Rodger Kamenetz > Quotes

“We can’t choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.”
― Rodger Kamenetz

“According to the Buddhist tradition,” he began, “there is no sort of conversion or missionary work. It is not good to ask someone to follow a different faith. Yet, because there are so many different mental dispositions, one religion simply cannot serve, cannot satisfy all people.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“The other day, lying in bed, I felt my heart beating for the first time in a long while. I realised how little I live in my body, how much in my mind.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, Terra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine

“The preservation of Buddhism is preserving your own internal heart. If Tibetans became terrorists they might win back Tibet, but Buddhism would be destroyed by that attitude.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“Because, in our society, to be obsessed with a vision about how to make a better automobile makes you a genius, but to be obsessed with a vision about the nature of reality makes you a nut.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“There is a danger in comparing an idealized version of a new religion to the very gritty and lived version of one’s birth religion.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“a haimish group—a warm group of Jewish homies.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“Everyone wants a revelation, but no one wants to be revealed.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul – Reclaiming the Intensely Meaningful Power of Nightly Visions

“Our ancient sources of wisdom call on human beings to rise to their highest capacity and behave in extraordinarily open and generous ways to one another, under difficult circumstances to transcend differences and create understanding across all barriers of convention and fear. This wisdom is fragile as our environment is fragile, threatened by an overwhelming material culture. I believe in a spiritual ecology. In today’s world, Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism and other wisdom traditions are endangered species.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus

“So," Art [Green] said, "it's hard to do Judaism and travel light. Judaism is not mostly about letting go, but mostly about attachment to God, through attachment to tradition, attachment to forms.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today's Jewish Mystical Masters

“The ancient sages said, ‘He who is angry—it is the same as if he worshiped idols.’ They also said, ‘One who yields to anger—if he is a sage, his wisdom departs from him; if he is a prophet, his prophetic gift departs from him.’ Those of an irate disposition—their life is not worth living.”
― Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus