Inspirational Quotes

Whether reading a dharma book or listening to a talk sometimes we read or hear a teaching that grabs us by the heart and mind. And sometimes those teachings can give our practice a boost. So in honour of those teachers and those moments I'm starting this thread of some of my favourite dharma quotes. Please feel free to add your own.

Where credit is due: Thanks to AndyW45 and Yadid for inspiring the idea for this thread.

(Edit: removed the quotes in order to post them sperately as Mu did. They read easier that way. Thanks Mumuwu.)

"Read yourself, not books. Truth isn't outside, that's only memory, not wisdom. Memory without wisdom is like an empty thermos bottle - if you don't fill it, it's useless."
- Ajahn Chah

"Enlightenment is an accident and practice makes you accident prone." - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

"Mindfulness is the realization that everything matters." - Chrstina Feldman

Nice. I have at times kept a little text file where I cut and paste quotes (or paragraphs) that seem particularly motivating or true. What grabs me tends to change week to week, month to month. The Feldman quote above reminds me of one I really like, from a teacher at a local Buddhist center I used to go to regularly. Not sure if he made it up or got it somewhere else: "Every moment is equally worthy of mindfulness." Another one - more of an inquiry question - that I have often liked: "What is true right now?" which I heard from Loch Kelly, a teacher in New York. And one my teacher Alan Chapman taught me: "How much effort does it take to be aware?"

My favourite quote, which sums it all up for me!

A HUMAN BEING IS PART OF A WHOLE, CALLED BY US - UNIVERSE -
A PART LIMITED IN TIME AND SPACE.
HE EXPERIENCES HIMSELF, HIS THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AS SOMETHING SEPARATE FROM THE REST......
A KIND OF OPTICAL DELUSION OF HIS CONSCIOUSNESS.
THIS DELUSION IS A KIND OF PRISON FOR US,
RESTRICTING US TO OUR PERSONAL DESIRES AND TO AFFECTION FOR A FEW PERSONS NEAREST TO US,
OUR TASK MUST BE TO FREE OURSELVES FROM THIS PRISON BY WIDENING OUR CIRCLE OF COMPASSION
TO EMBRACE ALL LIVING CREATURES AND THE WHOLE OF NATURE IN ITS BEAUTY.

ALBERT EINSTEIN.

'The human body, at peace with itself, is more precious then the rarest gem. Cherish your body, it is yours this one time only.
The human form is won with great difficulty, it is easy to lose. All worldly things are brief, like lightning in the sky.
This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop; a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being.
Therefore set your aspiration, make use of every day and night to achieve it.'

- Je Tsongkhapa

And, oh, when the hour-glass has run out, the hourglass of time, when the noise of worldliness is silenced, and the restless or the ineffectual busyness comes to an end, when everything is still about thee as it is in eternity -- whether thou wast man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or independent, fortunate or unfortunate, whether thou didst bear the splendor of the crown in a lofty station, or didst bear only the labor and heat of the day in an inconspicuous lot; whether thy name shall be remembered as long as the world stands (and so was remembered as long as the world stood), or without a name thou didst cohere as nameless with the countless multitude; whether the glory which surrounded thee surpassed all human description, or the judgment passed upon thee was the most severe and dishonoring human judgement can pass -- eternity asks of thee and of every individual among these million millions only one question, whether thou hast lived in despair or not, whether thou wast in despair in such a way that thou didst not know thou wast in despair, or in such a way that thou didst hiddenly carry this sickness in thine inward parts as thy gnawing secret, carry it under thy heart as the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that thou, a horror to others, didst rave in despair. And if so, if thou hast lived in despair (whether for the rest thou didst win or lose), then for thee all is lost, eternity knows thee not, it never knew thee, or (even more dreadful) it knows thee as thou art known, it puts thee under arrest by thyself in despair.
Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death.

alt: And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not

"
'The human body, at peace with itself, is more precious then the rarest gem. Cherish your body, it is yours this one time only.
The human form is won with great difficulty, it is easy to lose. All worldly things are brief, like lightning in the sky.
This life you must know as the tiny splash of a raindrop; a thing of beauty that disappears even as it comes into being.
Therefore set your aspiration, make use of every day and night to achieve it.'

- Je Tsongkhapa

"

I really enjoyed this one.

Do not take lightly small misdeeds, believing they can do no harm.
Even a tiny spark can set alight a mountain of hay.

Do not take lightly small good deeds, believing they can hardly help.
For drops of water, one by one, in time can fill a giant pot.

- Patrul Rinpoche

If you can't be disciplined, be clever.

- Shinzen Young

Thanks for starting this thread! I have a "few" to share - I'll try to restrain myself...

'Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief '“ not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.'

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is one that I've been savoring lately given some of the other lively discussions:

"When I see that I am nothing that is wisdom. When I see that I am everything that is love. Between these two my life moves." -Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is from The (Secret) Gospel Of Thomas:

"What you bring forth from within you, will save your life. What you do not bring forth from within you, will destroy you."

Jesus of Nazareth

Not exactly a "Dharma" teaching...but pertinent -

"I don't think much of a man's religion if it makes no difference how he treats his dog."

Abraham Lincoln

I'm feeling this one a lot lately...

"There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned."

Sri Ramana Maharshi

"Nothing with you is wrong" Zen saying

"Bliss - a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of fear. Pay close attention to the most frightening thing you can find... and in waves, a terror like you've never known will wash over you and, if you're lucky, kill you. Ride these out, and it's like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Steadily increasing bliss in every atom."

-- Davis Foster Wallace

Here are two that have been important to me lately:

"Say what you mean. Do what you say." Read that, phrased slightly differently, in Bill Hamilton's "Saints and Psychopaths". I understand it to be a modern way of putting the Buddha's definition of karma: "Intention is kamma. Intending, you do kamma in thought, word, and deed".

"You're fighting it, let go" - channelled by Canela Michelle Meyers: she perceived these words during some energetic opening experience she had. I heard about it on the "Being Ordinary" podcast interview with her.

Cheers,
Florian

Here's one my mother-in-law shared with me:

"Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still yet still moving - that is everything."

Do Hyun Choe

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

"It all begins when we say, 'I'. Everything that follows is illusion."

from "To you" by Sawaki Kôdô Rôshi www.antaiji.dogen-zen.de/eng/kodo-sawaki-to-you.shtml (via DhO)

B

A collection of anatta quotes for Android:

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co...berationunleashed.eq

"When you're going through hell - keep going." - Winston Churchill

a slightly misleading quote from the Alpha Centauri computer game. Yet it keeps saying something to me - like some secret hides in there that i haven't yet unlocked.

And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our
destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS,
just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than
substance?

-- Sister Miriam Godwinson
"We Must Dissent" (fictional)
lots more: en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breath, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment."
EDIT: i get this warm fuzzy contrary feeling from finding my words of wisdom in computer games