“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it... As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother.”

— Lavinia 1 via Ursula Le Guin
Prophetess and co-foundrer of the Roman Empire
from Lavinia

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“How wonderful! How wonderful! All things are perfect, exactly as they are.”

— Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth

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“Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.”

— Plato Πλάτων 428 – 348 BCE
from Republic Πολιτεία

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“The Tao begins in the relation between man and woman, ends in the infinite vastness of the universe.”

— Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

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“The Tao is great because there is nothing it does not encompass… It gives without seeking a reward it nourishes all creatures and takes nothing for itself… the nature of the Tao is to be itself. It does not imitate anything else.”

— Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

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“Deluded, we call pearls broken piece of pottery; awakened we see them as pearls.”

— Dazu Huike 487 – 593 CE via Shan Dao
(Dz Huk)

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“Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.”

— Jianzhi Sengcan 鑑智僧璨 529 – 606 CE
(Jiànzhì Sēngcàn)

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“Everything is one's own mind. Not so much as an atom exists outside of mind.”

— Saraha 1

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“Loosed, and it flows through the galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind –
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me.”

— Han Shan 1
(Cold Mountain)

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“Every phenomenon that exists is a creation of thought; therefore I need but empty my mind to disover that all of them are void… all the Buddhas of the whole universe do not in fact possess the smallest perceptible attribute.”

— Huangbo Xiyun 黄檗希运 1
(Huangbo Xiyun, Huángbò Xīyùn, Obaku)

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“Appearances, sound, and phenomena are your own mind. There are no phenomena apart from mind.”

— Niguma 1

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— Kaṅkaṇa ཀངྐ་ཎ་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
(“The Siddha-King”)
Mahasiddha #29
from Masters of Mahamudra

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“Regard everyone you meet as the Buddha.”

— Gampopa སྒམ་པོ་པ། 1079 – 1153 CE via Herbert Guenther
(Sönam Rinchen, Dakpo Rinpoche)
from Jewel Ornament of Liberation

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“Like the moon overwhelming the darkness, from the beginning just beam through all gloom.”

— Hóngzhì Zhēngjué 宏智正覺 1091 – 1157 CE via Dan Leighton
(Shōgaku)
from Cultivating the Emplty Field

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“Lovely snowflakes, they fall nowhere else!”

— Mumon Ekai 無門慧開 1183 – 1260 CE
(Wumen Huikai)
Pioneering pathfinder to the Gateless Gate

from The Gateless Gate, 無門関, 無門關

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“Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”

— Rumi مولانا جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی 1207 – 1283 CE
(Rumi Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī)
from Masnavi مثنوي معنوي‎‎) "Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning”

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“Love, what a strange and wonderful thing that can give me life and deprive me of wits.”

— Gaspara Stampa 1523 – 1554 CE via Jane Tylus
from The Complete Poems

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“The wise support others with warmth, a warmth that requires genuine practice, true application barring insult and attack, bearing all difficulty, hardship, sickness, and calamity, just as the earth supports the mountains.”

— Liu Yiming 刘一明 1734 – 1821 CE via Thomas Cleary, Shan Dao
(Liu I-ming)
from Taoist I Ching, , Zhouyi chanzhen 周易闡真

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“my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing.”

— William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

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“Besides the mind, there is no other Dharma. Therefore, you have no other action to carry out somewhere else.”

— Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol ཞབས་དཀར་ཚོགས་དྲུག་རང་གྲོལ། 1781 – 1851 CE via Erik Pema Kunsang
from Flight of the Garuda

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“Envy is ignorance, imitation is Suicide.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 CE
Champion of individualism

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“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

— Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886 CE

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“All over the sky a sacred voice is calling your name.”

— Black Elk 1863 – 1950 CE
(Heȟáka Sápa)

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“At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.”

— Black Elk 1863 – 1950 CE
(Heȟáka Sápa)

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“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

— W.B. (William Butler) Yeats 1865 – 1939 CE

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“the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.”

— Teilhard de Chardin 1881 – 1955 CE via Bernard Wall
from Divine Milieu

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“the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE
from Zorba the Greek

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“We always want to alter the outer hoping thereby to change the inner…I think we miss this basic thing, which is; the world is me and I am the world.”

— Krishnamurti 1895 – 1986 CE
(Jiddu Krishnamurti)
from Awakening of Intelligence

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“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944 CE

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“Wherever you go, you will find your teacher.”

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

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“All aspects of every phenomenon are completely clear and lucid, the universe is open and unobstructed, everything mutually interpenetrating.”

— Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche དིལ་མགོ་མཁྱེན་བརྩེ། 1910 – 1991 CE
"Mind" incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo
from Maha Ati

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“Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there…”

— Charles Bukowski 1920 – 1994 CE
"Laureate of American lowlife”
from Women

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“God is always present. The question is, how present are we?”

— Reb Zalman 1924 – 2014 CE
from Paradigm Shift

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“Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!”

— Allen Ginsberg 1926 – 1997 CE

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“The Way itself is a follower. Though it is before everything, it follows what is.”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“All things are bound together, all things connect. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls also the children of the earth.”

— Oren Lyons 1930 CE –

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“Wisdom is innate, not distant from ourselves. It’s what we are.”

— Gesshin Myoko Roshi 1931 – 1999 CE
Moon heart miraculous light

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“A stick becomes a flute when it's loved.”

— Yoko Ono 小野 洋子 1933 CE –
(“Ocean Child”)

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“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed.”

— Wendell Berry 1934 CE –

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“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.”

— Pema Chödrön 1936 CE –
(Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)
First American Vajrayana nun

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“Energy is openness and all-pervasiveness. It is constantly expanding. It is decentralized energy, a sense of flood, ocean, outer space, the light of the sun and moon.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

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“the only way to grow up and mature further is through further openness to the world… this is realization of the sacredness of the universe and of yourself.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

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“We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...”

— John Lennon 1940 – 1980 CE

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“The Tao begins in the relation between man and woman, and ends in the infinite vastness of the universe.”

— Stephen Mitchell 1943 CE –
from Second Book of Tao

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“To Chinese Buddhists the Tao was synonymous with the One Mind or Pure Consciousness which they held to be not only the impersonal creator, but the very substance (or rather ‘non-substance’) of the entire universe.”

— Red Pine 1943 CE –
( Bill Porter)
Exceptional translator, cultural diplomat

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