, we can easily waste the time between now and our
37510 inevitable death in essentially worthless pursuits, never taking advantage of
37511 this precious opportunity to do something truly meaningful with our life.
37512 Like the foolish prisoner who becomes so accustomed to the confines of his
37513 cell that he turns a blind eye to all chances of escape, we shall be
37514 condemning ourselves to spiritual stagnation and the endlessly recurring
37515 miseries of cyclic existence.
37516 Yet it is not enough merely to become discontent with our present condition;
37517 everyone experiences discontent at one time or another but very few do
37518 anything of real significance about it. In fact, the usual ways of dealing
37519 with problems and disappointment--blaming them on someone else or drowning
37520 them in forgetfulness--only bind us tighter to the wheel of suffering. What
37521 we must do is recognize that the true causes of all our misery lie rooted in
37522 our own ignorant misconceptions and that these can only be eradicated through
37523 the development of a clear, penetrating insight into the nature of reality.
37524 Only through the continued cultivation of such penetrating wisdom will it
37525 eventually be possible to attain liberation from all states of existence
37526 conditioned by ignorance and be free of suffering.(p.45)
37527 -- "Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice", by Jonathan Landaw
37528 and Andy Weber, published by Snow Lion Publications
37530 We must distinguish between pride and self-confidence. Self-confidence is
37531 necessary. It is what enables us, in certain situations, not to lose courage
37532 and to think with some justification, 'I am capable of succeeding.' Self-
37533 confidence is quite different from excessive self-assurance based on a false
37534 appreciation of our capacities or circumstances.
37535 If you feel able to accomplish a task that other people cannot manage, then
37536 you cannot be called proud as long as your assessment is well founded. It is
37537 as if someone tall came across a group of short people who wanted to get
37538 something too high for them to reach, and said to them, 'Don't exert
37539 yourselves, I can do it.' This would simply mean that he was more qualified
37540 than the others to carry out a particular task, but not that he is superior to
37541 them or that he wants to crush them.(p.259)
37542 -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "365 Dalai Lama: Daily Advice from the
37543 Heart", edited by Matthieu Ricard, translated by Christian Bruyat,
37544 published by Snow Lion Publications
37546 What is progress? How do we recognize it? The teachings are like a mirror
37547 before which we should hold our activities of body, speech, and mind. Think
37548 back to a year ago and compare the stream of activities of your body, speech,
37549 and mind at that time with their present condition. If we practice well, then
37550 the traces of some improvement should be reflected in the mirror of Dharma.
37551 The problem with having expectations is that we usually do not expect the
37552 right things. Not knowing what spiritual progress is, we search for signs of
37553 it in the wrong areas of our being. What can we hope for but frustration? It
37554 would be far better to examine any practice with full reasoning before
37555 adopting it, and then to practice it steadily and consistently while observing
37556 the inner changes one undergoes, rather than expecting this or that fantasy to
37558 The mind is an evolving organism, not a machine that goes on and off with
37559 the flip of a switch. The forces that bind and limit the mind, hurling it
37560 into unsatisfactory states of being, are impermanent and transient agents.
37561 When we persistently apply the practices to them, they have no option but to
37562 fade away and disappear.
37563 Ignorance and the "I"-grasping syndrome have been with us since
37564 beginningless time, and the instincts of attachments, aversion, anger,
37565 jealousy and so forth are very deeply rooted in our mindstreams. Eliminating
37566 them is not as simple as turning on a light to chase away the darkness of a
37567 room. When we practice steadily, the forces of darkness are undermined, and
37568 the spiritual qualities that counteract them and illuminate the mind are
37569 strengthened and made firm. Therefore, we should strive by means of both
37570 contemplative and settled meditation to gain stability in the various Lam Rim
37572 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Path to Enlightenment", edited and translated
37573 by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications
37575 We are beings of the Desire Realm, and thus our minds are also included
37576 within Desire Realm minds. If we cultivate great compassion, our own minds
37577 are the basis for great compassion. By contemplating countless sentient
37578 beings and meditating to develop great compassion, one eventually achieves
37579 great compassion. At that point, the mental basis--one's own mind--has become
37580 of the entity of great compassion. There is no distinguishing the two at that
37581 time. Meditating on great compassion does not mean taking compassion as an
37582 object and looking at it; it means taking sentient beings as one's object and
37583 developing compassion for them such that the mind comes to be of the nature of
37585 The texts frequently speak of different mental bases: the basis for calm
37586 abiding, the basis for meditative absorption, the basis for achieving a path.
37587 The way of understanding all of these is the same. You may wonder whether,
37588 when one cultivates a certain path, the mind becomes of the entity of that
37589 path. It is important to understand this question because that is, in fact,
37590 what occurs when one cultivates calm abiding. The mental basis becomes of the
37591 nature of calm abiding.
37592 -- Geshe Gedun Lodro, "Calm Abiding and Special Insight: Achieving Spiritual
37593 Transformation Through Meditation", translated and edited by Jeffrey
37594 Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications
37596 Nature's law dictates that, in order to survive, bees must work together.
37597 As a result, they instinctively possess a sense of social responsibility.
37598 They have no constitution, no law, no police, no religion or moral training,
37599 but because of their nature, they labor faithfully together. Occasionally,
37600 they may fight, but in general, based on cooperation, the whole colony
37602 We human beings have a constitution, laws and a police force. We have
37603 religion, remarkable intelligence and a heart with a great capacity for love.
37604 We have many extraordinary qualities, but in actual practice, I think we are
37605 lagging behind those small insects. In some respects I feel we are poorer
37607 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "The Pocket Dalai Lama", compiled and edited by
37610 Nagarjuna offers us encouragement in terms of someone of modest potential
37611 accomplishing the practice, in verse 116:
37613 And even those who realized the truth
37614 Did not fall from the heavens, nor emerge
37615 Like crops of corn from earth's dark depths, but once
37616 Were ruled by kleshas and were ordinary men.
37618 Not one of all the sublime beings who have appeared--individuals who had
37619 direct realization of the Dharma of the four truths--was already a sublime
37620 being right from the beginning: they did not fall from the sky, nor did they
37621 emerge from the darkness of the earth like a crop. In the past they were
37622 subject to afflictive emotions ['kleshas']--they were ordinary people
37623 dominated by the afflictive emotions. They are therefore worth following as
37624 an example for accomplishing the path.(p.150)
37625 -- Nagarjuna, "Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kangyur
37626 Rinpoche", with commentary by Longchen Yeshe Dorje, Kyabje Kangyur
37627 Rinpoche, translated by The Padmakara Translation Group, published by
37628 Snow Lion Publications
37632 As long as we cling to some notion of objective existence--the idea that
37633 something actually exists in a concrete, identifiable way--emotions such as
37634 desire and aversion will follow. When we see something we like--a beautiful
37635 watch, for example--we perceive it as having some real quality of existence
37636 among its parts. We see the watch not as a collection of parts, but as an
37637 existing entity with a specific quality of watch-ness to it. And if it's a
37638 fine mechanical timepiece, our perception is enhanced by qualities that are
37639 seen to exist definitely as part of the nature of the watch. It is as a
37640 result of this misperception of the watch that our desire to possess it
37642 In a similar manner, our aversion to someone we dislike arises as a result
37643 of attributing inherent negative qualities to the person. When we relate this
37644 process to how we experience our own sense of existence--how the thought "I"
37645 or "I am" arises--we notice that it invariably does so in relation to some
37646 aspect of our physical or mental aggregates.
37647 Our notion of ourselves is based upon a sense of our physical and emotional
37648 selves. What's more, we feel that these physical and mental aspects of
37649 ourselves exist inherently. My body is not something of which I doubt the
37650 specificity. There is a body-ness as well as a me-ness about it that very
37651 evidently exists. It seems to be a natural basis for my identifying my body
37652 as "me." Our emotions such as fear are similarly experienced as having a valid
37653 existence and as being natural bases for our identifying ourselves as "me."
