Gems of Wisdom

[Skull]

"In the future, it will come to pass that although no

spiritual enjoyment or joy, or even the desire for renunciation

exists, those who defame one another, the scolds and troublemakers,

the debased, the vilifiers, will listen to this wisdom

mudra and will say, ‘I will become a Buddha!’ Those who live as

householders experience thousands of miseries; when they see

the actions that cause desire, patience will emerge. So even

those who are slaves to emotionality will say: ‘I will become a

Buddha!’ In their dreams they will see the Buddhas and will be

comforted. But growing proud, they will say, with no good

reason, ‘There is no doubt I am enlightened!’ Yet once again, they

will listen to the words of this Sutra, which will give them joy

and comfort, and they will attain enlightenment before too

long. Having listened to and truly heard this way of truth, they

will be w ithout grasping and without attachment like the wind

of the reaches of space. There are many such beings."

From the Bhadrakalpika Sutra, vol. 1:67

 

[Skull]

There is a wonderful French proverb which runs thus: Tout com-prendre, c'est tout pardonner: To understand everything is to forgive all. To understand all the hid causes, the results, the past destiny, the present strength, the temptation, the virtue, whatever it may be — to understand all this is to have divine knowledge, and it means to forgive. It is a wonderful proverb and must have been uttered, I venture to say, first by some human being who had a touch of illumination.

G. de Purucker "The Heritage of Man is Man Himself."

 

[Skull]

“It is unfortunate to have been born at a time when the force of human character was ebbing, when the tide of material activity and material knowledge was rising so high as to drown all moral independence,” says Peter Alden in The Last Puritan. [by George Santayana]

Excerpt From: George A. Panichas. Essential Russell Kirk.

 

[onefour1]

"Be still, and know that I am God"

Psalms 46:10

 

[Skull]

As a general rule, and save in certain cases
due to karman, as for instance in certain cases of those who die in
childhood or in early youth, the Reincarnating Ego is born into a
different race when it returns to earth, into a different time, into
different surroundings, and other environments.

Purucker

 

[Skull]

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Pascal

 

[The Professor]

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Pascal

For all your posts, many thanks.

 

[Skull]

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Pascal

For all your posts, many thanks.

You are most welcome!

 

[Skull]

Do your eyes expect a reward for seeing, or your feet for walking? That is what they were made for. By doing what they were designed to do, they are performing their function. Whereas humans were made to help others. And when we do help others we are doing what we were designed for. We perform our function.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations, end of book nine

 

[Skull]

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

[Skull]

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

 

[Skull]

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them.

But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.

And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions, the company become aware that the thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all become wiser than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct.

The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man’s name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in vain.

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.

From the famous 1841 Essay by Emerson on the "Oversoul."

 

[Skull]

The philosophy of six thousand years has not
searched the chambers and magazines of the soul.
In its experiments there has always remained, in
the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve.
Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being
is descending into us from we know not whence.
The most exact calculator has no prescience that
somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next
moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge
a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I
watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see
not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see
that I am a pensioner; not a cause but a surprised
spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and
look up and put myself in the attitude of reception,
but from some alien energy the visions come.


Emerson The Over-Soul

 

[Skull]

It is not a matter of achieving Bodhi or attaining Buddhahood. Rather, you yourself become aware that your own mind has always been fully enlightened.

Li Tungxuan

 

[Skull]

The deluded claim that the false is true, but they fail to see the truth in the falsity; the enlightened see that the false is not true, and so they are able to see the truth in falsity.

Fa Zang

 

[Skull]

Evil appears as good in the minds of those the gods lead to destruction.

Sophocles

 

[Skull]

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

—Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present

 

[Skull]

Humans themselves are makers of themselves - by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; for mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance.

James Allen

 

[Skull]

The revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance
represents a complete break with the past, is always
modeled on some image of the lost Paradise, of a legendary
Golden Age. The classless Communist society, according to
Marx and Engels, was to be a revival, at the end of the dialectical
spiral, of the primitive Communist society which stood
at its beginning. Thus all true faith involves a revolt against
the believer's social environment, and the projection into the
future of an ideal derived from the remote past. All Utopias
are fed from the sources of mythology; the social engineer's
blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text.

Arthur Koestler, in The God That Failed

 

[BreezeWood]

The God That Failed

- certainly in getting their message out to the public ...