Inspiring Words

A place to discuss casual topics amongst spiritual friends.
Post Reply
User avatar
Kusala
Posts: 1148
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:02 am

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Kusala »

There seems to be a close bond between Native American spirituality and Dharmic traditions...

Image
"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;
He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;
He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "

--------------------------------------------
"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One,
Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation,
Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The Beloved of the Gods, the king Piyadassi, when he had been consecrated twenty years, came in person and reverenced the place where Buddha Sákyamuni was born. He caused a stone enclosure to be made and a stone pillar to be erected.
Ashoka, Rummindei Pillar Inscription (3rd century BCE)
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Human nature is disposed to do good, just as water flows downwards. There is no man that does not show this tendency to goodness.
Mencius, (4th century BCE)
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Silence is the virtue of fools.
Francis Bacon
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.
User avatar
Sam Vara
Site Admin
Posts: 13482
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 5:42 pm
Location: Portsmouth, U.K.

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Sam Vara »

"More than half a century of existence has taught me that most of the wrong and folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot possess their souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves mankind from destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness. Every day the world grows noisier; I, for one, will have no part in that increasing clamour, and, were it only by my silence, I confer a boon on all."

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
denise
Posts: 659
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2014 4:56 pm
Location: U.S.A.

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by denise »

"The truth may be out there but the lies are all in your mind"....Terry Pratchett
User avatar
Sam Vara
Site Admin
Posts: 13482
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 5:42 pm
Location: Portsmouth, U.K.

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Sam Vara »

"Here there is rest at last,
A sweet forgetting of the past;
There is no future here, nor aught
Save this soft healing pause of thought."

Arthur Symons, Silhouettes (1892)
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Once real virtue, manhood, the courage and responsibility of free men, are extinguished in a society, presently security evaporates, too; but that is the lesser loss. There is something better than to know what it is to be guaranteed and protected and pensioned. The better state is to know what it is to be a man.
Russell Kirk
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

He who gave us our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection.
Edmund Burke
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
Isaac Watts
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

We figure to ourselves Intellect as an ethereal sea, which ebbs and flows, which surges and washes hither and thither, carrying its whole virtue into every creek and inlet which it bathes. To this sea every human house has a water front. But this force, creating nature, visiting whom it will and withdrawing from whom it will, making day where it comes and leaving night when it departs, is no fee or property of man or angel. It is as the light, public and entire to each, and on the same terms.
Emerson
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Yet what we really want is not a haste to act, [to practicality], but a certain piety toward
the source of action and knowledge. In fact we have to say that there is a certain beatitude,—I can
call it nothing less,—to which all men are entitled, tasted by them in different degrees,
which is a perfection of their nature, and to which their entrance must be in every way
forwarded. Practical men, though they could lift the globe, cannot arrive at this.
Something very different has to be done,—the availing ourselves of every impulse of
genius, an emanation of the heaven it tells of, and the resisting this conspiracy of men
and material things against the sanitary and legitimate inspirations of the intellectual nature.
Emerson
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Our eating, trading, marrying, and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities,
whilst they are properly symbols only; when we have come, by a divine leading, into
the inner firmament, we are apprised of the unreality or representative character of
what we esteemed final.
Emerson
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The man down in Nature occupies himself in guarding, in feeding, in warming and multiplying his body, and, as long as he knows no more, we justify him; but presently a mystic change is wrought, a new perception opens, and he is made a citizen of the world of souls: he feels what is called duty; he is aware that he owes a higher allegiance to do and live as a good member of this universe. In the measure in which he has this sense he is a man, rises to the universal life. The high intellect is absolutely at one with moral nature.
From Emerson, "The Sovereignty Of Ethics"
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.
User avatar
Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Inspiring Words

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

My belief in the use of a course on philosophy is that the student shall learn to appreciate the miracle of the mind; shall learn its subtle but immense power, or shall begin to learn it; shall come to know that in seeing and in no tradition, he must find what truth is; that he shall see in it the source of all traditions, and shall see each one of them as better or worse statement of its revelations; shall come to trust it entirely, as the only true; to cleave to God against the name of God. When he has once known the oracle he will need no priest.
From Emerson's Natural History Of Intellect
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.
Post Reply