2018 & 2019
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December 22, 2019
A questioner at Ramana Maharshi’s Ashram at Arunachala (Hill of Wisdom) expressed concern about losing his accustomed self-reliance on account of his hearing becoming defective.
Ramana Maharshi responded, “You were not self-reliant; you were ego-reliant. It is good that ego-reliance is banished, and that you become truly Self-reliant.”
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
Talk 151, 31st January, 1936.
Decemner 15, 2019
I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream.
Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Decemner 8, 2019
Not everything that can be counted counts,
and not everything that counts can be counted.
William Bruce Cameron
sometimes misattributed to Albert Einstein
November 30, 2019
Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
in Questions sur les miracles
November 24, 2019
Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, – the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.
November 17, 2019
I am increasingly persuaded that there is a dimension of the human organism, and indeed of all creation, that we do not understand, and will not explore because old-fashioned science says it can’t happen.
In The Bishop in The West Wing by Andrew M. Greeley
November 9, 2019
What matters it what went before or after?In A Certain Justice by PD James
November 3, 2019
A man has to live with himself,
and he should see to it that he always has good company.
October 27, 2019
Jesus said to his disciples, “In truth I say to
you …”
– he often used to say, “In truth I say to you” –
“… those among you who sorrow most in misfortune
are the most attached to this world.”
The Muslim Jesus
translated by Tarif Khalidi
October 20, 2019
I was wondering why people seem to read Scripture
a lot more as they get older.
Then, it dawned on me: We’re cramming for the final exam.
TZF’s dear friend, Arlo Hansen
October 13, 2019
The mind is not a thing.
Neither is it a place.
The mind is thought.
Constant, mostly uncontrolled,
often random, thought.
Why do we permit it?
SCN
October 6, 2019
I am in the world but not concerned with the world.
I am going through the marketplace, but not as a purchaser.
Kabir
quoted by Neem Karoli Baba
in Miracle of Love
September 29, 2019
That which you see now is an illusion: it is truly naught but the Self, but perceived by the mind which has not been purified and which has not realized the Truth. There is nothing outside the Self: just as the tree is in the seed, all this is already in the mind, and the mind sees it as if it is outside.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami Venkatesananda
September 22, 2019
Politicians and diapers must be changed often,
and for the same reason.
September 15, 2019
When asked if he could say the Creed,
Bishop James Albert Pike replied,
“No, but I can sing it.”
Source unknown, but attributed to
Bishop Pike
by a dear friend of The Zoo Fence here
September 1, 2019
All this is nothing more
than the play of ignorance and delusion.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami Venkatesananda
August 25, 2012
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of Ribena, they lay down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.
“Watson, look up, and tell me what you see,” he said.
Watson replied, “I see millions and millions of stars.”
“What does that tell you?” Holmes asked.
Watson pondered for a bit, and then answered. “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. And what does it tell you, Holmes?”
Sherlock Holmes was silent for a moment; then, he said, “Someone has stolen our tent.”
Original source unknown
August 18, 2019
You do not have to be talking about God
to be talking about God.
SCN
August 11, 2019
I mean that [it is] foolish [to say] that you bear all the cares, burdens, and responsibilities of life. The Lord of the universe bears the whole burden. You only imagine that you do. You can hand over all your burdens to Him. Whatever you have to do, you will do made an instrument for doing it at the right time. Do not imagine that you cannot be it unless you have the desire to. It is not desire that gives you the necessary strength. The strength is the Lord’s.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
in
The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi by Arthur Osborne
August 4, 2019
I never see a thing without seeing God before it.
Abu Bakr
Companion of Muhammad
in The Niche of Lights
July 28, 2019
God is the Light in which I see.
A Course in Miracles
Workbook for Students, #44
July 21, 2019
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
You’ve Got To Be Taught
Oscar Hammerstein II
also
here and here
July 14, 2019
Words are heavy.
If birds talked,
they couldn’t fly.
Northern Exposure
television series
July 7, 2019
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare —
Don’t mix them!
…
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!
Hafiz
in The Gift – Poems by Hafiz
June 30, 2019
It is clear that so drastic a process of unselfing is not likely to take place without stress. It is the negative aspect of “deification” in which the self, deprived of “perception, knowledge, will, work, self-seeking” – the I, the Me, the Mine – loses itself, denies itself, unforms itself, drawing “ever nearer” to the One, till “nothing is to be seen but a ground which rests upon itself” – the ground of the soul, in which it has union with God.
