“Danger arises when a man feels secure in his positon. Destruction threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a man has put everything in order.”

— Fu Xi 伏羲 1 via Richard Wilhelm, Hexagram 12
Emperor/shaman progenitor of civilization symbol
from I Ching

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“To go one thousand li without fear, go through unpeopled ground. To attack and surely take it, attack where they do not defend. To defend and surely hold firm, defend where they will surely attack.”

— Sun Tzu 孙武 544 – 496 BCE
(Sun Zi)
HIstory's supreme strategist

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“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever.”

— Socrates 469 – 399 BCE
One of the most powerful influences on Western Civilization

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“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”

— Socrates 469 – 399 BCE
One of the most powerful influences on Western Civilization

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“What a fool you are! You have the greatest treasure in the world inside you and yet you go around asking other people for help…”

— Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

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“There is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.”

— Epicurus ɛpɪˈkjɔːrəs 341 – 270 BCE
Western Buddha
from On Nature

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“Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.”

— Horace 65 – 8 BCE

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“Not death or pain is to be feared, only the fear of death or pain.”

— Epictetus Ἐπίκτητος 55 – 135 CE
from Discourses of Epictetus, Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί

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“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later.”

— Epictetus Ἐπίκτητος 55 – 135 CE
from Discourses of Epictetus, Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί

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“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”

— Marcus Aurelius 121 – 219 CE

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“The Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all.”

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

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“When the world is filled with seeming sin, all mishaps should be diverted into the path of bodhi.”

— Atisha ཨ་ཏི་ཤ་མར་མེ་མཛད་དཔལ་ཡེ་ཤེས་ 980 – 1054 CE
(Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna)

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“Among ten people, three seek life because they hate death, three seek death because they hate life, and three live as if they were dead.”

— Wang Anshi 王安石 1021 – 1086 CE

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“We grow afraid but look again… an unreal, reflected image is all we find.”

— Shyalipa ཥྱ་ལི་པ། 1000 – 1100 CE via Keith Dowman
(Śyalipa, "The Jackal-Yogin")
Mahasiddha #21
from Masters of Mahamudra

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“Like a rainbow dissolving into the sky, birth, life and death have no hold”

— Kālapa ཀཱ་ལ་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
("The Handsome Madman")
Mahasiddha #27
from Masters of Mahamudra

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“Then what should I fear? I have never become less from dying.”

— 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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“Once we forget form, our self becomes empty. Once our self is empty, nothing can harm us. Once there is no self, there is no life. How then could there be any death?”

— Deqing 1546 – 1623 CE
(Te-Ch’ing)

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“Everyone fears death and knows they will die but still continue to fool themselves into thinking there is plenty of time.”

— Karma Chagme Rinpoche I ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་རཱ་ག་ཨ་སྱས། 1613 – 1678 CE via Shan Dao

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“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”

— Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778 CE

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“The poor have little,
Beggars none;
The rich too much,
Enough not one.”

— Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790 CE
from Poor Richard's Almanack

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“When a thief came to rob Ryokan, there was nothing to steel so Royokan offered him his clothes. When the thief slunk away, Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. ‘Poor fellow,’ he mused, ‘I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.’”

— Ryokan 良寛大愚 1758 – 1758 CE via Paul Reps
(Ryōkan Taigu,“The Great Fool”)
from Shasekishū (Sand and Pebbles)

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“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

— Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

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“Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894 CE

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“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

— Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965 CE

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“as long as one is in any way held by the domination of cupiditas, the veil is not lifted, and the heights of consciousness, empty of content and free of illusion, are not reached, nor can any trick nor any deceit bring it about.”

— Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist

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“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

— Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE
from The Prophet

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“How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE

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“We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.”

— T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965 CE

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“If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.”

— Masanobu Fukuoka 福岡 正信 1913 – 2008 CE via Korn
from One Straw Revolution

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“It was more than dignity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“I read this poem as saying that if you can take life as it comes, it doesn’t come at you as your enemy.”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“He lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never really lived.”

— Dalai Lama XIV Tenzin Gyatso 1935 CE –

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“Everybody is a caricature of themselves… as well as everything having its own basic fullness. You represent yourself not by name but by being. So there is a sense of completion.”

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

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“I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.”

— John Lennon 1940 – 1980 CE

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