X-Git-Url: https://feistymeow.org/gitweb/?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=sidebyside;f=infobase%2Ffortunes.dat;h=2aa8d9d72486dd0f30384753d8af05795af589f5;hb=881d0d16dcf1db7df42f2bfc3b5981c2982a38dc;hp=4c4fff49f1195815f960a28b18aaf87d99e4f873;hpb=d39f8f4150eb32cd1d0060db29fd735a756872c9;p=feisty_meow.git diff --git a/infobase/fortunes.dat b/infobase/fortunes.dat index 4c4fff49..2aa8d9d7 100644 --- a/infobase/fortunes.dat +++ b/infobase/fortunes.dat @@ -42195,5 +42195,140 @@ Discover wisdom Accept constant change. -##--#Source: "Moon journeying through clouds", Zen Buddhist chants, sayings and recitations from the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. + -- Source: "Moon journeying through clouds", Zen Buddhist chants, sayings and recitations from the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom. +~ +never forget that the truth is always larger than you know. + -- fred t. hamster +~ +Roger Babson's Ten Commandments of Investing + ++ Keep speculation and investments separate. ++ Don't be fooled by a name. ++ Be wary of new promotions. ++ Give due consideration to market ability. ++ Don't buy without proper facts. ++ Safeguard purchases through diversification. ++ Don't try to diversify by buying different securities of the same company. ++ Small companies should be carefully scrutinized. ++ Buy adequate security, not super abundance. ++ Choose your dealer and buy outright (i.e., don't buy on margin.) +~ +Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection. -- Mark Twain +~ +All of us cherish helpful and loving friends, and wise, compassionate +spiritual mentors are especially important to us to progress on the path. +Being separated from the people we value or having an important relationship +not work out the way we had hoped is painful, yet it is a common occurrence in +cyclic existence. Because we ourselves, others, and all the conditioned +things around us are impermanent by nature, whatever comes together must also +separate. + -- Thubten Chodron, "Good Karma: How to Create the Causes of Happiness and + Avoid the Causes of Suffering", published by Shambhala Publications +~ +There are no limits to our imagination, +or if there are, +we can only imagine them. + -- Fred T. Hamster +~ +When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say +to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." + -- Fred Rogers +~ +Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a +triple. + -- Barry Switzer +~ + First, let’s take a look at how physical and emotional health supports +our spiritual health. What is spiritual health? One way that the Buddhist +teachings define spiritual health is having a sense of interconnection with +other living beings on the planet, as well as respect for the natural +environment. Recognition of this interconnection with others is developed as +we call to mind the things that all beings have in common: the wish to attain +happiness and avoid suffering. We can reflect on this by thinking that all of +the wonderful things we want for ourselves, others want them too. Just so, +all of the painful things we would like to avoid, others wish to avoid those +things too. + However, spiritual health is far more than a mere sense of connection. +True spiritual health arises from discovering love and compassion for all +sentient beings. In doing so, we cut through our own painful feelings of +anger, resentment, and strong desire, which cause us so much personal +unhappiness and sorrow. By bringing ourselves back into harmonious +relationship with friends, family, and the larger community, even those we may +dislike, we ourselves become spiritually rich. + -- Anyen Rinpoche & Allison Choying Zangmo, "The Tibetan Yoga of Breath: + Breathing Practices for Healing the Body and Cultivating Wisdom", + published by Shambhala Publications +~ +Our worries may zoom around the state of the world. “What happens if the +economy plummets? If the ozone layer keeps decreasing? If we have more +anthrax attacks? If terrorists take over the country? If we lose our civil +liberties fighting terrorism?” Here, our creative writing ability leads to +fantastic scenarios that may or may not happen, but regardless, we manage to +work ourselves into a state of unprecedented despair. This, in turn, often +leads to raging anger at the powers that be or alternatively, to apathy, +simply thinking that since everything is rotten, there’s no use doing +anything. In either case, we’re so gloomy that we neglect to act +constructively in ways that remedy difficulties and create goodness. + -- Thubten Chodron, in "Taming the Mind", published by Shambhala Publications +~ +It really seemed like every band built on the one just prior to it, so that as +each day moved on, the acts just generated more and more energy and awesome +music, storing it up in a celestial battery. the peak of it all for me was +the phish show on the last night, which was so high energy and saturated with +fun and healthy vibes that I felt like "i never need to feel fear again". +that feeling lasted for days after the concert was over. hopefully memory of +that thought never fades. + -- fred t. hamster, after lockn 2016 +~ +The dawn of the Great Eastern Sun is based on actual experience. It is not a +concept. You realize that you can uplift yourself, that you can appreciate +your existence as a human being. Whether you are a gas station attendant or +the president of your country doesn’t really matter. When you experience +the goodness of being alive, you can respect who and what you are. You need +not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook, +or papers to be filed. Fundamentally, in spite of all those responsibilities, +you begin to feel that it is a worthwhile situation to be a human being, to be +alive, not afraid of death. + -- Chögyam Trungpa, "Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior", published + by Shambhala Publications +~ + These deities share a freedom from passion and experience more and more +subtle states of mind in each higher level. In the first level, the freedom +from passion is experienced; in the second, freedom from discursive thought; +in the third, the elimination of gross joy in meditation, leaving only sublime +delight; in the fourth, freedom even from delight. Above these are the four +levels of the realm of formlessness, whose inhabitants have transcended form +altogether and have no bodies or forms at all. Here deities experience +successively even more subtle states of mind: the infinity of space, the +infinity of consciousness, “nothing at all,” and neither perception nor +nonperception. + These states can certainly appear enormously attractive from our human +point of view. In fact, they correspond to what many think religious practice +is all about—attaining some kind of heaven or some sort of tranquillity or +bliss. But from the Buddhist viewpoint, the sublimity even of these states is +not a worthy ultimate goal. One may ask, “What can possibly be wrong with +such attainments?” + It is important to remember that the divine states of the desire realm, +the form realm, and the formless realm, like all the other states known in the +other five realms, are still part of samsara and subject to karma, +impermanence, and suffering. In spite of the relative exaltation of their way +of being, there comes a day for every god when he or she begins to feel the +signs of impending death. The intoxication of the godly state gives way to +sadness, pain, fear, and finally terror, and this is followed by death and +rebirth in a lower realm. + In addition, the gods have one enormous liability: precisely because of +their power, longevity, and intoxication, they are unable to hear the dharma +with its teachings about duhkha, the first noble truth. They, like the +inhabitants of all the other nonhuman realms, are victims of their karma and +are unable to practice a spiritual path to gain liberation. + -- Reginald A. Ray, in "Indestructible Truth", published by Shambhala Publications +~ +The Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes, "I like to walk alone on country paths, +rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the +earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such +moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually +consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real +miracle is to walk on earth... a miracle we don’t even recognize." + -- from Jan Chozen Bays, MD, "How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures + in Mindfulness", published by Shambhala Publications