June 23, 2019
To get any meaning out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition. We must take up the study of the superconscious state just like any other science. On reason we must lay our foundation. We must follow reason as far as it leads, and when reason fails, reason itself will show us the way to the highest plane.
Swami Vivekananda
in The Yogas and Other Works
June 16, 2019
One spring, our vegetable garden seemed nearly overrun by slugs, and fervently we prayed for relief. A few days later, our problem appeared only to have worsened when we discovered a colony of beetles taking up residence beneath a rotting log by the lettuce patch. Certain of the damage they could surely wreak, we did them in, each and every one.
Later, we looked up the species in an insect guide, and determined they had been ground beetles. Actually, a particular kind of ground beetle. One which feeds on slugs!
Prayers are always answered, but not necessarily as we imagine and hope. In some ways, the greater part of praying for help is being open and receptive to unexpected solutions.
SCN
June 9, 2019
The world is not what it appears in the eyes of the ignorant.
What is real in the eyes of the enlightened is indescribable.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami Venkatesananda
June 2, 2019
All the paths take you to the purification of the mind. The impure mind is opaque to truth. The pure mind is transparent; truth can be seen through it easily and clearly.
May 19, 2019
It’s origin is unknown.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami Venkatesananda
One day in Paradise, Adam sees Eve for the first time.
“I am Adam,” he says to her.
“Yes, I know,” Eve replies, “so am I.”
“Are you real?” he asks. “No,” she replies.
“Am I real?” he asks. Again, she responds, “No.”
At that, they both laugh.
Neither of them fully understands. Alone and apparently separate, they cannot fully understand anything. But they know it does not matter; in Paradise, nothing matters.
Presently, Adam and Eve embrace. Gently, they kiss, tentatively at first; then, as each gives way to the experience of sensation, with increasing ardor.
Soon, like adolescents, they are hopelessly distracted. They forget who they are, where they are, and how they got there.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Stefan Nadzo
in In The Beginning
May 4, 2019
Yesterday evening, a chartered Boeing 737 skidded into the St. John’s river in Jacksonville, Florida with 143 persons aboard. Remarkably, there were no fatalisties.
An NBC-TV reporter, talking on-air with a member of Jacksonville’s fire and rescue team, used the word “miraculous” to describe the outcome.
The Jacksonville official responded, “Oh, I don’t take that kind of approach to anything. I’m much more of a secular kind of guy.”
Too cool.
April 28, 2019
“Call no man father” means,
you are who and what you think your parents are.
Matthew 23 & SCN
April 21, 2019
The reading of the word of God should be performed in solitude, in order that the whole mind of the reader might be plunged into the truths of the Holy Scripture, and that from this he might receive warmth, which in solitude produces tears; from these a man is wholly warmed, and is filled with spiritual gifts, which rejoice the mind and heart more than any word.
April 14, 2019
In the vision of the knowers of truth,
there is nothing other than the pure and infinite consciousness,
and the objective universe is completely and totally non-existent.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
April 7, 2019
Miss Brinklow, however, was not yet to be sidetracked.
“What do the lamas do?” she continued.
“They devote themselves, madam, to contemplation and to the pursuit of wisdom.”
“But that isn’t doing anything.”
“Then, madam, they do nothing.”
March 31, 2019
When will I be able to look upon
the diverse activities of people with the playfulness of a child?
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
March 24, 2019
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
March 17, 2019
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
March 10, 2019
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
General of The Army Omar Bradley
March 3, 2019
You have knowledge of the scriptures,
yet you are not at rest
within yourself as a stone rests in the ocean.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
February 17, 2019
Silence your thoughts,
Discard your memories,
Release your expectations.
What remains is indefinable, intangible and unspeakable:
Your very Self.
Seek it tirelessly.
SCN
February 10, 2019
Knock, And He’ll open the door.
Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun.
Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.
February 3, 2019
If we want things to stay as they are,
things will have to change.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
in The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)
January 27, 2019
Riddle Me This:
How is it that there is God,
but there is not a God?
SCN
January 20, 2019
To set up what you like against what you dislike,
this is the disease of the mind.
Buddhist saying
in
Letters of Aldous Huxley
January 13, 2019
Sri Nisargadatta: The inner Guru is not committed to non-violence.
He can be quite violent at times, to the point of destroying the obtuse or perverted
personality
Questioner: Has one to be afraid of his own self?