37654 Both our loves and our hates serve to deepen the self sense. Even the mere
37655 feeling "I'm cold" contributes to our sense of being a solid and legitimate
37657 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "A Profound Mind: Cultivating Wisdom in Everyday
37658 Life", edited by Nicholas Vreeland, afterword by Richard Gere
37660 In the Mahayana, there exist the vows of the Bodhisattva... but in Dzogchen,
37661 there exist no such rules or vows.
37662 When the Indian Buddhist master Atisa came to Tibet in the eleventh century,
37663 he met the famous Tibetan translator Rinchen Zangpo. Atisa asked him how he
37664 practiced the Tantras which he had translated, and he replied that he
37665 practiced them meticulously one after the other. But Atisa told him that this
37666 was not the correct way. He pointed out to the translator that all of the
37667 Tantras could be condensed and integrated into a single Upadesa and one need
37668 only practise that in order to maintain all of the transmissions which he had
37670 The same is true with Dzogchen. If we really understand this single
37671 teaching here which comes directly from Guru Padmasambhava, we can attain
37672 liberation. But we must grasp this vital core of the teaching. No matter
37673 what we are doing, which ever among the four modes of behavior--walking,
37674 sitting, lying down, or eating, we must always hold to awareness, never
37675 forgetting, never losing this awareness. This is the real meaning of Rigdzin,
37676 one who is totally aware. In Dzogchen, there is only one rule--always be
37677 aware in whatever we do, never be distracted!(p.68)
37678 -- "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness", translation and
37679 commentary by John Myrdhin Reynolds, foreword by Namkhai Norbu,
37680 published by Snow Lion Publications
37682 Our mind needs to stretch to encompass emptiness. Our minds are so stuck in
37683 the idea, "Things exist the way they appear to me. What I see is reality. It
37684 is 100 percent true. There's nothing to doubt. Things exist exactly as they
37685 appear to my senses, exactly as they appear to my mental consciousness." We
37686 hardly ever doubt that. Not only do we have the appearance of inherent
37687 existence to our sense consciousnesses and mental consciousness, but also our
37688 mental consciousness grasps on to that appearance and says, "Yes! Everything
37689 really exists in this findable, independent way. Everything is real as it
37691 When we believe there's a real "me," then we have to protect that self and
37692 bring it happiness. Thus, we are attached to things that are pleasurable and
37693 become angry at anything unpleasant. Pride, jealousy, laziness, and the whole
37694 gamut of negative emotions follow. Motivated by these, we act physically,
37695 verbally, and mentally. These actions, or karma, leave seeds on our
37696 mindstream, and when these ripen, they influence what we experience. We again
37697 relate to these experiences ignorantly, so more emotions arise, motivating us
37698 to create more karma. As a result, cyclic existence with all its difficulties
37699 continues on and on, created by our mind, dependent on the ignorance that
37700 misconceives the nature of ourselves and all other phenomena.
37701 ...However, when we investigate more deeply and look beyond appearances, we
37702 realize that it's impossible for things to exist in the way they appear.
37703 Seeing this gives us a kind of spaciousness and freedom because, if samsara
37704 were inherently existent and everything really did exist the way it appears to
37705 us, then transformation and change could not occur...and the best we could
37706 ever have is what we have right now. Thinking about the emptiness of inherent
37707 existence shows us the possibility for change. Beauty can come forth because
37708 nothing is inherently concrete, fixed, or findable.(p.105)
37709 -- Thubten Chodron, "Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga Method of
37710 Chenrezig", foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Pub.
37714 If one does not sow the seed
37715 Of appreciation for a perfect guru,
37716 The tree of spiritual power is not born.
37717 With undivided mind entrust yourself.
37719 Human life is rare and precious,
37720 Yet if not inspired by thoughts of death,
37721 One wastes it on materialism:
37722 Be ready to die at any moment.
37724 All living beings have been our mothers,
37725 Three circles of suffering always binding them.
37726 Ignoble it would be not to repay them,
37727 Not to strive to attain enlightenment. (p.100)
37729 The colophon [inscription] for this poem reads, "Written at the request of
37730 Ritropa Samdrub, an Amdo monk from Dechen Monastery, who begged for a short
37731 teaching...." The Seventh Dalai Lama advises him to establish three central
37732 pillars in his spiritual practice: (1) a disciplined spiritual connection with
37733 his teacher; (2) awareness of the preciousness of life, and the uncertainty of
37734 the time of death; and (3) the mind of love and compassion for all living
37735 beings, coupled with the aspiration to enlightenment as the best means of
37736 fulfilling that love and compassion.
37737 -- The Seventh Dalai Lama, "Meditations to Transform the Mind", translated,
37738 edited, and introduced by Glenn Mullin, published by Snow Lion Pub.
37740 Courageous Bodhisattvas risk their lives to help others, and so, when we are
37741 in relatively better, more comfortable situations, we must certainly practice
37742 giving. Even if they are threatened, the courageous ones will not engage in
37743 improper actions. Instead, after examining the situation carefully, when they
37744 find that certain actions are correct and justified, on the basis of reason,
37745 they engage in them even at the risk of their lives. That is the way of the
37746 decent, civilized and courageous ones, who do not follow misleading paths.(p.20)
37747 -- H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, "Generous Wisdom: Commentaries by H.H. the
37748 Dalai Lama XIV on the Jatakamala, Garland of Birth Stories", translated
37749 by Tenzin Dorjee, edited by Dexter Roberts
37751 One day, when a very learned scholar or geshe and I were discussing the fact
37752 that the self is an elusive phenomenon, that it is unfindable in either body
37753 or mind, he remarked: 'If the self did not exist at all, in a sense that would
37754 make things very simple. There would be no experience of suffering and pain,
37755 because there would be no subject to undergo such experiences. However, that
37756 is not the case. Regardless of whether we can actually find it or not, there
37757 is an individual being who undergoes the experience of pain and pleasure, who
37758 is the subject of experiences, who perceives things and so on. Based on our
37759 own experience we do know that there is something--whatever we may call it--
37760 that makes it possible for us to undergo these experiences. We have something
37761 called discernment or the ability to perceive things.'
37762 In fact, when we examine the experience of suffering, although some
37763 sufferings are at the sensory or bodily level, such as physical pain, even the
37764 very experience of pain is intimately connected with consciousness or mind and
37765 therefore is part of our mental world. This is what distinguishes sentient
37766 beings from other biological organisms, such as plants, trees and so on.
37767 Sentient beings have a subjective dimension, which we may choose to call
37768 experience, consciousness or the mental world.
37769 ....One thing we can understand, both through scientific analysis and also
37770 from our own personal experience or perception, is that whatever experiences
37771 we have now are consequences of preceding conditions. Nothing comes into
37772 being without a cause. Just as everything in the material world must have a
37773 cause or condition that gives rise to it, so must all experiences in the
37774 mental world also have causes and conditions.(p.74)
37775 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Lighting the Way", translated by Geshe Thupten
37776 Jinpa, published by Snow Lion Publications
37778 Meditation, when learned skillfully, can enable a return to awareness of the
37779 body, our sensations, and feelings. When we are not given specific guidance
37780 to ground our meditation within the body, however, meditation can easily
37781 perpetuate a disembodied spiritual practice. This is accentuated if our view
37782 of spirituality sees the body as some kind of problem to be transcended.
37783 Unfortunately, this view can prevail even within the Buddhist world, despite
37784 being counter to the essential principle of mindfulness and presence. When,
37785 however, we cultivate the capacity to remain present in our felt experience
37786 within the body, our relationship to ourselves changes. We can begin to feel
37787 more grounded in our life and more stable in our identity.
37788 Engaging in a disembodied spirituality is no solution to our life demands.
37789 It may be a way of experiencing states of mind that can be very seductive,
37790 even addictive. Seldom does it address the roots of our emotional problems.
37791 Transformation comes when we are willing and able to restore or develop a
37792 sound relationship to our body in a healthy way. With many Buddhist
37793 practices, such as Tantra, this is essential, for the body contains the
37794 vitality that is the heart of our innate creative potential.
