#eli

First of all, Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and the world. It looks at things objectively (yathābhūtam). It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness. ↗

— Walpola Rahula

#buddhism #middle-path #middle-way #objectivism #objectivity

The soul is a mystery. Scientists and Theologians constantly butt heads on the soul’s definitive and can’t come to grips with its purpose and actual existence. Yet, the basic framework taught in a High School physics class helps with an explanation of the latter - the existence of the soul. ↗

— H.D. Rennerfeldt

#science-vs-religion #souls #religion

How we need another soul to cling to. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#companionship #loneliness #need

Yes, I want to tell her, and maybe I even do say that, but I am crying because whatever gifts, the pieces of good buried inside and under so much that I feel is bad, is wrong, is twisted, are less clear than the ability to hit a ball with a bat and break the scoreboard or do a triple pirouette in the air on ice. My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world. My gifts are unspecific. I am an artist manque, someone full of crazy ideas and grandiloquent needs and even a little bit of happiness, but with no particular way to express it. I am like the title character in the film Betty Blue, the woman who is so full of...so full of...so full of something or other-it is unclear what, but a definite energy that can't find its medium-who pokes her own eyes out with a scissors and is murdered by her lover in an insane asylum in the end. She is, and I am becoming, a complete waste. So I cry at the end of The Natural. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#life

I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. ↗

— Henry Rollins

#loneliness #bad

For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another. ↗

— Criss Jami

#christianity #fearless #flaws #honesty #humble

religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right... but i am about the process that takes you to the living answer... it will change you from the inside. there are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. ↗

— Wm. Paul Young

#the-shack #change

The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#self-pity #alone

Love and kindness are the hammer and chisel that gently chip through barriers and long-held beliefs to reveal the magnificent soul contained within every human. ↗

— Molly Friedenfeld

#belief #chisel #hammer #human #inspiration

We know the end is overrated, we'll become the walls we raise. We don't believe enough, but we still care. ↗

— Matchbox

#ending #inspiration #loss #strength #inspirational