Sri Nisargadatta: Not afraid, for the self means well. But it must be taken seriously. It calls
for attention and obedience; when it is not listened to, it turns from
persuasion to compulsion
January 6, 2019
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Yoda
in “Star Wars”
December 30, 2018
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image
when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
December 23, 2018
Such intellectual knowledge is not knowledge. Unattachment to wife, husband, son, daughter, and house, equanimity in pleasure and pain, love of solitude, being firmly established in self-knowledge — this is knowledge, all else is ignorance. Only when the egosense is thinned out does this self-knowledge arise.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
December 16, 2018
No human thing is of serious importance.
December 9, 2018
For where the instrument of thinking mind
Is joined to strength and malice, man’s defense
Cannot avail to meet those powers combined.
Dante Alighieri
in The Divine Comedy, Hell, ix:35-37
translated by Dorothy Sayers
December 2, 2018
All the means we take to reach God are true:
it is only like trying to find the pole-star
by locating it through the stars that are around it.
Swami Vivekananda
in The Yogas and Other Works
November 25, 2018
Remain at peace within yourself,
seeing the one infinite being in all.
You will achieve the impossible
if you are able to remain firm
in your knowledge of the truth,
and if you engage yourself
in appropriate action
in a life characterized
by effortless experiencing
of the natural course of events.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami Venkatesananda
November 18, 2018
I am amazed at the seeker of purity
who when it’s time to be polished
complains of rough handling. …
That harshness isn’t toward you,
but toward the harmful qualities within you.
When someone beats a rug,
the blows are not against the rug,
but against the dust in it.
Jalaluddin Rumi
in The Rumi Collection
edited by Kabir Helminski
November 11, 2018
Those persons who worship Me, meditating on their identity with Me, and ever devoted to Me — to them I carry what they lack and for them I preserve what they already have.
Bhagavad Gita
9:22
translated by Swami
Nikhilananda
November 4, 2018
Realizing that everything is the one Self, one should worship the Self in this spirit. One should look with equal vision upon that which is pleasant and beautiful through and through, and that which is unendurably unpleasant.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
October 28, 2018
Do you love your Creator?
Love your fellow beings first.
The Sayings of Muhammad
in Wisdom
of The East Series
October 21, 2018
There is no need to run outside
For better seeing,
Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide
At the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart and see
If he is wise who takes each turn.
The way to do is to be.
The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu
Translated by Witter
Bynner
October 14, 2018
I do not understand anything I see in this
room,
… on this street, from this window, in this place.
(Whatever you see is a proper subject for applying the idea.)
A Course in
Miracles
Workbook for Students, Lesson 3
October 7, 2018
When I sent man out in creation, I gave him two paths by which he could retrace his steps to Me — discrimnination and right action. Both take man on the right course toward salvation. But when the devotee is nearing ultimate freedom, then wisdom and meditative action merge into one inner highway to Self-realization, the culmination of which is union of the soul with Spirit.
The
Bhagavad Gita, 3:iii
translated & interpreted by Paramahansa Yogananda
September 30, 2018
This Self can be attained by a hundred ways
and means;
yet, when it is attained, nothing has been attained.
It is the Supreme Self; yet it is nothing.
Vasistha’s
Yoga
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
September 23, 2018
That nothing save the light of truth allays
Our intellect’s disquiet I now see plain —
God’s truth, which holds all truth within its rays.
The Divine Comedy (Paradise) iv:124-126
September 16, 2018
Just give full attention to what in you is crude and primitive, unreasonable and unkind, altogether childish, and you will ripen. It is the maturity of heart and mind that is essential. It comes effortlessly when the main obstacle is removed — inattention, unawareness. In awareness you grow.
September 9, 2018
The absolute cannot be realized or
experienced by another;
only the absolute can realize itself.
The
Concise Yoga Vasistha
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
September 2, 2018
This entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom, even as an ornament is not different from gold. Just as an ornament potentially exists in gold, the object exists in the subject. But when this notion of the object is firmly rejected and removed from the subject, then consciousness alone exists without even an apparent or potential objectivity. When this is realized, evils like attraction and repulsion, love and hate, cease in one’s heart, as do false notions of the world, you, I, etc. Even the tendency to objectify ceases. This is freedom.
The
Concise Yoga Vasistha
translated by Swami
Venkatesananda
August 26, 2018
The ego is not what you think of yourself.
The ego is that you think of
yourself;
that you believe there is a yourself separate and distinct from
other selves.
That is the ego.
SCN
August 19, 2018
Burn, O Good Lord, the thorns of my
transgressions,
cleanse my soul, and purify all my thoughts.
Ever shelter, guard, and keep me in your love.
August 12, 2018
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
August 5, 2018
By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states, I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confidence, and trust.