37795 Embodiment therefore implies a full engagement in life with all of its
37796 trials and tribulations, rather than avoidance through disembodied spiritual
37797 flight. The value of meditation is that it can enable this engagement because
37798 it cultivates the capacity to be present and remain open, not grasping at or
37799 rejecting what arises. When meditation emphasizes presence rather than
37800 transcendence, this openness is a natural outcome.(p.143)
37801 -- Rob Preece, "The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of Individuation
37802 in Buddhist Life", published by Snow Lion Publications
37804 Those training in great love should forsake self-centeredness and engage in
37805 the Buddha's practice, the root of which is compassion. You may be thinking,
37806 Love is indeed very profound, but I do not have the skill to practice it; I
37807 will focus my efforts on practices aimed at getting myself out of cyclic
37808 existence instead. On one hand, this is true, because you should choose a
37809 path of development appropriate to your ability. On the other hand, there is
37810 great advantage in attempting the highest degree of love you can.
37811 Even if you cannot actually implement the practices of love and compassion,
37812 merely hearing about them establishes powerful predispositions for future
37813 success. This can be amplified by planting prayer-wishes aspiring to
37814 altruism. Do not be discouraged; it is difficult to absorb such a profound
37815 perspective. Be courageous and think of your future potential. It is
37816 particularly important to do the best you can.(p.82)
37817 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving
37818 Relationships", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
37820 What is very important for us to recognise is our own falsity. This is not
37821 a judgement that sometimes we are authentic and sometimes we are false. It
37822 means that everything about us in our ordinary sense of self is false because
37823 it is grounded on a misapprehension of the nature of reality.... It is like
37824 somebody in University who is having their final examinations. They go into
37825 the wrong examination room and not reading the questions very clearly they
37826 write very long answers on their own subject that is unfortunately not the one
37827 they are being examined on. It does not matter how good the answer is they
37828 will fail, for they are not addressing the question.
37829 The basic question is always: "Who are you?", "Who am I?" but we do not
37830 understand it and so we answer with a ceaseless narrative of self definition.
37831 This covers over the freshness of the question, the possibility of looking and
37832 seeing, and so all our answers are stale, the reworking of self-protective
37833 versions constructed out of unexamined elements. We have many, many, many
37834 answers and all of them are false. That's why it is very important when you
37835 do meditations, to put your full energy one-pointedly into the practice, to
37836 try to repair the initial basic fault that has torn subject and object apart.
37837 It is very important to stop being ashamed of being false. For we have to
37838 see how falsity arises, how obscuration develops. We want to look directly at
37839 our falsity and learn its tricks so that we will not be caught by them. This
37840 helps to open the space in which we can recognise our own nature.
37841 "When you understand the falsity of your confusion remain unartificially,
37842 effortlessly in the natural mode (dharmakaya)."(p.90)
37843 -- "Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje entitled 'The
37844 Mirror of Clear Meaning' with commentary by James Low", published by Snow
37848 this is an event that can be caused by strong intoxication of various sorts.
37849 the sufferer passes out while seated at a table, such that he or she then has
37850 their head thud down onto the table. after a brief rest, the unlucky person
37851 wakes up again, and starts to rise off the table. when the head rises to a
37852 certain point, where blood pressure starts to increase, the effect of the
37853 intoxication takes over again, and they pass out once more. bam. hence, the
37854 head repeatedly banging into the table: a groundhog daze.
37855 i have seen this happen. it's not fun to watch. well, maybe a little.
37858 We are the source of healing and happiness. Our generosity and concern
37859 pacify every negative situation. As we send out kindness, we grow accustomed
37860 to being strong and kind. In this way, our positive feelings are constantly
37861 renewed and can never be exhausted.
37862 Perhaps you know the story about the man who arrived in heaven and when
37863 asked by God where he wanted to go replied that he wanted to see both heaven
37864 and hell. First, he went to hell. There was a large table with all the
37865 inhabitants of hell sitting around it. The center of the table was full of
37866 delicious food. Each person had two very long chopsticks. They could reach
37867 the food but they could not get it into their mouths because their chopsticks
37868 were too long. They were miserable. No one was eating and everyone went
37869 hungry. Next he was taken to visit heaven. All the inhabitants of heaven
37870 were also sitting around a big table full of delicious food but they were
37871 happy. They too had very long chopsticks but they were eating and enjoying
37872 themselves. They used the chopsticks to feed each other across the table.
37873 The people in heaven had discovered that it was in their interest to
37874 collaborate unselfishly.(p.69)
37875 -- Ringu Tulku, "Mind Training", published by Snow Lion Publications
37877 When you are in a fluctuating state of mind, like when you are angry or have
37878 lost your temper, then it is good to bring back calmness by concentrating on
37879 breathing. Just count the breaths, completely forgetting about anger.
37880 Concentrate on breathing and count in/out "one, two, three," up to twenty.
37881 At that moment when your mind concentrates fully on breathing, the breath
37882 coming and going, the passions subside. Afterwards it is easier to think
37884 Since all activities, including meditation, depend very much on the force of
37885 intention or motivation, it is important that, before you begin to meditate,
37886 you cultivate a correct motivation... The correct motivation is the
37887 altruistic attitude.(p.69)
37888 -- Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Cultivating a Daily
37889 Meditation", published by Snow Lion Publications
37891 The crazy elephant of the mind behaving wildly
37892 Is tied to the pillar of an object of observation
37893 With the rope of mindfulness.
37894 By degrees it is brought under control with the hook of wisdom.
37897 "Wisdom" here is introspection. Hence, the example of taming an elephant
37898 indicates the achievement of a serviceable mind by way of the two--mindfulness
37899 and introspection. The subtle vajra that is the base on which the mind is
37900 being set is like a stable pillar to which an elephant is tied. The
37901 unserviceable mind is like an untamed elephant. Causing the mind not to be
37902 distracted from its object of observation through relying on mindfulness is
37903 like using a rope to tie an elephant. Setting the mind free from fault--when
37904 it does not hold the object of observation as originally set--through
37905 immediately recognizing such by means of introspection is like a herder's
37906 hitting an elephant with a hook and correcting it when it strays from the tie-
37909 Hence, there are two important factors with regard to holding the mind:
37910 + From the beginning, stay on the object of observation without being
37911 distracted to anything other than it.
37912 + Then if distracted, immediately recognize such, and again focus the mind
37914 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba and Jeffrey Hopkins, "Yoga Tantra: Paths
37915 to Magical Feats", translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by
37916 Snow Lion Publications
37918 Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor
37919 technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or
37920 defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this
37921 you will awaken from your dreams.
37922 -- Hagakure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo
37924 LEEEEEEEROYYYY JENNNNNKINZZZ!!!
37925 -- To be yelled before irrationally throwing away all plans and jumping into
37926 the worst possible situation.
37928 what is an inference?
37929 someone says, "my hand stinks because my butt stinks."
37930 an inference you could draw:
37931 that hand has probably been too close to that butt.
37933 What Do We Mean by Bodhisattva?
37935 Bodhi means enlightenment, the state devoid of all defects and endowed with
37936 all good qualities. Sattva refers to someone who has courage and confidence
37937 and who strives to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. Those who
37938 have this spontaneous, sincere wish to attain enlightenment for the ultimate
37939 benefit of all beings are called bodhisattvas. Through wisdom, they direct
37940 their minds to enlightenment, and through their compassion, they have concern
37941 for beings. This wish for perfect enlightenment for the sake of others is
37942 what we call bodhichitta, and it is the starting point on the path.
37946 When we talk about the notion of self in Buddhism, it is important to bear
37947 in mind that there are different degrees or types. There are some types of
37948 sense of self which are not only to be cultivated but also to be reinforced
37949 and enhanced. For instance, in order to have a strong determination to seek
37950 buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, one needs a very strong
37951 sense of confidence, which is based upon a sense of commitment and courage.
37952 This requires a strong sense of self. Unless one has that identity or sense
37953 of self, one will not be able to develop the confidence and courage to
37954 strongly seek this aim.
37955 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
37957 Genuine peace of mind is rooted in affection and compassion. There is a very
37958 high level of sensitivity and feeling involved. So long as we lack inner
37959 discipline, an inner calmness of mind, then no matter what external facilities
37960 or conditions we may have, they will never give us the feeling of joy and
37961 happiness that we seek. On the other hand, if we possess this inner
37962 quality—that is, calmness of mind, a degree of stability within—then even
37963 if we lack various external facilities that are normally considered necessary
37964 for a happy and joyful life, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful
37966 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
37968 COMPLICATED SIMPLICITY
37970 Emptiness is the simplest and most unelaborated thing we could imagine, but
37971 then there is this whole literature about all these very discursive details
37972 with all their subpoints. There are five paths and ten bhumis, and each path
37973 is divided into a number of stages, with certain numbers of obscurations
37974 having to be relinquished on each one of those subpaths. Most people just
37975 think, "Who wants or needs to know all that? Don't we have too many
37976 thoughts already? I thought this was about letting go of all reference
37978 Of course nobody really wants to know all those details and in a sense we
37979 all know them already, because they are the details of the many reference
37980 points that we already have in our mind. The fact that these sutras and their
37981 commentaries talk about our obscurations is precisely the point why they seem
37982 so endless and complicated—because our minds are complicated. Emptiness is
37983 extremely simple, but our convoluted minds that do not get this simplicity are
37984 very complicated. It is not that the Buddha and the other speakers in the
37985 sutras and the commentaries really like to, but they need to address each one
37986 of those knots in our minds, which are like knots in space.
37988 If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have
37989 to be a horrible warning.
37992 THE MIND OF CLEAR LIGHT
37994 Is spiritual practice really worthwhile? Is it really possible to eliminate
37995 from within ourselves the forces that give rise to suffering? As is said,
37996 "The ultimate nature of mind is clear light." Consciousness has many
37997 levels, and although the coarser levels are affected by the defiling forces,
37998 the most subtle level remains free of gross negativities. In the Vajrayana
37999 this subtle level of consciousness is called the mind of clear light.
38000 The delusions and emotional afflictions as well as the dualistic mind of
38001 right and wrong, love and hatred, etc., are associated only with the coarse
38002 levels of consciousness. At the moment, we are totally absorbed in the
38003 interplay of these coarse states, so we must begin our practice by working
38004 within them. This means consciously encouraging love over hate, patience in
38005 place of anger, emotional freedom rather than attachment, kindness over
38006 violence, and so forth. Doing this brings immediate peace and calm to the
38007 mind, thus making higher meditation possible.
38008 Then, because grasping at a self and at phenomena as being truly existent is
38009 the cause of all the vast range of distorted states of mind, one cultivates
38010 the wisdom that eliminates this ego-grasping. To overcome ego-grasping is to
38011 overcome the entire host of mental distortions.
38012 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38014 It is the general Buddhist procedure that one's own pleasure and pain are
38015 acheived by oneself and not from the outside, and that, therefore, sentient
38016 beings themselves must understand and implement practices to bring about their
38017 own happiness. Thus, the most efficacious way to help others is through
38018 teaching what should be adopted in practice and what should be discarded from
38019 among current behavior. There is no way to do this unless you come to know
38020 all of the topics involved in what should be adopted in practice and what
38021 should be discarded—you must become omniscient. As mentioned earlier, there
38022 is no way to accomplish this except by removing the obstructions to
38023 omniscience, and one who has overcome, utterly and forever, the obstructions
38024 to omniscience is a Buddha.
38025 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38027 In meditation, imagine that in front of you are three persons—an enemy, a
38028 friend, and a neutral person. At that time, in our minds we have (1) a sense
38029 of closeness for one of them, thinking, "This is my friend"; (2) a sense
38030 of dislike even when imagining the enemy; and (3) a sense of ignoring the
38031 neutral person. Now, we have to think about the reasons why we generate these
38032 feelings—the reasons being that temporarily one of them helped us whereas
38033 the other temporarily harmed us, and the third did neither. However, when we
38034 think in terms of the long course of beginningless rebirth, none of us could
38035 decide that someone who has helped or harmed us in this life has been doing so
38037 When you contemplate this way, eventually you arrive at a point where a
38038 strong generation of desire or hatred appears to you to be just senseless.
38039 Gradually, such a bias weakens, and you decide that one-sided classification
38040 of persons as friends and enemies has been a mistake.
38041 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38043 Generally speaking, even if money brings us happiness, it tends to be the
38044 kind that money can buy: material things and sensory experiences. And these,
38045 we discover, become a source of suffering themselves. As far as actual
38046 possessions are concerned, we must admit that they often cause us more, not
38047 less, difficulty in life. The car breaks down, we lose our money, our most
38048 precious belongings are stolen, our house is damaged by fire. Or we worry
38049 about these things happening.
38050 The problem is not materialism as such. Rather it is the underlying
38051 assumption that full satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone.
38052 Unlike animals whose quest for happiness is restricted to survival and to the
38053 immediate gratification of sensory desires, we human beings have the capacity
38054 to experience happiness at a deeper level, which, when achieved, can overwhelm
38055 unhappy experiences.
38056 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38058 We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of
38059 others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like
38060 it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives in which we do not benefit
38061 from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most
38062 of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. Nor
38063 is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by
38064 concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic
38065 actions bring about happiness, but they also lessen our experience of
38066 suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are
38067 motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less
38068 misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort
38069 or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our
38070 internal peace—anxiety, doubt, disappointment—these are definitely less.
38071 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38073 If we view the world's religions from the widest possible viewpoint and
38074 examine their ultimate goal, we find that all of the major world religions,
38075 whether Christianity or Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, are dedicated to the
38076 achievement of permanent human happiness. They are all directed toward that
38077 goal. All religions emphasize the fact that the true follower must be honest
38078 and gentle, in other words, that a truly religious person must always strive
38079 to be a better human being. To this end, the different world religions teach
38080 different doctrines which will help transform the person. In this regard, all
38081 religions are the same, there is no conflict. This is something we must
38082 emphasize. We must consider the question of religious diversity from this
38083 viewpoint. And when we do, we find no conflict.
38084 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38086 Emptiness vs. Non-Existence
38088 The doctrines of emptiness and selflessness do not imply the non-existence of
38089 things. Things do exist. When we say that all phenomena are void of self-
38090 existence, it does not mean that we are advocating non-existence, that we are
38091 repudiating that things exist. Then what is it we are negating? We are
38092 negating, or denying, that anything exists from its own side without depending
38093 on other things. Hence, it is because things depend for their existence upon
38094 other causes and conditions that they are said to lack independent self-
38096 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38098 If we view the world's religions from the widest possible viewpoint and
38099 examine their ultimate goal, we find that all of the major world religions,
38100 whether Christianity or Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, are dedicated to the
38101 achievement of permanent human happiness. They are all directed toward that
38102 goal. All religions emphasize the fact that the true follower must be honest
38103 and gentle, in other words, that a truly religious person must always strive
38104 to be a better human being. To this end, the different world religions teach
38105 different doctrines which will help transform the person. In this regard, all
38106 religions are the same, there is no conflict. This is something we must
38107 emphasize. We must consider the question of religious diversity from this
38108 viewpoint. And when we do, we find no conflict.
38109 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38111 The process of overcoming our defilements goes in conjunction with gaining
38112 higher levels of realisation. In fact, when we speak of gaining higher levels
38113 of realisation in Buddhism we are speaking primarily of the processes through
38114 which our wisdom and insight deepen. It is actually the wisdom aspect that
38115 enables the practitioner to move from one level to the next on the path.
38116 The attainment of the levels of the path is explained in condensed form in
38117 the Heart Sutra, where we find the mantra tadyatha om gate gate paragate
38118 parasamgate bodhi svaha. Tadyatha means It is thus; gate gate means go, go;
38119 paragate means go beyond and transcend; parasamgate means go utterly beyond,
38120 go thoroughly beyond; and bodhi svaha means firmly rooted in enlightenment.
38121 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38124 It is often seen that human beings can endure problems quite well, but
38125 cannot endure success. When we are successful and have everything we desire,
38126 it can easily go to our heads. There is a great danger of losing our common
38127 sense and becoming careless and arrogant. As it is said, "Nothing corrupts a
38128 person more than power." Very powerful people sometimes become so proud that
38129 they no longer care about their actions or about the effect they have on
38130 others. Losing any sense of right and wrong, they create severe problems for
38131 themselves and everyone else.
38132 Even if we have all the success we could dream of—fame, wealth, and so
38133 on—we must understand that these things have no real substance. Attachment
38134 does not come from having things, but from the way our mind reacts to them.
38135 It is fine to participate in good circumstances, provided we can see that they
38136 have no real essence. They may come and they may go. When seeing this, we
38137 will not become so attached. Even if we lose our wealth we will not be badly
38138 affected, and while it is there we will enjoy it without being senseless and
38140 -- Ringu Tulku, from "Daring Steps: Traversing the Path of the Buddha",
38141 edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs, page 92.
38143 The role of other sentient beings
38145 In relation to the attainment of liberation from cylic existence, which is
38146 known also as "definite goodness," the role of other sentient beings is
38147 indispensable. In the Buddhist understanding, the key spiritual practices
38148 that lead to the attainment of liberation are the Three Higher
38149 Trainings—higher training in morality, in meditation, and in wisdom. The
38150 last two are based upon the foundation of the first, namely the training in
38151 morality. As I said before, the presence of other sentience beings is
38152 indispensable for this training. This is how we come to the powerful
38153 realisation that the role of other sentient beings is essential in all areas
38154 of our mundane and spiritual activities.
38155 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38157 To avoid being hurt by thorns and brambles, we might consider covering all
38158 the mountains with leather. That would be impossible, but putting on shoes
38159 would serve the same purpose. Similarly, if we tried to subdue all our outer
38160 enemies, we would never succeed. Once one was eliminated, another would rise
38161 against us. While doing this, our anger would continue to breed new foes.
38162 The only way to overcome our enemies is to turn inward and kill the real one,
38163 which is our own hatred.
38164 -- Ringu Tulku, from "Daring Steps: Traversing the Path of the Buddha",
38165 edited and translated by Rosemarie Fuchs.
38167 One should not view one's dharma practice as being something decorative,
38168 regarding statues and images as material possessions or as furnishings for
38169 one's house, or thinking that because there is an empty space on a wall one
38170 might as well put up a thangka for decoration. That kind of attitude should
38171 not be cultivated. When you arrange the statues or thangkas, you should do so
38172 out of a deep respect from the mind, moved by your faith and conviction. If
38173 you can arrange these physical representations—statues and so forth—out of
38174 deep respect and faith, that's all right. On the other hand, the attitude
38175 that they are merely material possessions is dangerous and destructive. I
38176 think that some people who have a cupboard or the like in which they keep all
38177 their precious possessions may arrange an altar on it just for the sake of
38178 decoration. This is very wrong.
38179 Having such motivations is not the proper way to become a Buddhist; the
38180 proper way to become a Buddhist is to bring about some positive change within
38181 the mind. Any practice that can give you more courage when you are undergoing
38182 a very difficult time and that can provide you with some kind of solace and
38183 calmness of mind is a true practice of the dharma.
38184 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38186 The environment where you are doing the meditation should be properly cleaned.
38187 While cleaning, you should cultivate the motivation that since you are engaged
38188 in the task of accumulating great stores of merit by inviting the hosts of
38189 buddhas and bodhisattvas to this environment, it is important to have a clean
38190 place. You should see that all external dirt and dust around you is basically
38191 a manifestation of the faults and stains within your own mind. You should see
38192 that the most important aim is to purge these stains and faults from within
38193 your mind. Therefore, as you cleanse the environment, think that you are also
38194 purifying your mind. Develop the very strong thought that by cleaning this
38195 place you are inviting the hosts of buddhas and bodhisattvas who are the most
38196 supreme merit field, and that you will subsequently engage in a path that will
38197 enable you to purge your mind of the stains and delusions.
38198 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38200 From the point of view of one who seeks enlightenment, it is far better to
38201 be a human being than to be born even in the heavens of the gods, where there
38202 is nectar to live on and all wishes are granted by the wish-fulfilling tree;
38203 where there is neither fatigue nor difficulty, neither sickness nor old age.
38204 It is as humans, possessed of the eight freedoms and the ten endowments, and
38205 not as gods, that every one of the thousand Buddhas of this age has attained,
38206 or will attain, enlightenment. This human existence, moreover, is not to be
38207 achieved by force or mere chance; it is the result of positive actions. And
38208 because it is rare for beings to accomplish positive actions, a precious human
38209 existence is indeed difficult to obtain.
38210 Nevertheless, we have now managed to be born into such a state; we have
38211 encountered the Buddadharma, have entered the path and are now receiving
38212 teachings. But if we are unable to practise them, simply listening to the
38213 teachings will not in itself liberate us from samsara, and will be of no help
38214 to us when we are confronted by the hardships of birth, disease, old age and
38215 death. If we do not follow the doctor's prescription when we are sick, then
38216 even if the doctor sits constantly by our side, the pain will not go away.
38217 -- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, from "Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the
38218 Seven-Point Mind Training", translated by Padmakara Translation Group.
38220 The realization of the nature of the mind is not something we can find by
38221 searching for it from afar. It is present within the essence of the mind
38222 itself. If we do not alter or change that in any way, that is enough. It is
38223 not as if we were lacking something before, so we need to make something new
38224 through our meditation. It is not as if we are bad and have to go through all
38225 sorts of efforts to make ourselves good. Goodness is something we all have.
38226 It has always been with us, but we have just not looked for it or seen it yet,
38227 so we have become confused. Therefore all we need to do is to just rest
38228 within it without changing it. We see where it stays and rest there, so we
38229 are like a kusulu. This means that we rest free and easy with nothing to do,
38230 very simply. We do not need to think that we are making something good or
38231 that we need to meditate properly. It is enough just to know what we already
38233 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, from "Vivid Awareness", in "The Best Buddhist
38234 Writing 2012", edited by Melvin McLeod and the editors of the Shambhala
38235 Sun, pages 196–197.
38237 We all have to recognize the tremendous opportunity that we have. As humans
38238 we have this rare intelligence, but there is a real danger that we will waste
38239 it. Death is certain, but when we will die is totally unpredictable. We
38240 could lose our precious human existence at any moment. With such reflections,
38241 we must motivate ourselves to do something meaningful right now. The best way
38242 to make your human existence meaningful is to really engage in the practice of
38243 Dharma. During formal sitting meditation and in between sessions, in
38244 different ways, be mindful and introspectively vigilant. Keep constant watch
38246 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38248 In order to carry out a practice--such as constantly watching the mind--you
38249 should form a determination, make a pledge, right when you wake up: "Now, for
38250 the rest of this day, I will put into practice what I believe just as much as
38251 I can." It is very important that, at the start of the day, we should set out
38252 to shape what will happen later. Then, at the end of every day, check what
38253 happened. Review the day. And if you carried through for that whole day your
38254 morning's determination, then rejoice. Reinforce further your motivation to
38255 continue in the same line. However, when you do your reviewing, you may
38256 discover that you did things during the day that are contrary to your
38257 religious values and beliefs. You should then acknowledge this and cultivate
38258 a deep sense of remorse. Strengthen your resolve not to indulge in these
38259 actions in the future.
38260 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38262 There are two different ways in which we can understand the term "ordinary
38263 mind." One way is to not take control over anything and end up following our
38264 afflictions. When a thought of anger arises, we follow it; when greed arises,
38265 we lose control of ourselves to it. Similarly, we lose control of ourselves
38266 to our pride and jealousy. Although we might think of this as our ordinary
38267 state of mind, it is not what we mean here. Here it does not mean losing
38268 control of ourselves to negative emotions. Instead, it means that we do not
38269 need to do anything at all to the essence of the mind itself.
