Summer Alkadhem > Summer's Quotes

“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama, The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“Remember that you must behave as at a banquet. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand, and take a moderate share. Does it pass you? Do not stop it. Is it not come yet? Do not yearn in desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. So with regard to children , wife, office, riches; and you will some time or other be worthy to feast with the gods. And if you do not so much as take the things which are set before you, but are able even to forego them, then you will not only be worthy to feast with the gods, but to rule with them also. For, by thus doing, Diogenes and Heraclitus, and others like them, deservedly became divine, and were so recognized.”
― Epictetus Epictetus, The Enchiridion of Epictetus

“In whatever form phenomena arise, they are
not real. All substantial things are unreal and false, like a mirage. They are not
permanent. They are not changeless. So what is the purpose of my attachment
to these perceptions? What is the purpose of my awe and terror? That which is
non-existent, I am seeing as existent! In reality, all these things that I
perceive are the perceptions of my own mind. Yet, the essential nature of mind is
primordially non-existent, like an illusion. So how is it possible for things to exist
externally, in their own right? Since I have not understood this before, I have
[always] regarded the non-existent as existent. I have regarded the unreal as
real. I have regarded illusions as truth. This is why I have roamed in cyclic
existence for such a long time. Now, yet again, if I do not realise that all these
[phenomena] are illusions, I will continue to roam in cyclic existence,
interminably, and without doubt, I will drown in a swamp of every manner of
suffering. Now, I must realise that all these phenomena are completely
devoid of substantial existence, even for a single instant. In reality, they are
like a dream, like an illusion, like an echo, like a celestial city, like a mirage, like
a reflection, like an optical illusion, like the moon reflected in water. It is
absolutely certain that these phenomena are not truly real, but that they are
false. Through this singular resolve, I will blow apart my apprehension of their
true existence”
― Padmasambhava

“Self-understanding is crucial for understanding another person; self-love is crucial for loving others. When you’ve understood your suffering, you suffer less, and you are capable of understanding another person’s suffering much more easily. When you can recognize the suffering in the other person and see how that suffering came about, compassion arises. You no longer have the desire to punish or blame the other person. You can listen deeply, and when you speak there is compassion and understanding in your speech. The person with whom you’re speaking will feel much more comfortable, because there is understanding and love in your voice.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“One day, after the Buddha and a group of
monks finished eating lunch mindfully together, a farmer, very agitated, came by and asked, "Monks, have you seen my cows? I don't think I can survive so much misfortune." The Buddha asked him, "What happened?" and the man said, "Monks, this morning all twelve of my cows ran away. And this year my whole crop of sesame plants was eaten by insects!" The Buddha said, "Sir, we have not seen your cows. Perhaps they have gone in the other direction." After the farmer went off in that direction, the Buddha turned to his Sangha and said, "Dear friends, do you know you are the happiest people on Earth? You have no cows or sesame plants to lose." We always try to accumulate more and more, and we think these "cows" are essential for our existence.

In fact, they may be the obstacles that prevent us from being happy. Release your cows and become a free person. Release your cows so you can be truly happy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
― Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

“You want to live - but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying - and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Why do I get angry when I am insulted? A: Because you entertain the verity of the insult.”
― Kapil Gupta, Direct Truth: Uncompromising, non-prescriptive Truths to the enduring questions of life

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Once you can communicate with yourself, you'll be able to communicate outwardly with more clarity. The way in is the way out.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Art of Communicating

“A lotus for you. A Buddha to be.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“Where I live in Plum Village, every time you meet someone on your way somewhere, you join your palms and bow to him or to her with respect, because you know that there is a Buddha inside that person. Even if that person isn’t looking or acting like a Buddha, the capacity for love and compassion is in him or her. If you know how to bow with respect and freshness, you can help the Buddha in him or her to come out. To join your palms and bow like this isn’t mere ritual. It’s a practice of awakening.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“The sole cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”
― Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

“Speech:       1. Tell the truth. Don’t lie or turn the truth upside down.       2. Don’t exaggerate.       3. Be consistent. This means no double-talk: speaking about something in one way to one person and in an opposite way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my back, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”
― Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is not intelligible save to the like. Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all time, become Eternity; then you will understand God. Believe that nothing is impossible for you, think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every living being. Mount higher than the highest height; descend lower than the lowest depth. Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead, beyond death. If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God.”
― Giordano Bruno

“So you see that you cannot depend upon anybody. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you - your relationship with others and with the world - there is nothing else. When you realize this, it either brings great despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that you and nobody else is responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, what you feel, how you act, all self-pity goes.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known