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In Order To…
In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything,
Desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything,
Desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything,
Desire to know nothing.
In order to arrive at that point where you take no pleasure,
you must go by a way that gives no pleasure.
In order to arrive at that point where you know nothing,
you must go by a way you do not know.
In order to arrive at that point where you are free of possessing,
you must go by a way you do not possess.
In order to arrive at that point at which you are nothing,
you must go through that which you are not.
— St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, bk I, ch 13, sect 11
To depend on God alone is our true autonomy.
— Nicolas Gomez Davila (via)
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
— William Blake
There is so much baggage we burden ourselves with over the years that keeps us from seeing things the way they are. Some baggage we carry with us for a single thought, some for years, and some for lifetimes. But there isn’t one piece that isn’t our own creation.
— Bill Porter, Zen Baggage (via)
Did you feel you were tricked
By the future you picked?
— Peter Gabriel, from “Down to Earth”
Fads, Trends, and Principles
When looking at the world, you can divide much of it into Fads, Trends or Principles. A little mantra for this is that we should Play with Fads, Work with Trends, and Live by Principles… in modern times, we are too often Seduced by Fads, Ignorant of Trends, and Resistant to Principles.
— David Zach
Experience
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
— Author unknown, quoted by Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture
The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning:
The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.
— Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Flattery is like chewing gum, enjoy it, but don’t swallow it.
— Author unknown
Many people make the mistake of thinking that, since ego is the root of suffering, the goal of spirituality must be to conquer and destroy ego. They struggle to eliminate ego’s heavy hand but…that struggle is merely another expression of ego. We go around and around, trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we realize that the ambition to improve ourselves is itself the problem. Insights come only when there are gaps in our struggle, only when we stop trying to rid ourselves of thought, when we cease siding with pious, good thoughts against bad, impure thoughts, only when we allow ourselves simply to see the nature of thought.
— Chögyam Trungpa, (Chogyam Trungpa) Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
A man is a slave to anything he cannot part with that is less than himself.
— George MacDonald
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
— 14th century Japanese Zen monk [via]