38270 We do not need to alter this essence in any way. We do not have to worry
38271 about what we are thinking, what is pleasant, or what is painful. We can
38272 leave this mind as it is. If we try to alter the mind in any way, thoughts
38273 will arise. But if we do not do anything to it and let it rest easily, then
38274 it is unaltered. The Kagyu masters of the past called this the ordinary mind,
38275 or the natural state. They called it this out of their experience. This
38276 ordinary mind itself is the dharma expanse and the essence of the buddhas; it
38277 is our buddha-nature.
38278 -- Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, from "Vivid Awareness" in "The Best Buddhist
38279 Writing 2012", edited by Melvin McLeod and the editors of the Shambhala
38282 If your engagement with others is tainted by strong attachment, craving,
38283 aversion, anger, and so forth, then that form of grasping is undesirable. But
38284 on the other hand, when you are interacting with other living beings and
38285 become aware of their needs or suffering or pain, then you need to fully
38286 engage with that and be compassionate. So there can be positive attachment in
38287 this sense of active engagement.
38288 Buddhist masters have long used the term attachment to describe the quality
38289 of compassion for others. For example, a verse from Haribhadra's Clear
38290 Meaning Commentary refers to compassion that is attached to other living
38291 beings. And as we have seen, Nagarjuna teaches that attachment for other
38292 living beings will arise spontaneously in the person who realizes emptiness.
38293 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38295 Kongtrul Rinpoche suggested we pray to the guru, buddhas, and bodhisattvas and
38296 ask them to grant their blessings, "So I may give birth to the heart of
38297 sadness." But what is a "heart of sadness"? Imagine one night you have
38298 a dream. Although it is a good dream, deep down you know that eventually you
38299 will have to wake up and it will be over. In life, too, sooner or later,
38300 whatever the state of our relationships, or our health, our jobs and every
38301 aspect of our lives, everything, absolutely everything, will change. And the
38302 little bell ringing in the back of your head to remind you of this
38303 inevitability is what is called the "heart of sadness." Life, you realise,
38304 is a race against time, and you should never put off dharma practice until
38305 next year, next month, or tomorrow, because the future may never happen.
38306 -- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, from "Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-
38307 Called Preliminary Practices"
38309 What we want to eliminate is grasping that is grounded upon falsification of
38310 the object, distortions that arise as afflictions grasp at the apparent
38311 substantial existence of an object. Some texts say that mental states such as
38312 compassion and faith are, by their very nature, virtuous and thus cannot at
38313 the same time be afflicted mental states. Yet there are other texts that
38314 refer to "afflicted compassion" or "afflicted faith." For those of us
38315 who have not realized emptiness, when we generate strong devotion toward the
38316 Buddha perhaps there is within that faith, within that devotion, an element of
38317 grasping at the Buddha as substantially real. This makes it an instance of
38318 so-called "afflicted devotion."
38319 Still, it is important to distinguish grasping rooted in falsification and
38320 distortion from the attachment, focus, or holding that we associate with
38321 compassion. In our immediate experience, these two forms of grasping may seem
38322 the same, but in terms of the overall mental environment they are quite
38323 different. Compassion is fact-based, while distorted grasping is not.
38324 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38326 By and large, human beings tend to prefer to fit in to society by following
38327 accepted rules of etiquette and being gentle, polite, and respectful. The
38328 irony is that this is also how most people imagine a spiritual person should
38329 behave. When a so-called dharma practitioner is seen to behave badly, we
38330 shake our heads over her audacity at presenting herself as a follower of the
38331 Buddha. Yet such judgments are better avoided, because to "fit in" is not
38332 what a genuine dharma practitioner strives for.
38333 Think of Tilopa, for example. He looked so outlandish that if he turned up
38334 on your doorstep today, odds are you would refuse to let him in. And you
38335 would have a point. He would most likely be almost completely naked; if you
38336 were lucky, he might be sporting some kind of G-string; his hair would never
38337 have been introduced to shampoo; and protruding from his mouth would quiver
38338 the tail of a live fish. What would your moral judgment be of such a being?
38339 "Him! A Buddhist?" This is how our theistic, moralistic, and judgmental
38340 minds work. Of course, there is nothing wrong with morality, but the point of
38341 spiritual practice, according to the vajrayana teachings, is to go beyond all
38342 our concepts, including those of morality.
38343 -- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, from "Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-
38344 Called Preliminary Practices".
38346 Because it is a reality that we are by nature social animals, bound to depend
38347 on each other, we need to cultivate affection and concern for other people if
38348 we really desire peace and happiness. Look at wild animals and birds. Even
38349 they travel together, flock together, and help each other. Bees do not have a
38350 particular legal system, they do not follow any spiritual practice, but for
38351 their livelihood and survival they depend on each other--that is their
38352 natural way of existence. Even though we intelligent human beings must also
38353 depend on each other, we sometimes misuse our intelligence and try to exploit
38354 each other. That goes against human nature. For those of us who profess to
38355 believe in a particular religious practice, it is extremely important that we
38356 try to help each other and cultivate a feeling of affection for each other.
38357 That is the source of happiness in our life.
38358 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38360 It's important to differentiate a thought from an emotion. We say things
38361 such as, "I feel like they don't accept me." Actually, that is a thought.
38362 We may feel hurt or frustrated, and it's because we're thinking that others
38363 don't accept us. How do we know they don't accept us? We don't. We
38364 haven't asked them. Instead, on the basis of how they looked at us or a
38365 comment they made, our mind constructs a story that we believe.
38366 As soon as you hear yourself saying, "I feel like...," stop and recognize
38367 that you can't "feel like" something. You are thinking. After you have
38368 identified the thought, ask yourself, "Is that true? How do I know it's true?
38369 What evidence do I have to prove the validity of that thought?" It's really
38370 startling to see how often we assume our interpretation of a situation is true
38371 when in fact it is based on flimsy evidence.
38372 -- Thubten Chodron, from "Don't Believe Everything You Think: Living with
38373 Wisdom and Compassion"
38375 We are all human beings, and from this point of view, we are the same. We all
38376 want happiness and we do not want suffering. If we consider this point, we
38377 will find that there are no differences between people of different faiths,
38378 races, colors, or cultures. We all have this common wish for happiness.
38379 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38381 Enlightenment is not anything new or something we create or bring into
38382 existence. It is simply discovering within us what is already there. It is
38383 the full realization of our intrinsic nature. In Tibetan, buddha is sang
38384 gyay. Sang means that all of the faults have been cleared away, while gyay
38385 means "full realization"; just as from darkness, the moon waxes, likewise
38386 from ignorance, the qualities of the mind's intrinsic nature emerge.
38387 -- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
38389 The fundamental teaching of the Buddha is that we should view others as being
38390 more important than we are. Of course, you cannot completely ignore yourself.
38391 But neither can you neglect the welfare of other people and other sentient
38392 beings, particularly when there is a clash of interest between your own
38393 welfare and the welfare of other people. At such a time you should consider
38394 other people's welfare as more important than your own personal well-being.
38395 Compare yourself to the rest of sentient beings. All other sentient beings
38396 are countless, while you are just one person. Your suffering and happiness
38397 may be very important, but it is just the suffering and happiness of one
38398 individual, whereas the happiness and suffering of all other sentient beings
38399 is immeasurable and countless. So, it is the way of the wise to sacrifice one
38400 for the benefit of the majority and it is the way of the foolish to sacrifice
38401 the majority on behalf of just one single individual. Even from the point of
38402 view of your personal well-being, you must cultivate a compassionate
38403 mind—that is that source of happiness in your life.
