Sign in with Facebook
Being aware that he had but a short time to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in immortality, he purposed to live each golden moment as eternity—without fear, without hope, with sybaritic gusto.
“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.”
―
―
“Disciples and devotees…what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea!”
―
―
“Bhikkhus, the teaching is merely a vehicle to describe the truth. Don’t mistake it for the truth itself. A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon. The teaching is like a raft that carries you to the other shore. The raft is needed, but the raft is not the other shore. An intelligent person would not carry the raft around on his head after making it across to the other shore. Bhikkhus, my teaching is the raft which can help you cross to the other shore beyond birth and death. Use the raft to cross to the other shore, but don’t hang onto it as your property. Do not
become caught in the teaching. You must be able to let it go.”
― Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha
become caught in the teaching. You must be able to let it go.”
― Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha
“Being aware that he had but a short time to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in immortality, he purposed to live each golden moment as eternity—without fear, without hope, with sybaritic gusto.”
― Stranger in a Strange Land
― Stranger in a Strange Land
“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
― This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
― This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Ram’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ram’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,254 books
|
5,381 friends
230 books
|
22 friends
265 books
|
96 friends
1,259 books
|
498 friends
604 books
|
75 friends
204 books
|
122 friends
77 books
|
423 friends
160 books
|
40 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Ram
Lists liked by Ram