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Mary Overton

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Average rating: 3.86 · 7 ratings · 1 review · 1 distinct work

The Wine of Astonishment: Stories

3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1997

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Mary is Currently Reading

Mary Overton is currently reading

Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind

by Michelle Carr

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Dec 21, 2025 04:58AM

Mary Overton is currently reading

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

by Thich Nhat Hanh

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read in December 2010

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Mary Overton said: " "Let us look at a wave on the surface of the ocean. A wave is a wave. It has a beginning and an end. It might be high or low, more or less beautiful than other waves. But a wave is, at the same time, water. Water is the ground of being of the wave. I "Let us look at a wave on the surface of the ocean. A wave is a wave. It has a beginning and an end. It might be high or low, more or less beautiful than other waves. But a wave is, at the same time, water. Water is the ground of being of the wave. It is important that a wave knows that she is water, and not just a wave. We, too, live our life as an individual. We believe that we have a beginning and an end, that we are separate from other living beings. That is why the Buddha advised us to look more deeply in order to touch the ground of our being which is nirvana. Everything bears deeply the nature of nirvana. Everything has been 'nirvanized' That is the teaching of the LOTUS SUTRA. We look deeply, and we touch the suchness of reality. Looking deeply into a pebble, flower, or our own joy, peace, sorrow, or fear, we touch the ultimate dimension of our being, and that dimension will reveal to us that the ground of our being has the nature of no-birth and no-death.

"We don't have to ATTAIN nirvana, because we ourselves are always dwelling in nirvana. The wave does not have to look for water. It already is water." pg. 211

"...The Buddha said that in the depth of our store consciousness, alayavijnana, there are all kinds of positive and negative seeds - seeds of anger, delusion, and fear, and seeds of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness. Many of these seeds have been transmitted to us by our ancestors. We should learn to recognize every one of these seeds in us in order to practice diligence. If it is a negative seed, the seed of an affliction like anger, fear, jealousy, or discrimination, we should refrain from allowing it to be watered in our daily life. Every time such a seed is watered, it will manifest on the upper level of our consciousness, and we will suffer and make the people we love suffer at the same time. The practice is to refrain from watering the negative seeds in us....

"We also try to recognize the positive seeds that are in us and to live our daily life in a way that we can touch them and help them manifest on the upper level of our consciousness, manovijnana. Every time they manifest and stay on the upper level of our consciousness for a while, they grow stronger. If the positive seeds in us grow stronger day and night, we will be happy and we will make the people we love happy. Recognize the positive seeds in the person you love, water those seeds, and he will become much happier.... Whenever you have time, please water the seeds that need to be watered. It is a wonderful and very pleasant practice of diligence, and it brings immediate results.

"Imagine a circle divided in two. Below is the store consciousness and above is mind consciousness. All mental formations lie deep down in our store consciousness. Every seed in our store consciousness can be touched and manifests itself on the upper level, namely our mind consciousness. Continued practice means trying our best not to allow the negative seeds in our store consciousness to be touched in our daily life, not to give them a chance to manifest themselves. The seeds of anger, discrimination, despair, jealousy, and craving are all there. We do what we can to prevent them from coming up. We tell the people we live with, 'If you truly love me, don't water these seeds in me. It is not good for my health or yours.' We have to recognized the kinds of seeds not to be watered. If it happens that a negative seed, the seed of an affliction, is watered and manifests itself, we do everything in our power to embrace it with our mindfulness and help it return to where it came from. The longer such seeds stay in our mind consciousness, the stronger they become." pg. 206-207

Wheel of Becoming ...more "

Dec 20, 2018 06:38AM · see review

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From Le Guin's "Afterword": "The setting, story, and characters of this novel are based on the last six books of Vergil's epic poem the AENEID. ".... "My desire was to follow Vergil, not to improve or reprove him. But Lavinia herself sometimes insisted ...more
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Never, ever in my long reading life have I run into a novel where a major character is introduced during an orgasm. Truly groundbreaking. "Across the East River, in a loft in Chelsea, Lana Bingham cried out, soaring on the long, rolling orgasm. As cry ...more
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Mary’s Quotes

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

tags: humor

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“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

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