Category Archives: Quotes

Some Purpose That Has Come

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.

–James Hillman, From Little Acorns: A Radical New Psychology

An Unnerving Stranger

Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our “biography,” our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards … It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, how ever boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?

And doesn’t this point to something fundamentally tragic about our way of life? We live under an assumed identity, in an nuerotic fairy tale world with no more reality than the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland. Hypnotized by the thrill of building, we have raised the houses of our lives on sand. This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place. What will happen to us then if we have no clue of any deeper reality?

–Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living & Dying

You Make a Promise

For some reason memory brought up Mary Karr’s second memoir, Cherry, which details her adolescent experiences near Port Arthur, Texas (on the Gulf). At one point she recalls falling into a deep depression around age 13, although like all great writers, she doesn’t call it that; she describes her experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There was one passage that I found wry, sweet, and affirming, and that generated a welling in my eyes — both for the message of the tale and her method of writing. Here it is:
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Hidden Ground

By being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained; the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.

–Thomas Merton, Essential Writings

Every Day

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, everyday, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

–Christopher Morley

The Universal Story

Nacho, who writes Woodmoor Village Zendo, posted a quote by Cheri Huber.

One thing I like about practicing with a group is that we begin to see how impersonal it all is — all our melodramas that can seem so terribly personal. If we spent six months together, we all would know each other’s life stories, and it would be the same story. One person lives in Toledo, another one lives in Shanghai, but it is the same story. Being a human being is pretty much the same for all of us; the differences are far, far less than the similarities. What we think, what we fear, how our emotions arise – fundamentally, we are very much alike. We get caught up in differences in content because that is how we experience ourselves as separate.

Working in a group enables us to see not only how we are all attached to the same things, but how, when we are attached, we suffer, and how, when we come back to the present moment, we cease to suffer. It’s that straightforward.

As we see the sameness of our experience, our suffering becomes less charged: our story is one more story among countless stories. It becomes easier to find the courage to bring our attention back to the present, to allow whatever happens simply to happen.

–Cheri Huber

How relevant this is to me right now! Last night I volunteered at an adult education program with English language learners. My task was to be a conversation partner (actually, a listener) to give them a chance to practice speaking. I conversed with four people and was amazed at some of the similarities among them, and between me and them. Two women came to the U.S. for their husbands’ jobs. They are not permitted to work here, regardless of their professional training (and both had careers in their home countries). I, too, have been displaced from my profession since moving here, and I miss it. I was fascinated as I listened to them describe their daily lives, their comparisons of culture, and what they enjoy and dislike about being here, in the states, now.

Another student illustrated the universality of the heart’s anguish that arises when we move far from home. She is 19 and has lived here three months. Her aunt worked hard for five years and invested no small sum to arrange the paperwork that permitted entrance. She started training in her home country as a nurse, but she came to finish it here. There are better opportunities here for her, if she chooses to stay, and an American education will also open doors back in her home country. She is providing day care and earning a larger salary than she ever did in her home country, and will use her earnings to pay for college here. Yet she struggles with the decision whether to stay. We talked about the advantages of each choice, and when I asked her what pulled at her to return home, she said: “I miss my mother and father.” Oh, yes. Our stories are the same. I shared a little about my recent trip and how hard it is to say good-bye to some things and hello to others. So perhaps she will feel less alone, as I do, knowing that people encounter this everywhere, every day. Whatever her decision, I hope talking about it helped her.

This morning I received an email from a friend arranging a coffee date and learned that a job opportunity she was excited about fell through. We’re in the same position of trying to find our way, following our talent and dreams, and coping with inconstancy. Later I talked with a city library employee to learn more about how I might get a job there. She provided information on this and much more, as well as encouragement. My burden is eased a bit. I am participating in a the same dance as every other human.

To the Edge and Back

A close encounter involving a party, a piece of steak, and Dr. Heimlich’s maneuver.

Then I was on my side, looking at dirt, and glory, glory, glory, I was breathing. Raspy uncertain breaths, but I was breathing! I never realized how lovely dirt could look. And I could hear a voice saying “She looks much less blue” and “She’s pinking up.” More phrases that made sense at the time, but I can’t remember now. I wanted to reassure them, I said “Breathing is good” and I’m fine, I’m fine, and Hi, wow that was scary. One voice said “She’ll feel better if you wipe that dirt off” I said I didn’t mind the dirt at all, it was beautiful dirt, as long as I was breathing. I can’t say that is what actually was heard, but I think I got a few relieved laughs. A man told me he was giving me a face mask with oxygen, coaxing me into accepting it. Completely unnecessary, I jammed it onto my face and sucked in, my chest easing, delicious oxygen. I found my cousin Fran holding my right arm, and she looked so beautiful and caring. I reached out to my left and felt D’s shoe, and we found each other’s hands, and I drank in his worried face. I’m fine, I’m fine, breathing is wonderful, this was scary. Said a bright Hi to the woman in the uniform who came and took my vital signs and asked me questions.

—One Word Is Enough

I’m deeply moved. The whole story is worth a read (click the link above).

On a lighter note, this brought to mind the hilarious Eddie Izzard sketch on Heimlich’s development of the maneuver: “I don’t know, I have swallowed a football and I can’t get it out. Can you perform my maneuver on me, the me maneuver?”

I am all over the emotional map these days.

Even Within Hearts

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Impractical and Immoral

Violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

No Such Thing As Sudden Enlightenment

People talk about sudden enlightenment, a sudden glimpse, satori and all kinds of other spiritual attainments. But those things require the conditions for you to pull yourself together. You need to be in the right frame of work, so to speak, and frame of mind to experience such a thing. So-called sudden enlightenment needs enough preparation for it to be sudden. Otherwise, it can’t be sudden. If you have a sudden accident in your motor car, you have to be driving in your car. Otherwise, you can’t have the accident. That is the whole point: whenever we talk about suddenness and sudden flashes of all kinds, we are talking in terms of conditional suddenness, conditional sudden enlightenment. Sudden enlightenment is dependent on the slow growth of the spiritual process, the growth of commitment, discipline and experience. This takes place not only in the sitting practice of meditation alone, but also through the life-long experience of dealing with your wife, your husband, your kids, your parents, your job, your money, your sex life, your aggressive life, whatever you have. You have to deal with everything you experience in your life, and you have to work with and learn from those situations. Then, the gradual process is almost inevitable, and we could almost say quite safely at this point that scholastically and experientially there is no such thing as sudden enlightenment in Buddhism at all.

–Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche