EVIL IS ANY ABSTRACTION that enables you to look at someone and not see the person.
-- Lee Thorn
from "Reconciliation,"
Turning Wheel magazine, Fall 2000
WHENEVER WE GET ANGRY, we should realize that the strength we feel is not the strength of the charioteer in us. It is the strength of the runaway horse. We should immediately try to put the charioteer back in control. If we can do this, we are masters. If we cannot, we are slaves.
-- Ananda Pereira
from "Escape to Reality: Buddhist Essays"
Wheel Publication No. 45/46
ALL THE VARIOUS TYPES of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies soley in the inner awakening which an individidual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. There's no sense in trying to judge it as more or less elevated in relation to other paths to realization.
-- Namkhai Norbu
from "Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State"
Arkana 1989
I CONSIDER MYSELF
a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869-1948)
WE HAVE TO BE GENUINE, which means not having aggression and being true to oneself. In that way, we can build an enlightened society. Enlightened society cannot be built and cannot develop on the level of dreams or concepts. Enlightened society has to be real and good, honest and genuine. A lot of us feel attacked by our own aggression and by our own misery and pain. But none of that particularly presents an obstacle to creating an enlightened society. What we need to begin with, is to develop kindness toward ourselves and then to develop kindness toward others. It sounds very simpleminded, which it is. At the same time, it is very difficult to practice."
-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
from "Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala"
(Shambhala 1999)
VIOLENCE IS ESSENTIALLY WORDLESS, and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down. Any society which is geared for violent action is by that very fact systematically unreasonable and inarticulate. Thought is not encouraged and the exchange of ideas is eschewed as filled with all manner of risk. Words are kept at a minimum, at least as far as their variety and content may be concerned, though they may pour over the armed multitude in cataracts: they are simply organized and inarticulate noise destined to arrest thought and release violence, inhibiting all desire to communicate with the enemy in any other way than by destructive impact.
-- Thomas Merton
from "Ghandi and the One-Eyed Giant," 1964
AS ALBERT EINSTEIN ONCE SAID TO ME: Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing—playing helpless.
-- Fritz Perls, psychologist
OUR DEEDS DETERMINE US
as much as we determine our deeds.
-- George Elliot
WHAT I POINT OUT TO YOU is only that you shouldn’t allow yourselves to be confused by others. Act when you need to, without further hesitation or doubt. People today can’t do this. What is their affliction? Their affliction is in their lack of self-confidence.
If you do not spontaneously trust yourself sufficiently, you will be in a frantic state, pursuing all sorts of objects. And being changed by those objects, unable to be independent.
-- Linji (d.867)
I GOT TO GET MY MIND
in a higher sphere.
-- Barry Hannah
from the novel "Ray"
YOU GET TREMENDOUS RESPECT for human beings when you begin to study their normal capacities.
-- Noam Chomsky
DO YOU HAVE THE PATIENCE to wait till your mind settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
-- Lao-Tzu
WHEN I DESPAIR, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of this always.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
THIS IS WHY THE LORD BUDDHA taught the world, and in particular the world of human beings, who know right and wrong, good and evil; who know how to foster the one and remedy the other; who understand the language of the Dhamma he taught. That is why he taught the human world above and beyond the other worlds: so that we could try to remedy things which are harmful and detrimental, removing them from our thoughts, words and deeds; try to nourish and foster whatever goodness we might already have and give rise to whatever goodness we don't yet have.
-- Ven. Acariya Maha Bowa Nanansampanno
from "Straight From the Heart," Thailand 1987
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