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MEN NEVER DO EVIL so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

-- Pascal

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LIKE ALL OTHER PROBLEMS, the ailments of society arise from causes, and these can be traced in a sequence leading from the manifestations to the underlying roots. The conclusion drawn from this inquiry is highly significant: the causes of social disharmony lie in the human mind and all stem ultimately from craving. Thus craving turns out to be the origin of suffering in more ways than one. It brings about not only continued rebirth in samsara with its personal pain and sorrow, but also the cupidity, selfishness, violence and immorality that wreck all attempts to establish peace, cooperation, and social stabilty.

-- Bikkhu Bodhi
from "The Great Discourse on Causation:
The Mahnidanna Sutta and its Commentaries" p. 10
(Buddhist Publication Society, 1984-85)

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IN BUDDHIST TERMINOLOGY, all thought, action and speech is said to be rooted in one of two types of consciousness — kusala or akusala, wholesome or unwholesome.

-- H. Saddhatia
from "The Buddha's Way"

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IT IS MENTAL VOLITION, O monks, that I call kamma. Having willed, one acts through body, speech or mind.

-- The Buddha
Anguttaranikaya, III, p. 415

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WHEN WE TALK ABOUT gaining the perfect wisdom of a buddha, we should not think that we need to create qualities in ourselves that are not there already, and aquire them from somewhere outside of us. Rather, we should see perfect buddha wisdom as a potential that is being realized.

The defilements of the mind hamper the natural expression of that potential which is inherent in consciousness. It is as if the capacity for unobstructed knowledge is there in our mind, but the defilements obscure and hinder it from being fully developed and expressed.

-- H.H. The Dalai Lama
from "The Four Noble Truths" (Thorsons 1977)

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THERE IS NO SITUATION that cannot be ennobled by achievement or enduring.

-- Goethe

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OUR GREATEST GLORY is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

-- Confucius

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YOU CANNOT PREVENT the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.

-- Swedish proverb

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DEATH IS REAL,
comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.

-- One of the 'Four Reminders'

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-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

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NEVER FORGET HOW SWIFTLY this life will be over, like a flash of summer lightning or the wave of a hand. Now that you have the opportunity to practice dharma, do not waste a single moment on anything else.

-- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from Tricycle, Fall 1997

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DOKYO, ALSO KOWN AS SHOJU RONIN, lived most of his life in a hut and refused to join the large monasteries. He saw in zazen, Zen meditation, the essence of the Zen way and used to deal harshly with believers who sought him out to hear so-called Zen doctrine. He would occasionally even draw his sword on them and drive them away, in keeping perhaps with his samurai origin.

-- from "Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Hailu Poets on the Verge of Death"
(Charles E. Tuttle Co.)

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THERE IS A WAY between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes.

-- Rumi
from "The Essential Rumi"
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
(Harper SanFrancisco, 1995)

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ALTHOUGH THE WORLD is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

-- Helen Keller

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YOU WANT TO KNOW how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair

-- Elie Wiesel

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BROKEN AND BROKEN
again on the sea, the moon
so easily mends

-- Chosu

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HOW GLADLY you follow
The words of the awakened.

How quietly, how surely
You approach the happy country,
The heart of stillness.

-- The Buddha
from No. 25 ("The Seeker")
in Thomas Byrom's verse rendering
of "The Dhammapada" (Shambhala, 1993)

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