Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Perennial Philosophy

By Aldous Huxley

First put into writing more than 2500 years ago and found in the folklore of primitive people in every part of the world, the term perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis) was coined by Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) and popularized by Leibniz. The main idea represents a perspective that views the world's religious and other wisdom traditions as sharing universal truths and origins. It’s history includes a Renaissance blending of Neo-Platonism and Christianity, attempts to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, Averroes, the Koran, the Cabala and many other sources. Promoted in the early 19th century by the Transcendentalists and an inspiration for Unitarians, the Theosophical Society, the Neo-Vedanta school, and the New Age movement; Huxley describes this symbol as “the self-validating certainty of direct awareness” and this book as an anthology of the commentaries of people through history who have realized this perspective.

Themes

Quotes from Perennial Philosophy

“devotees of the apocalyptic religion of Inevitable Progress [believe] that the Kingdom of Heaven is outside you and in the future.

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“Any confusion of castes, any assumption by one man of another man's vocation and duties of state, is always say the Hindus, a moral evil and a menace to social stability.”

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Themes: Hinduism

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“Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line… that we only have to go on being yet cleverer to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.”

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Themes: Technology

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“In later Buddhist philosophy… language is a main source of the sense of separateness and the blasphemous idea of individual self-sufficiency… the infatuating delusion of ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine.’”

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“It is only by making psychological and moral experiments that we an discover the intimate nature of mind and its potentialities.”

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“It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ that we can truly possess the world in which we live… And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.”

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Themes: Egolessness

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“knowledge of God is possible only to those who 'have ceased to cherish opinions'—even opinions that are as true as it is possible for verbalized abstractions to be”

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Themes: Opinion

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“Maps are symbols, and even the best of them are inaccurate and imperfect. But to anyone who really wants to reach a given destination, a map is indispensably useful”

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“More systematically than any other religion, Buddhism teaches the way to spiritual knowledge in its fullness as well as its heights, in an through the world as well as in an through the soul.”

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Themes: Buddhism

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“No amount of theorizing can tell us as much about divine Reality as can be directly apprehended by a mind in a state of detachment, charity and humility.”

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“Of all social, moral, and spiritual problems, that of power is the most chronically urgent and the most difficult of solution... Growing with every successive satisfaction, the appetite for power can manifest itself indefinitely”

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Themes: Power

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“The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.”

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Themes: Hinduism

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“The great Mohammedan theologian, Al-Ghazzali, had similarly turned from the consideration of truths about God to the contemplation and direct apprehension of Truth-the-Fact, from the purely intellectual discipline of the philosophers to the moral and spiritual discipline of the Sufis.”

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Themes: Discipline

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“The incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of ‘nature worship’ were sealer arts which only arose when Christianity was in decline”

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Themes: Art

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“The organized Christian churches have persisted in the fatal habit of mistaking means for ends… that souls are saved if assent is given to what is locally regard as the correct formula, lost if it is withheld… The over-valuation of words and formulae so fatally characteristic of historic Christianity.”

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“the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms, has a place in every one of the higher religions... treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages”

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“They thought they would improve on Nature by turning dry prairies into wheat fields, and produced deserts; chopped down vast forests to provide the newsprint demanded by that universal literacy which was to make the world safe for democracy, and got wholesale erosion, pulp magazines and the organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist and nationalist propaganda... the free press is everywhere the servant of its advertisers, of a pressure group, or of the government.”

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“This history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arise when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favor of money and political power.”

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“This state of 'no-mind' exists on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation.”

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Themes: Fanaticism

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“To suppose that people can be saved by studying and giving assent to formulae is like supposing that one can get to Timbuctoo by poring over a map of Africa.

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“Unfortunately, familiarity with traditionally hallowed writings tends to breed... a kind of reverential insensibility, a stupor of the spirit, an inward dearness to the meaning of the sacred words.”

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Themes: Ignorance

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Rimé Lineage

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