38404 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38406 Attachment and love are similar in that both of them draw us to the other
38407 person. But in fact, these two emotions are quite different. When we're
38408 attached we're drawn to someone because he or she meets our needs. In
38409 addition, there are lots of strings attached to our affection that we may or
38410 may not realize are there. For example, I 'love' you because you make me feel
38411 good. I 'love' you as long as you do things that I approve of. I 'love' you
38412 because you're mine. You're my spouse or my child or my parent or my friend.
38413 With attachment, we go up and down like a yo-yo, depending on how the other
38414 person treats us. We obsess, "What do they think of me? Do they love me?
38415 Have I offended them? How can I become what they want me to be so that they
38416 love me even more?" It's not very peaceful, is it? We're definitely stirred
38418 On the other hand, the love we're generating on the Dharma path is
38419 unconditional. We simply want other to have happiness and the causes of
38420 happiness without any strings attached, without any expectations of what these
38421 people will do for us or how good they'll make us feel.
38422 -- Thubten Chodron, "Don't Believe Everything You Think: Living with Wisdom
38425 Because we don't recognize our essential nature--we don't realize that
38426 although appearances arise unceasingly, nothing is really there--we invest
38427 with solidity and reality the seeming truth of self, other, and actions
38428 between self and others. This intellectual obscuration gives rise to
38429 attachment and aversion, followed by actions and reactions that create karma,
38430 solidify into habit, and perpetuate the cycles of suffering. This entire
38431 process needs to be purified.
38432 -- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, from "In the Presence of Masters: Wisdom from 30
38433 Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Teachers", edited by Reginald A. Ray.
38435 Effort is crucial in the beginning for generating a strong will. We all
38436 have the Buddha nature and thus already have within us the substances through
38437 which, when we meet with the proper conditions, we can turn into a fully
38438 enlightened being having all beneficial attributes and devoid of all faults.
38439 The very root of failure in our lives is to think, "Oh, how useless and
38440 powerless I am!" It is important to have a strong force of mind thinking,
38441 "I can do it," this not being mixed with pride or any other afflictive
38443 Moderate effort over a long period of time is important, no matter what you
38444 are trying to do. One brings failure on oneself by working extremely hard at
38445 the beginning, attempting to do too much, and then giving it all up after a
38446 short time. A constant stream of moderate effort is needed. Similarly, when
38447 meditating, you need to be skillful by having frequent, short sessions; it is
38448 more important that the session be of good quality than that it be long.
38449 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, from "Kindness, Clarity, and Insight"
38451 We Buddhists are supposed to save all sentient beings, but practically
38452 speaking, this may be too broad a notion for most people. In any case, we
38453 must at least think in terms of helping all human beings. This is very
38454 important. Even if we cannot think in terms of sentient beings inhabiting
38455 different worlds, we should nonetheless think in terms of the human beings on
38456 our own planet. To do this is to take a practical approach to the problem.
38457 It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily
38458 lives. If we find we cannot help another, the least we can do is to desist
38459 from harming them. We must not cheat others or lie to them. We must be
38460 honest human beings, sincere human beings.
38461 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38463 How things appear and how they actually exist differ greatly. A person
38464 engaging in practice of the perfection of wisdom does this kind of analysis
38465 and then examines how things appear in ordinary experience, alternating
38466 analysis and comparison with the usual mode of appearance in order to notice
38467 the discrepancy between the actual mode of subsistence of phenomena and their
38469 In this way the inherent existence which is the object of negation will
38470 become clearer and clearer. As much as the object of negation becomes
38471 clearer, so much deeper will your understanding of emptiness become. Finally,
38472 you will ascertain a mere vacuity that is a negative of inherent existence.
38473 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38475 Three attitudes prevent us from receiving a continual flow of blessings.
38476 They are compared to three "pots": a full pot, a pot with poison in it,
38477 and a pot with a hole in the bottom.
38478 The pot that's filled to the brim is like a mind full of opinions and
38479 preconceptions. We already know it all. We have so many fixed ideas that
38480 nothing new can affect us or cause us to question our assumptions.
38481 The pot containing poison is like a mind that's so cynical, critical, and
38482 judgmental that everything is poisoned by this harshness. It allows for no
38483 openness and no willingness to explore the teachings or anything else that
38484 challenges our righteous stance.
38485 The pot with a hole is like a distracted mind: our body is present but
38486 we're lost in thought. We're so busy thinking about our dream vacation or
38487 what's for dinner that we're completely deaf to what's being said.
38488 Knowing how sad it is to receive blessings and not be able to benefit,
38489 Shantideva wants to save himself grief by remaining open and attentive.
38490 Nothing will improve, he says, unless we become more intelligent about cause
38491 and effect. This is a message worth considering seriously.
38492 -- Pema Chödrön, from "No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the
38495 Shantideva cites three benefits of pain. First, it is valuable because
38496 through sorrow, pride is driven out. No matter how arrogant and condescending
38497 we've been, great suffering can humble us. The pain of a serious illness or
38498 loss of a loved one can be transformative, softening us and making us less
38500 The second benefit of pain is empathy: the compassion felt for those who
38501 wander in samsara. Our personal suffering brings compassion for others in the
38502 same situation. A young woman was telling me that when her baby died, she
38503 felt a deep connection to all the other parents who had lost children. This
38504 was, as she put it, the unexpected blessing of her sorrow.
38505 The third value of suffering is that evil is avoided and goodness seems
38506 delightful. When we practice according to Shantideva's instructions, we can
38507 get smarter about cause and result. Based on this understanding, we'll have
38508 less inclination to cause harm, and more desire to gather virtue and benefit
38510 -- Pema Chödrön, from "No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the
38513 Since emptiness, from between positive and negative phenomena, is a negative
38514 phenomenon and, from between affirming negatives and non-affirming negatives,
38515 is a non-affirming negative, when it appears to the mind, nothing will appear
38516 except an absence of such inherent existence—a mere elimination of the
38517 object of negation. Thus, for the mind of a person realizing emptiness there
38518 is no sense of, "I am ascertaining emptiness," and there is no thought,
38519 "This is emptiness." If you had such a sense, emptiness would become
38520 distant. Nevertheless, the emptiness of inherent existence is ascertained and
38522 After such realization, even though whatever phenomena appear appear to
38523 exist in their own right, you understand that they do not exist that way. You
38524 have a sense that they are like a magician's illusions in that there is a
38525 combination of their appearing one way but actually existing another way.
38526 Though they appear to exist inherently, you understand that they are empty of
38527 inherent existence.
38528 When phenomena are seen this way, the conceptions that superimpose a sense
38529 of goodness or badness on phenomena beyond what is actually there and serve as
38530 a basis for generating desire and hatred lessen; this is because they are
38531 based on the misconception that phenomena are established in their own right.
38532 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38534 Rely on timeless awareness, which is free of elaboration, without
38535 identity, and the very essence of being;
38536 do not rely on ordinary consciousness, which is a mind fixated
38537 on characteristics and concepts.
38539 Timeless awareness entails (a) understanding that the way in which phenomena
38540 actually abide is, from the ultimate perspective, free of all limitations
38541 imposed by elaborations of origination, cessation, and so forth; (b)
38542 realization of the nonexistence of the two kinds of identity; and (c) unerring
38543 knowledge of sugatagarbha as utter lucidity, the way in which things actually
38544 abide, beyond any context of speculative value judgments. It is on this
38545 awareness that one should rely.
38546 Ordinary consciousness entails (a) belief that what one immediately
38547 perceives constitutes something truly existent; (b) conceptualization in terms
38548 of characteristics, such as the sense of personal identity and the mind-body
38549 aggregates; and (c) mental states that are conditioned, for example, by
38550 attitudes of naively fixating on the pleasures of the senses. One should not
38551 rely on such consciousness.
38552 -- Jamgön Kongtrül Lodro Taye, from "The Treasury of Knowledge: Book Seven
38553 and Book Eight, Parts One and Two"
38555 Such is the process of karma: it is ineluctable; its results are greatly
38556 magnified; actions not committed have no effect; and the effects of actions
38557 committed never expire on their own.
