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10 years 11 months ago - 10 years 11 months ago #11199 by Russell
Random Dharma was created by Russell
I love reading fiction and it seems like some of the best words of wisdom come out of nowhere when I am reading works of fiction instead of Dharma books, anyone have any good quotes? I use the highlight feature in my kindle all the time. I'll start:

Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

"...what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way to show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet it is all we have."


Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

"He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

“You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”


Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

“We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.”

“Look up at the stars and you're gone.”


I have many more...just getting started.
Last edit: 10 years 11 months ago by Russell.

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10 years 11 months ago #11204 by Chris Marti
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Cue The Matrix...

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10 years 11 months ago #11207 by Ona Kiser
Replied by Ona Kiser on topic Random Dharma
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

-Winnie the Pooh

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10 years 11 months ago #11208 by Chris Marti
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Cue "The Tao of Pooh"

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10 years 11 months ago - 10 years 11 months ago #11209 by Chris Marti
Replied by Chris Marti on topic Random Dharma
Sorry, I'll play this thing right from now on :evil:
Last edit: 10 years 11 months ago by Chris Marti.

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10 years 11 months ago #11211 by Ona Kiser
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Serious Chris Iz Serious :P

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10 years 11 months ago #11217 by Shoshin
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Great topic Russell, I love quotes and aphorisms. Here are a couple of quotes from The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham:

“...he said something that I've never forgotten, because it horrified me; he said that the world isn't a creation, for out of nothing nothing comes; but a manifestation of the eternal nature; well, that was all right, but then he added that evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good.” - p. 107-108

' “I'm afraid I don't quite understand,” I said.
' ”I'm not surprised,” he answered, with a little smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes, as though he were gently mocking me. “A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?” - p. 261

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10 years 11 months ago #11218 by Shoshin
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Here's a favorite from the Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien:

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf speaking to Frodo

The last sentence comes to mind whenever I hear people exercising themselves over "the problem of evil".

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10 years 11 months ago #11231 by Russell
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Cormac McCarthy - The Road:

“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.”

"You have to carry the fire.
I don't know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I dont know where it is.
Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it."


Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake

“He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.”

“Immortality is a concept. If you take ‘mortality’ as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then ‘immortality’ is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal."

“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”

“Not real can tell us about real.”


Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

“Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!”

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10 years 10 months ago #11428 by Russell
Replied by Russell on topic Random Dharma
Was actually reading a tech blog today and the author posted this:

"Maybe you can remember the first time you lay on the grass at night, looked up at the stars, and realized you weren't looking up at all, because there is no "up", and you were suddenly aware of being attached to the surface of a tiny sphere rolling through a vast emptiness."


In a freaking article about a game system. :woohoo:

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10 years 10 months ago - 10 years 10 months ago #11440 by Russell
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Reading another David Mitchell Book called 'Ghostwritten' - From last night:

"Grudges are demons that gnaw away at your bone marrow. Time was already doing a good enough job of that. Buddha has often told me that forgiveness is vital to life. I agree. Not for the well-being of the forgiven, though, but for the well-being of the forgiver."

Last edit: 10 years 10 months ago by Russell.

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10 years 10 months ago #11656 by Shoshin
Replied by Shoshin on topic Random Dharma
A blast from the past:

"Love is a rose but you better not pick it,
only grows when it's on the vine.
Handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it,
lose your love when you say the word 'mine'."


-Neil Young

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10 years 10 months ago #11657 by Shoshin
Replied by Shoshin on topic Random Dharma
“The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.”


- Walt Whitman
Excerpt from I sing the Body Electric

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10 years 10 months ago - 10 years 10 months ago #11658 by Shoshin
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“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self righteous should rush.”


- Yann Martel
from Life of Pi
Last edit: 10 years 10 months ago by Shoshin. Reason: spelling

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10 years 10 months ago #11696 by Tom Otvos
Replied by Tom Otvos on topic Random Dharma
This is less about dharma, I suppose, and more about the WTF things that happen. I happened to see a short clip of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the AllThingsD conference a bunch of years ago. In the clip, he refers to a Beatles lyric, which I did not recognize because I am not a big Beatles guy:

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.


