#si

Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical. When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#zen #metaphysics

The object of your desire is not an object. ↗

— Jack Gardner

#objects #zen #zen

Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur." If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. ↗

— Horace

#classics #horace #latin #classics

May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! ↗

— Emily Brontë

#death #hate #love #malediction #obsession

In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind,...The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain. ↗

— David Richo

#loss #transitions #paradox

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness. ↗

— Paul Brunton

#crisis #growth #intuition #intuition

One of the terrible fallacies of contemporary psychotherapy is that if people would just say how they felt, a lot of problems could be solved. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#contemporary

I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#prozac-nation #nationalism

And so it goes... ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#classics

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before. ↗