July 29, 2018
What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
July 22, 2018
The Teachings need to be studied, reflected on, and practiced in order to realise their true meaning. They are “discourses on the right way of living” or contemplations on the “way things are.” They are not meant to be “sacred scriptures” which tell us what to believe. One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the Truth beyond words.
Adapted from the Foreword to The Long Discourses of The Buddha
July 15, 2018
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs; we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.
July 8, 2018
It is surprising what a man can do when he
has to,
and how little most men will do when they don’t have to.
July 1, 2018
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
June 24, 2018
When you are not thinking about who you
are,
who are you?
Sonja
Margulies in Meetings
with Remarkable Women
by Lenore
Friedman
June 17, 2018
At a recent ecumenical meeting with spokespeople from every world religion, including Native Americans, … everyone concurred that the three requisites for spiritual evolution in human beings were gratitude and humility and humor.
Meetings
with Remarkable Women
by Lenore Friedman
June 10, 2018
Life is short,
but it comes with a blessing:
It is thy turn to meet God.
Sant Kirpal Singh
in Love
Everyone
by Parvati
Markus
June 3, 2018
A rule of thumb:
If you come across a form of address for God that makes you
uncomfortable,
it is probably time for you to adopt it.
SCN
May 27, 2018
Put no limits on
(your perception of)
God.
SCN
May 20, 2018
Whatever the problem,
the solution is spiritual.
SCN
in “There Is A Way” (out of print)
May 13, 2018
Therefore, we must always remember that external practices have value only as they help to develop internal purity. It is better to have internal purity alone, when minute attention to external observances is not practicable. But woe unto the man, and woe unto the nation, that forgets the real, internal, spiritual essentials of religion, and mechanically clutches with death-like grasp all external forms, and never lets them go! The forms have value only so far as they are the expressions of life within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy.
Swami
Vivekananda
in The
Yogas and Other Works
May 6, 2018
There is no path that does not lead to Him.
A Course in
Miracles
Text – Chapter 31
April 28, 2018
In whatever way people are devoted to Me,
in that measure I manifest Myself to them.
All men [and women], in every manner of seeking Me,
pursue a path to Me.
Bhagavad Gita,
IV.11
trans. Paramahansa Yogananda
April 22, 2018
It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
April 15, 2018
On the morning of the Eighth Day,
after enjoying a day of Divine Repose,
now imagining post-Edenic humanity,
and perceiving the predictable,
God created the eraser.
SCN
April 8, 2018
God is free for the taking.
Movie Navigating The Heart
April 1, 2018
Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
The Four-Way Test
of Rotary International
by Herbert J. Taylor
March 25, 2018
Silence is the unbearable repartee.
G. K.
Chesterton
attributing to Charles
Dickens
March 18, 2018
Seek not from God
anything other than Himself,
and attach not the power
of the heart’s intention
to anything other than Him.
And if everything in the universe
should be spread before you,
receive it graciously –
but do not stop there.
Persist in your quest.
March 11, 2018
Ten percent of those performing every human
endeavor
– whatever, wherever –
are artists.
The rest are mechanics.
The difference is, the artists are being what they do,
the mechanics are doing what they do.
Happiness lies in finding the artist in ourselves,
and being that.
So it seems to me.
SCN
March 4, 2018
Ramana:
All the activities that the body is to go through are determined
when it comes into existence. The only freedom you have is to turn
your mind inward, and renounce activities there.
Questioner: Are only the
important events in a man’s life predetermined, or are trifling
acts also, such as taking a cup of water or moving from one part
of the room to another?
Ramana: Everything is
predetermined.
Sri Ramana
Maharshi
from The
Teachings of Ramana Maharshi by Arthur Osborne
February 25, 2018
A man is likely to mind his own business
when it is worth minding.
When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs
by minding other people’s business.
February 18, 2018
Choices have consequences.
SCN
February 11, 2018
I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.
February 4, 2018
When you dance with the devil, the devil
don’t change.
The devil changes you.
Attributed variously,
including the movie “Eight Millimeter”
January 28, 2018
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
Henry
David Thoreau
in “Walden” (Chapter 1)
January 21, 2018
Let there be light.
Bereishit – Genesis
January 14, 2018
Now here was a lesson. If you think that you or I have something, we cannot give. You must think of it as God’s–that only He can give. You are only the ladle, the leaf on which it is being given.
Dada Mukerjee
in By His Grace
sharing the wisdom of Neem Karoli Baba
January 7, 2018
If you give your life to God,
then it is no longer yours.
SCN
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