38558 Generally speaking, whether you are an ordinary mortal individual or a
38559 spiritually advanced being, all positive experiences that carry with them any
38560 pleasant sensation—down to even the slightest pleasure caused by a cool
38561 breeze for beings reborn in a hell realm—occur due to positive karma
38562 reinforced in the past; it is not in accord with the nature of things that
38563 happiness be due to negative karma. And all negative experiences that carry
38564 with them any unpleasant sensation—down to even the slightest suffering that
38565 could occur in the experience of an arhat—occur due to negative karma one
38566 has reinforced in the past; for it is not in accord with the nature of things
38567 that suffering be due to positive karma.
38568 -- Jamgön Kongtrül Lodro Taye, from "The Treasury of Knowledge: Book Seven
38569 and Book Eight, Parts One and Two"
38571 "That which is seen and that which is touched are of a dream-like and
38572 illusion-like nature. Because feeling arises together with the mind,
38573 it is not [ultimately] perceived." --Shantideva
38575 There is nothing whatever that has a true mode of existence. Nevertheless,
38576 this does not suggest that a person who experiences feelings and the feelings
38577 themselves—pleasant and unpleasant—are utterly non-existent. They do
38578 exist, but in an untrue fashion. Thus, the things that we see and touch have
38579 a dream-like and illusion-like quality.
38580 In the second line the author refutes the true existence of the mind that
38581 experiences feelings. Since feelings arise in conjunction with the mind,
38582 feelings are not perceived by the mind that is simultaneous with them. There
38583 must be a causal relationship between the experienced object and the
38584 experiencing subject. If two entities are substantially distinct and exist
38585 simultaneously, there could be neither a causal relationship nor an identity
38586 relationship between them.
38587 For this reason the author denies that either [intrinsic] relationship could
38588 hold for the feelings and the awareness that is simultaneous with them. Two
38589 mental events that arise in conjunction with each other are not able to
38590 apprehend one another. This holds true for all states of awareness. Thus,
38591 feelings are not observed by the awareness that arises in conjunction with
38592 them and that exists simultaneously with them.
38593 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama
38595 Any happiness there is in the world ultimately turns to pain. Why? Consider
38596 the two sides of a coin: just because what we desire is to be seen on the
38597 front does not mean that dislike won’t soon appear on the back. Likewise,
38598 hope and fear are a single coin, one entity with two faces--on the other side
38599 of a moment in which we hope for more happiness will be our fear of more
38600 suffering. Until attachment is eliminated, we can be certain of having both
38601 hope and fear. As long as there is hope and fear, the delusions of samsara
38602 will be perpetuated and there will be constant suffering. Thus attachment is
38603 the nature of both hope and fear: looking at the ultimate emptiness of the
38604 self-envisioned magical illusion of hope and fear, we should hang loosely in
38606 --Tulku Pema Rigtsal, "The Great Secret of Mind: Special Instructions on the
38607 Nonduality of Dzogchen", translated by Keith Dowman
38609 The feelings of joy and sorrow do not exist from their own side. Although
38610 they exist as conceptual imputations, you cling to them as existing from their
38611 own side. Feelings do not exist by their own intrinsic nature; rather, they
38612 are identified on the basis of contributing circumstances.
38613 Therefore, this analysis is cultivated as an antidote for that [false
38614 conception of intrinsic existence]. The meditative absorption that arises
38615 from the field of discriminative investigation is the food of the
38616 contemplative.—Shantideva
38617 Feelings do not truly exist; they are not found when sought through
38618 analysis; they do not exist independently, but exist by the power of
38619 convention. Thus, the means for overcoming the misconception of the true
38620 existence of feelings is meditation on their lack of such existence. This
38621 entails analyzing the mode of existence of feelings.
38622 Such investigation is an aid to meditative absorption and leads to the
38623 integration of meditative quiescence and insight. That increases the physical
38624 vitality of the contemplative and enhances the power of his [or her] spiritual
38625 practice. Thus it is called the nourishment of the contemplative.
38626 -- H.H. the Dalai Lama, "Transcendent Wisdom".
38628 It is not enough merely to look into the space of happiness or sadness; it is
38629 important to have pure presence constant in that flow. If the power of
38630 meditation is not constant, it is impossible to remain long in the place of
38631 nondual perception. Thoughts that arise intermittently will break the
38632 continuity, and radiating out from this, like ripples on a pond, the poisonous
38633 taste of emotion will arise to obstruct the meditation. As gross thoughts
38634 increase, ripples become rough waves that intensify the emotion. Until subtle
38635 emotions are left behind, we cannot eradicate suffering, so it is crucially
38636 important to sustain the state of meditation. When we gain strong familiarity
38637 by staying in that space for a long time, then no matter what thoughts arise,
38638 whether gross or subtle, they will not be able to dislodge us: upon
38639 recognizing the first thought, whatever thought it may be, in that very
38640 moment, we realize it to be the play of the spontaneous creativity of
38641 dharmakaya. Like a wave falling back into the ocean, the thought vanishes
38642 into the dharmakaya. In that space of naked empty pure presence that is the
38643 view, always cherishing thoughts of the five poisonous emotions and all the
38644 movements of body, speech, and mind, and the acts of eating, sleeping, moving,
38645 and sitting, we are known as the yogins and yoginis who stand guard over the
38646 shifting dharmakaya display. This is the supreme method of sustaining the
38647 essence of meditation. According to Dzogchen teaching, this is unadulterated
38648 by any kind of focus; it is called "the great meditation that is
38650 --Tulku Pema Rigtsal, "The Great Secret of Mind: Special Instructions on the
38651 Nonduality of Dzogchen", translated by Keith Dowman.
38653 Who is more shameless in this world,
38654 Than one who abandons to samsara’s ocean of suffering
38655 All the mothers who have tenderly cared for him since beginningless time
38656 And instead strives toward the peace of a solitary nirvana?
38657 --Shechen Gyaltsap Pema Namgyal
38659 In each of our lives since beginningless time, our mother carried us within
38660 her body for nine months. She took care of us when we were helpless babies;
38661 she gave us food, education, and protection. In return, we feel love and
38662 gratitude for her kindness.
38663 Why not extend our respect and appreciation for our mother to everyone else?
38664 If we take a broader perspective, we can consider that, within the countless
38665 existences we have lived, every being has been our mother at one time or
38666 another. Don’t they also deserve our kindness now? We can extend the same
38667 debt of gratitude that we owe our present mother to all sentient beings. By
38668 doing so, we naturally begin to develop a deep concern for the happiness of
38669 others, and this feeling makes sense to us.
38670 We take the refuge vow not just for our own sake, but also for the sake of
38671 all sentient beings. This is bodhichitta, or the altruistic mind, which aims
38672 for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.
38673 --Shechen Rabjam, "The Great Medicine That Conquers Clinging to the Notion
38674 of Reality: Steps in Meditation on the Enlightened Mind"
38676 Direct perfect enlightenment [with regard to] all aspects,
38677 and abandonment of the stains along with their imprints
38678 [are called] buddha and nirvana respectively.
38679 In truth, these are not two different things.
38682 All aspects of the knowable—all absolute and relative phenomena—are
38683 directly known. Through this knowledge one is immediately and perfectly
38684 enlightened. This is the aspect of realization. All the adventitious
38685 defilements—the two veils along with their remaining imprints—are
38686 abandoned without any exception. This is the aspect of abandonment. These
38687 two qualities have been led to ultimate perfection. They are therefore named
38688 "perfect buddha" ["perfectly awakened and expanded"] from the
38689 viewpoint of the former aspect, and "nirvana" ["gone beyond any torment
38690 and pain"] from the viewpoint of the latter aspect. These two aspects are
38691 contained in one and the same meaning, the meaning of the tathagatagarbha,
38692 whereas a difference only lies in the convention of the different terms. In
38693 the sense of the absolute field of experience of the noble ones’ primordial
38694 wisdom the qualities of realization and abandonment are therefore completely
38695 inseparable and do not exist as two different things.
38696 -- Arya Maitreya, "Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra with
38697 Commentary", with commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodro Thaye
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