Jake > Jake's Quotes

“Your true Zen nature can never be gained or lost. It is what you are.”
― Huang Po & Thomas E Uharriet, Zen Haiku: Haiku Derived from the Zen Teachings of Huang Po on Mind Transmission

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus

“Here it is--right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.”
― Huang Po

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
― Alan Watts

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“From thought-instant to thought-instant, no FORM; from thought-instant to thought-instant, no ACTIVITY—that is to be a Buddha! If you students of the Way wish to become Buddhas, you need study no doctrines whatever, but learn only how to avoid seeking for and attaching yourselves to anything.”
― Huang Po, The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“Just let your minds become void and environmental phenomena will void themselves; let principles cease to stir and events will cease stirring of themselves.2”
― Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.”
― Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Enlightenment isn't necessarily a clean process. Enlightenment can be filthy, desperate, dangerous. Enlightenment is its own reward, its own punishment. You begin to see so much more. And so much more sees you.”
― Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

“The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”)”
― Thomas Ligotti

“To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“The universe dilated within him, above him. Something like joy stirred in Lancaster’s being, a sublime ecstasy born of terror. His heart felt as if it might burst, might leap from his chest. His cheeks were wet. Drops of blood glittered on his bare arms, the backs of his hands, his thighs, his feet. Black as the blackest pearls come undone from a string, the droplets lifted from him, drifted from him like a slow motion comet tail, and floated toward the road, the fields. For the first time in an age he heard nothing but the night sounds of crickets, his own breath. His skull was quiet.”
― Laird Barron, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

“I wasn't sure I knew any longer what was right and what was wrong. It was a very precarious feeling, but it hinted at a sense of liberation like I'd never experienced. Liberation from the countless little hassles of everyday life. It was as if the border between 'me' and 'not me' was dissolving, leaving me in a sort of slush.
I was going somewhere I'd never been before.”
― Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup: A Novel

“Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“Enlightenment is its own reward, its own punishment. You begin to see so much more. And so much more sees you.”
― Laird Barron

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it - slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone...”
― Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup: A Novel

“there is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings