Category: precepts

Thinking it through

… there is no royal road to thought. If one person, A, has an idea, and it is deemed desirable that another person, B, should have it too, there is absolutely no other way than for B to go through substantially the same process of thought that A has gone through …

— Peirce, MS 298 (φαν 34)

Advice

If you want to know the meaning of buddha-nature, observe the conditions of the time.

— Blue Cliff Record (Cleary 2002, 126)

Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

— J. A. Wheeler, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (2000), p. 235.

When you come to a fork in the road— take it.

— Yogi Berra

Always think twice before taking advice.

— gnox

True love

He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none and fears nothing.

— Isha Upanishad (Mascaró/Prabhavananda)

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

— Matthew 19:19 (RSV)

Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.

— Tao Te Ching 13 (Feng/English)

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

— Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.

— Tagore, Stray Birds

Unless our love is made of understanding, it is not true love.

— Thich Nhat Hanh (1998, 83)

Let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

— Ephesians 4:25 (RSV)

Perfect signature

Forget this moment and grow into the next. That is the only way.… So the point on each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice.

— S. Suzuki (2002, 18)

So why, pray, sign anything as long as every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own?

— Finnegans Wake, 115

Leave the letter that never begins to go, find the latter that ever comes to end, written in smoke and blurred by mist and signed of solitude, sealed at night.

— The Restored Finnegans Wake, 260

— Dream. On a nonday I sleep. I dreamt of a somday. On a wonday I shall wake.

— The Restored Finnegans Wake, 373

— As you sing it it’s a study. That letter selfpenned to one’s other, that neverperfect everplanned!
— This nonday diary, this allnights newseryreel.

— The Restored Finnegans Wake, 380

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack          a crack          in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

— Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’