Quote of the Week #54 - There's Nothing to Get

I think a lot of people come to Zen practice because they want to be free of their suffering. They’ve read about Zen enlightenment and want to attain that. So it’s really sad when I have to tell these people, “You know, actually, you have everything you need. You don’t have to get anything. You just have to get clear in yourself, and then you’ll recognize that it’s already there, that there’s nothing to get.”

--Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, interviewed by Sam Mowe, in Spirituality & Health magazine, January/February 2015 issue

Quote of the Week #53 - Looking Within the Human Heart

I look out into the world, and I see a deep night of unthinkable cruelty and blindness. But when I look within the human heart, I find something of love there, something that cares and shines out into the darkness of our times like a bright beacon. And in the shining of that inner light, I feel the dreams and prayers of all beings. In the shining of that beacon, I feel all of our hopes for a better future. In the shining of our heart lights, we find the strength to do what must be done.

-- John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, Voices of the Food Revolution, No Happy Cows, quoted in Spirituality & Health magazine, Sept/Oct 2014 issue

Quote of the Week #52 - Universal Vision

Above all else, those who are established in the consciousness of one-ness have universal vision. They see the divinity in every human being. Enlightened individuals can discern how each person fits into the greater whole, how each is an essential piece of the puzzle that we call life. They understand that both the saint and the sinner, the virtuous person and the scoundrel, the wise man and the fool, are part of the play of this material existence. They know that all of these actors are part of the wondrous manifestation of God’s Eternal Spirit in this finite physical world.

-- from Living the Life of Jewish Meditation; A Comprehensive Guide to Practice and Experience, by Rabbi Yoel Glick

Quote of the Week #51 - Mystery and Manifestation

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

--Tao Te Ching

Quote of the Week #50 - Being Comfortable with Paradox and Confusion

Enlightened space, the place of unconditional love, cannot be achieved until and unless one is willing to be comfortable with paradox and confusion.

--Ralph Walker

Quote of the Week #49 - The World's Breathing

The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

-- Clarice Lispector

Quote of the Week #48 - My Peace

I thrive on the eccentricity of my imagination. Outwardly, I’m conventional and boring. Inwardly, I can’t keep the wild thoughts from flowing. That’s my peace. In that wildness lives my creative and comforting stillness.

--Thomas Moore, in the article “The Place Beyond Seeking”, Spirituality & Health magazine, January/February 2015 issue

Quote of the Week #47 - Essence is More Than the Sum of the Parts

A biological organism is something more than the sum of its parts. Consider the people you know. If you analyze them according to height, weight, age, where they went to school, and so on, you are engaging in a form of reductionism that will never capture their essence. We intuitively understand this to be true with human beings, but we have been trained not to apply it to every other substance and life-form and the planet.

--Herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner in an interview by Akshay Ahuja in Sun Magazine, December 2014, Issue 468

Quote of the Week #46 - With Your Light

Con tu luz, si se puede.

With your light, it can be done.

--Carlos Santana

Quote of the Week $45 - The Void

During deep sleep, there is the experience of the void; the same void can be experienced during meditation. That void is not empty, but there is a feeling of emptiness. During that time, there is no content, and that is why it is called deep sleep. So sleep is an unconscious state without content; there is no awareness. When one is in the void, he does not know that he is in the void, but once awake, he remembers being in the void. In deep meditation, one is in the void and is aware of it at the time. The meditative state is a fully awakened state.

--Swami Rama, Mandukya Upanishad, Enlightenment Without God, p. 98; OM, The Eternal Witness, Secrets of the Mandukya Upanishad, p. 161

Quotes of the Week #44 - Light of Different Grades/A Luminous Perspective

Light of Different Grades

The soul is light, the mind is light, and the body is light – light of different grades; it is this relation which connects man with the planets and stars.

--Hazrat Inayat Khan

A Luminous Perspective

The perception that dawns on a person to see the world, not as finished, but as in the process of continued becoming, ascending, developing - this changes us from being 'under the sun' to being 'above the sun' from the place where everything takes on new form. The joy of heaven and earth abide in us as on the day they were created.

In this luminous perspective one looks at all the worlds, at the general and human development, at the destiny of each creature, at all the events of all times.

--Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook