Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
The human mind thinks but to complicate. As soon as one problem is solved, that solution introduces new complications, other problems that perhaps did not exist before. That was one of my great troubles when I was younger, I invented many things that were very fine, but always I was getting into complications. I have had to work very hard to overcome that.
Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part fallen into error, the error of textualism, which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost. Everywhere among conservatives we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind.
Gratitude is a virtue disposing the mind to an inward sense and an outward acknowledgment of a benefit received, together with a readiness to return the same, or the like, as occasions of the doer of it shall require, and the abilities of the receiver extend to. He who receives a good turn, should never forget it: he who does one, should never remember it.
You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world. But you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same: Attain! Reach! This is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego.
The big characters who occupy science, especially modern science, are all "off" in fundamental ways. I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. I wanted to pay tribute to that mind.
Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.
Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form.
If you go on a mission to preach the gospel with lightness and frivolity in your hearts, looking for this and that, and to learn what is in the world, and not having your minds riveted - yes, I may say riveted - on the cross of Christ, you will go and return in vain...Let your minds be centered on your missions, and labor earnestly to bring souls to Christ.
Bearing in mind that "the market" is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.
Remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.
We often wonder: "How will I be when I die?" The answer to that is that whatever state of mind we are in now, whatever kind of person we are now, that's what we will be like at the moment of death, if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. . . . Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body.
One of the names of Buddha is TATHAGATA - one who lives in suchness, one who has become free from all the distractions of the mind. And the miracle is that the mind consists only of distraction, so once you are free of all distractions there is no mind left. In the present there is no mind. In the present there is only consciousness, awareness, watchfulness.
D'Alembert was always surrounded by controversy. ... he was the lightning rod which drew sparks from all the foes of the philosophes. ... Unfortunately he carried this... pugnacity into his scientific research and once he had entered a controversy, he argued his cause with vigour and stubbornness. He closed his mind to the possibility that he might be wrong.
God isn't separate from us, because He's the love inside our minds. Every problem, inside and out, is due to a separation from love on someone's part. Thirty-five thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and there's no dearth of food. The question is not 'what kind of God would let children starve?' but rather, 'What kind of people let children starve?'
If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.
One of the primary conditions for suffering is denial. Shutting our mind to pain, whether in ourselves or others, only ensures that it will continue. We must have the strength to face it without turning away. By opening to the pain we see around us with wisdom and compassion, we start to experience the intimate connection of our relationship with all beings.
Thinking leads man to knowledge. He may see and hear, and read and learn, as much as he please; he will never know any of it, except that which he has thought over, that which by thinking he has made the property of his mind. Is it then saying too much if I say, that man by thinking only becomes truly man? Take away thought from man's life, and what remains?
Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.
You don't want to block your thoughts, emotions, and so on; nor do you want to chase after them. If you chase after them, if you let them lead you, they begin to define you, and you lose your ability to respond openly and spontaneously in the present moment. On the other hand, if you attempt to block your thoughts, your mind can become quite tight and small.
Sensibility... is a direct and particular reaction to the separate and individual nature of things. It begins and ends with the sensuous apprehension of colour, texture and formal relations; and if we strive to organize these elements, it is not with the idea of increasing the knowledge of the mind, but rather in order to intensify the pleasure of the senses.
We can program ourselves to be the person we want to be, whatever the subject matter is, live in it by a mental physical program - a system of learning and doing. Studying all the greats in that field and becoming greater. I believe we are powerful, but we don't use our minds to full capacity. Your mind is powerful enough to help you attain whatever you want.
The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere.
In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.
I got a lot of attention when I was really young, and people have it in their minds that I'm still 24 years old. So I made the decision that I had photographed everything I was interested in in New York. New York is a town you have to embrace, but you also need to leave. I may revisit it one day, but for me it's a place to live rather than one to make work in.
God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened, our minds may widen with it; that as our burden is increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to bear it. God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and understanding, uprightness, and godly fear, without which, even in greatest things there is nothing; with which, even in the smallest things there is every thing.
If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in serving his prince, he can devote his life; if in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere - although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.
Visiting a new town is like having a conversation. Places ask questions of you just as searchingly as you question them. And, as in any conversation, it helps to listen with an open mind, so you can be led somewhere unexpected. The more you leave assumptions at home, I've found, the better you can hear whatever it is that a destination is trying to say to you.
The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.
My brother was told that he wouldn't walk, that he wouldn't be able to play drums, that he wouldn't be able to race a car - and he's done all those things. He's defied the odds, defied disability. I look at him and I'm so inspired, by his mentality and by how incredible the body and the mind are. There's really nothing you can't do. My brother has proved that.
We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.
I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.
There are so many messages and lessons that I have been taught that I would want to share with people. Perhaps one that is very present in my mind now is the concept that we are all living on this one tiny planet that we call Earth. It is very small and is not getting any bigger, but the amount of people living on this planet continues to grow at a rapid rate.
Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?
The fungi became, or is for some mysterious reason still to be discovered, a pipeline into a mind, an entelechy, which we can only image as feminine and can only associate somehow to the environment, to the ecosystem. This is the Gaian mind. This is what the goddess really is. The goddess is a network of connective intelligence that is operating on this planet.
It is-or seems to be-a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.
Those who like tranquility and dislike clamor tend to avoid people to seek quietude. They do not know that when one wishes there were no one around, that is egotism; and when the mind is attached to quietude, that is the root of disturbance. How can they reach the state where others and oneself are seen as one, where disturbance and quietude are both forgotten.
I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
The palace started as a single vaulted room and grew in proportion to my despair. It began as an exercise to keep my mind from its melancholy, then it became a dream and a necessity. . . . I built a temple in my head. . . . Its hallways were as lofty as a cathedral, and the arch of each window as supple as a bow. Its corridors were the passages of my own brain.
But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!
Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about.
I used to be able to sit in a chair and for four hours straight in a very focused meditative way be in my own world without ay interruption. And now it's like your brain is getting so trained to check your phone, and there is like a dopamine release every time you get a text whether it's a good or a bad one. I'm really worried about what it's doing to our minds.
Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory, with no-mind there is no defeat. You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong.
It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
When we let our mind relax, a moment will come when we rest without thoughts. This stable state is like an ocean without waves. Within this stability a thought arises. This thought is like a wave which forms on the surface of the ocean. When we leave this thought alone, do nothing with it, not "seizing" it, it subsides by itself into the mind where it came from.
Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away,and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.
I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.
It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.