Inspiring Words

A place to discuss casual topics amongst spiritual friends.
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aflatun
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by aflatun »

Sight, hearing, smell,
Taste, touch, and cognition—
The experiential domain of these six faculties
Are the objects that are seen and so forth. [III.1]

Sight does indeed not see
Its own identity.
How can something that does not see itself
See anything else either? [III.2]

A solid establishment of sight cannot
Be provided through the example of fire.
With what was, has yet to be, and is being traversed
We have replied to that along with sight. [III.3]

When nothing at all is seen,
Neither is there one that sees.
“Sight is what performs seeing,”
How could this be right? [III.4]

Sight does not see,
Yet nonsight does not see either.
Know that sight itself
Also explains the one that sees. [III.5]

Whether seeing is involved or not,
There is nothing that sees.
Without the one that sees,
How could there be something seen and seeing? [III.6]

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Mabja Jangchub Tsondru. Ornament of Reason: The Great Commentary to Nagarjuna's Root of the Middle Way.
"People often get too quick to say 'there's no self. There's no self...no self...no self.' There is self, there is focal point, its not yours. That's what not self is."

Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
Senses and the Thought-1, 42:53

"Those who create constructs about the Buddha,
Who is beyond construction and without exhaustion,
Are thereby damaged by their constructs;
They fail to see the Thus-Gone.

That which is the nature of the Thus-Gone
Is also the nature of this world.
There is no nature of the Thus-Gone.
There is no nature of the world."

Nagarjuna
MMK XXII.15-16
boundless
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by boundless »

aflatun wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:18 pm When there is nothing left to surrender, nothing left to give, only then can we come to the end of the passage - the ending of consciousness and its personally subjective God. One glimpse of the Godhead, and no one would want God back.

Bernadette Roberts
Wow, very interesting!

Thank you for sharing :twothumbsup:
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aflatun
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by aflatun »

boundless wrote: Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:07 pm
aflatun wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:18 pm When there is nothing left to surrender, nothing left to give, only then can we come to the end of the passage - the ending of consciousness and its personally subjective God. One glimpse of the Godhead, and no one would want God back.

Bernadette Roberts
Wow, very interesting!

Thank you for sharing :twothumbsup:
Ms. Roberts was no joke :heart:
"People often get too quick to say 'there's no self. There's no self...no self...no self.' There is self, there is focal point, its not yours. That's what not self is."

Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
Senses and the Thought-1, 42:53

"Those who create constructs about the Buddha,
Who is beyond construction and without exhaustion,
Are thereby damaged by their constructs;
They fail to see the Thus-Gone.

That which is the nature of the Thus-Gone
Is also the nature of this world.
There is no nature of the Thus-Gone.
There is no nature of the world."

Nagarjuna
MMK XXII.15-16
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The identity of our physical origin makes no appeal to our higher and deeper feelings. Matter, deprived of its soul and spirit, or its divine essence, cannot speak to the human heart. But the identity of the soul and spirit, of real, immortal man, as Theosophy teaches us, once proven and deep-rooted in our hearts, would lead us far on the road of real charity and brotherly good will.

True Occultism or Theosophy is the “Great Renunciation of Self”, unconditionally and absolutely, in
thought as in action. It is Altruism, and it throws him who practises it out of calculation of the ranks of the
living altogether. “Not for himself, but for the world he lives”, as soon as he has pledged himself to the
work ..... he has to become a mere beneficent force in Nature.
Blavatsky
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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Let us divide Meditation into two sorts. First is the meditation practised at a set time, or an occasional one . . . . Second is the meditation of an entire lifetime, that single thread of intention, intentness, and desire running through the years stretching between the cradle and the grave.
William Quan Judge
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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An innate knowledge of the Gods is coexistent with our very essence; and this knowledge is superior to all judgment and deliberate choice, and subsists prior to reason and demonstration. It is also co-united from the beginning with its proper cause, and is consubsistent with the essential tendency of the soul to The Good. If, indeed, it be requisite to speak the truth, the contact with divinity is not knowledge. For knowledge is in a certain respect separated [from its object] by otherness. But prior to the knowledge, which as one thing knows another, is the uniform connexion with divinity, and which is suspended from the Gods, is spontaneous and inseparable from them.
Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, I, iii.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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May all sentient beings move from their homes into pure and splendid Buddha fields, well endowed with good dwellings, the mansions where Noble Ones dwell, the unsurpassed, imperishable abodes of Buddhas. May all sentient beings live relying on the Buddhas. May all sentient beings have limitless visions of all the qualities of the Buddhas. May all sentient beings illuminate the whole universe with unobstructed splendor. May all sentient beings have healthy bodies, attaining the bodies of the Tathāgatas. May all sentient beings be completely free from disturbances, like Bhaiṣajyarāja. May all sentient beings be like efficacious medicine trees, having taken on the task of healing all living things. May all sentient beings destroy all sickness and pain, attaining the health of complete knowing. May all sentient beings become skilled in medicine, able to bring about through practical application of medicine whatever cures they intend to achieve.
From Vajra Flag Sutra, quoted by Santideva in his Training Anthology, tr. by Charles Goodman.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

This common American speech pattern is ugly & dispiriting - thus not inspiring:

1) Using etc, etc. when only one is needed.
2) Audible pauses & fillers - like, you know, um
3) Overuse of colloquialisms.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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Having left behind delight & displeasure, cooled, with no acquisitions — a hero who has conquered all the world, every world: he's what I call a brahman.
Buddha in Dhammapada 418
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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3 For perverse thoughts separate people from God,
and when his power is tested, it exposes the foolish;
4 because wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul,
or dwell in a body enslaved to sin.
5 For a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit,
and will leave foolish thoughts behind,
and will be ashamed at the approach of unrighteousness.
6 For wisdom is a kindly spirit,
but will not free blasphemers from the guilt of their words;
because God is witness of their inmost feelings,
and a true observer of their hearts, and a hearer of their tongues.
Bible - Book of Wisdom ch. one
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

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As a fish when pulled out of water and cast on land throbs and quivers, even so is this mind agitated. Hence should one abandon the realm of Mara.
Buddha Dhammapada 34
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
Ben Franklin from 1737 article
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Against an angry man let him not in return show anger, let him bless when he is cursed.
Laws of Manu, VI, 48
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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confusedlayman
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by confusedlayman »

There are trees for shade, Practice jhana, dont regret later - common advice given to monks during buddha time by buddha
I may be slow learner but im at least learning...
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man.
In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution — at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine II:110
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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