He was referring to their respective aging. Then this morning, as my clock radio went off, that very same song was playing, which I only recognized in my half-awake state when that particular line was sung. Weird serendipity, and weird that my brain found those lyrics while I was still dozing.

The interview (advance to 2:55):



The song:


-- tomo

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10 years 9 months ago #12370 by Kate Gowen
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"Buddha Was a Good Ol' Boy"

!

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10 years 9 months ago - 10 years 9 months ago #12371 by every3rdthought
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"Nothing is more serious than another human being ... Which of us is brave enough to look love in the face?"

- Gun Outfit, "Another Human Being" (off their album Hard Coming Down which came out a few months ago and is on high high rotation at the moment)
Last edit: 10 years 9 months ago by every3rdthought.

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10 years 9 months ago #12381 by Kate Gowen

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10 years 9 months ago #12521 by every3rdthought
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More music, inspired by thinking about wanting and not-wanting on my thread recently... a bit defiant for what I'm aiming for at the moment but just beautiful

desire, you are not the maker nor the master of me

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10 years 9 months ago #12537 by Russell
Replied by Russell on topic Random Dharma
More quotes I highlighted from David Mitchell's Ghostwritten:

“I pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.”

“Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present.”

“I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.”

"Therefore, does chance or fate control our lives? Well, the answer is as relative as time. If you're in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you're reading, it's fate all the way."

"Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesized."

"A gecko appeared on the screen. It's tongue flickered like electricity. Hello, tiny lifeform of star compost, did you know that your lizardly life, too, is billiarded this way and that by quantum scissors, papers, and stones? That your particles exist in a time-froth of little bridges and holes forever going back and around and under itself? That the universe is the shape of a donut, and that if you had a powerful enough telescope you would see the tip of your tail? Do you care?"

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10 years 9 months ago #12538 by Andy
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Russell wrote: More quotes I highlighted from David Mitchell's Ghostwritten:

“I pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.”


This reminds me of a short piece by non-dual teacher Bob Ferguson, called "Fisherman, Hiker, Driver: Who Am I ?"

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10 years 9 months ago #12923 by every3rdthought
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The Caretaker - 'Libet's Delay,' from An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

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10 years 9 months ago #12932 by Russell
Replied by Russell on topic Random Dharma
Was listening to Howard Stern interviewing Jerry Seinfeld this morning and Jerry said: "The blessing in life is when you find the torture you are comfortable with"

I got a kick out of that one.

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10 years 9 months ago #12938 by Russell
Replied by Russell on topic Random Dharma
OK, another one of my favorite books, 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski

This is a crazy book, never read anything like it but it felt like the whole awakening process to me, other can interpret it very differently.

A lot of the pages look like this:



Anyways, some good ones:

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”

“For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.”

“I am not a fool. I am wise. I will run from my fear, I will outdistance my fear, then I will hide from my fear, I will wait for my fear, I will let my fear run past me, then I will follow my fear, I will track my fear until I can approach my fear in complete silence, then I will strike at my fear, I will charge my fear, I will grab hold of my fear, I will sink my fingers into my fear, then I will bite my fear, I will tear the throat of my fear, I will break the neck of my fear, I will drink the blood of my fear, I will gulp the flesh of my fear, I will crush the bones of my fear, and I will savor my fear, I will swallow my fear, all of it, and then I will digest my fear until I can do nothing else but shit out my fear. In this way I will be made stronger”

“Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”


Lots more but I'll stop.

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10 years 9 months ago #12951 by every3rdthought
Replied by every3rdthought on topic Random Dharma
Oh I LOVE House of Leaves but I read it before I got into practice. I've been thinking of revisiting it for a while... Also, did you know there's an album based around it, Poe's Haunted? I don't actually love it, sadly, but interesting still...

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