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#2546 - Sunday, August 6, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
To me, truth
is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything
in between, plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into
one big "thing." This is truth, to me.
- Jack Handey (1949- )
"Deep Thoughts" [1992]
There's no sense in being precise
when you don't even know
what you're talking about.
- John von Neumann
Although we
may be able to behave to some extent differently than we feel,
any successful coercion to feel other than we actually feel--even
a coercion to fit some preferred version of ourselves--will keep
us at a distance from our true selves.
- Robert Langan in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism
They project
this self-created world onto their ideas of past and future and
the present moment. They try to crystallize reality into
permanent shapes and categories. In this way they veil the path
of insight, the spiritual path which reveals the innate clarity,
freedom, and radiant transparency of What Is.
-Prajnaparamita
From "The Pocket Buddha Reader," edited by Anne
Bancroft, 2000
Wisdom
replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness
does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant
feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of
wholeness or completeness. It simply leads to more craving and
more aversion. When we realize in our own experience that
happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not
from seeking pleasurable experience but from opening in the
moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then
frees the energy of compassion within us. Our minds are no longer
bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure.
Compassion becomes the natural response of an open heart.
- Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom
photo by
Robert O'Hearn on Garden Mystics
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of
1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long
time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be
thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's
gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because
someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To
me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower
and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep
thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking,
who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth,
and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully
ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, in Peace Is Every Step
photo by Robert O'Hearn on Garden Mystics
Yuan Tsu:
“The mountains,
rivers, earth, grasses, trees and forests, are always emanating a
subtle, precious light, day and night, always emanating a subtle,
precious sound, demonstrating and expounding to all people the
unsurpassed ultimate truth.
It is just because you miss it right where you are, or avoid it
even as you face it, that you are unable to attain actual use of
it.
This is why Buddhism came into being, with its many expedients
and explanations, with temporary and true, immediate and gradual,
half and full, partial and complete teachings.
The words of the Buddha were intended merely as efficacious
expedients for leading men out of the darkness of worse
ignorance. It was as though one pretended yellow leaves were gold
to stop the flow of a child's tears.”
- Bob O'Hearn on Garden Mystics