Tao Te Ching
Pinot's Palette
Rising Sun World
Throughout history and continuing until our day, forces for corruption, selfishness, ignorance, and aggression have vied against the influences of wisdom, compassion, and awakened mind. We categorized quotes on these two themes as "Setting Sun" and "Rising Sun."
Pessimists may be able to more frequently claim being right but optimists may more often claim happier lives. Politicians and religious leaders frequently use pessimism as a way of demoralizing opposition and discouraging challenges to their rule. Scam artists and business advertising frequently use optimism in similar ways.
The Rising Sun World approach blends clear-sighted realism with unfettered openness grounded in the experience of Basic Goodness and Sacred World. Normally, people think of the placebo effect as a kind of joke, a laughable con that makes us believe that something ineffective and neutral has important powers of healing, and in scientific experiments, a kind of failure. Now though, in the scientific world, there is a greater respect and appreciation for the physical results our brain activity can create, the neurotransmitters, endorphins, and dopamine it uses for therapeutic benefits.
Given the foundational perspective that the rising sun world isn’t anything that we create but rather the basic nature of reality, something we discover; the practice of “seeing all beings as Buddhas, all sounds as Mantra, and all thoughts as Wisdom” becomes—not any kind of self-imposed delusion; but rather, a skillful means to realizing who and what we really are.
Quotes (81)
“The sage honors his inborn, basic goodness rising in influence when sanity reigns in society; enduring protected by silence when the Way does not prevail.”
“Holiness is a word I love to hear. It sounds like wings to me, wings brushing the world, grazing my life.”
“If but one virtue—mutual love—could be made universal, the strong would not make prey of the weak; the many would not plunder the few, the rich would not insult the poor, the noble would not be insolent to the mean; and the deceitful would not impose upon the simple.”
“When the ruler view his ministers as his hands and feet, they regard him as their heart and soul. When he views them as dirt and weeds, they regard him as an enemy and a thief.”
“Give a ceremonial bath to your mind!
Light comes from darkness, predicables from the formless, life springs into existence without a visible source, disappears into infinity.”
“Like small hills that pile up and become a mountain, like streams that flow into one another and become a great river; the good leader unites all and makes a unified effort and a unified nation possible”
“Who then is free? The wise man who commands his passions, who fears not death, nor chain, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished.”
“All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky.” 
“The infinite universe stands always before your eyes.”
“Our very nature is buddha, and apart from this nature there is no other buddha.”
“How miraculous and wondrous, hauling water and carrying firewood!”
“Not holding on to reality, not getting stuck in the void, you are neither holy nor wise, just an ordinary person”
“Out of the ground that is our actual nature, pure pleasure spontaneously arises”
“Bei Zhu was able to contest this case forcefully at court and did not pretend acquiescence. If every matter is handled this way, what cause will there be to worry about misgovernment?”
“If people knew that all creatures are the Way, and children are the mother, they would find the source in everything they meet.”
“Since these enlightened qualities—identical in permeating all buddhas and ordinary beings alike—are already and forever present, they are not obscure by the darkness of flaws and faults.”
“The wise rule the world through selflessness. All things come to them because they are one with all things.”
“This very earth is the Lotus Land of purity,
And this very body is the Body of the Buddha.”
“I do believe we shall continue to growl, to multiply and prosper until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men.”
“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses joy as it flies by
Will live in eternity's sunrise.”
“although the absurd, as a rule, predominates, and it seems impossible that the voice of the individual can ever penetrate through the chorus of the befooling and the befooled, there yet remains to the genuine works of every age, a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence and, as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions”
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”
“Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendor, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.”
“A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.”
“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”
“Up, up, up and up!
Face your game and play it!
The night is past, behold the sun!
The idols fall, the lie is done!”
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
“the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.”
“And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence… be your own source of experience., throw off your discontent, forgive yourself, merge everything you have lived through.”
“To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit, which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction.”
“how full the world is of sounds commonly unheard, and of sights commonly unseen, but in their nature, like the smallest blossoms, of a curious perfection and beauty”
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
“I daily weigh up my whole life and continue in the fiery brilliance of a sacred world far higher than the suicidal ashes of rationality.”
“A New Era has begun, one based on cooperation, equal rights, respect for labor, enlightenment, and on the perception of the beauty of Spiritual Leadership in its myriad manifestations of primal, or psychic energy.”
“When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know that I am standing in front of happiness... Throughout my life this has served me as an infallible sign.”
“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”
“Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.”
“Shelley was an iconoclast, a fighter against the commonplace and against corruption. He was the singer of man's emancipation.”
“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”
“[Recipe for a rising-sun world]: Take twenty sexually satisfied couples and their offspring; add science, intuition and humor in equal quantities; steep in Tantrik Buddhism and simmer indefinitely in an open pan in the open air over a brisk flame of affection.”
“what is this heaven and earth except a vast play of forces, of rays shooting, waves vibrating, colors changing, vapors rising, mists descending, clouds sailing, waters falling, the sun setting, the moon rising, grass growing, and all things aspiring to live in the light of the sun?”
“A person seeking to end violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party… they are only concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
“Good is all that serves life, evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life... and all that enhances life. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it to pieces.”
“We are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth and this is the voice of the earth.”
“If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe.”
“Optimism disregards the present but is a source of inspiration, of vitality, and hope when other have given up. It empowers us with confidence and enables us to claim the future instead of abandoning it to an enemy.”
“The everyday practice is just ordinary life itself.”
“The everyday practice is just ordinary life itself.”
“The everyday practice is just ordinary life itself.”
“adapt the work to the needs of the worker rather than demand that the worker adapt himself to the needs of the work”
“We must convert religion to religion that transcends religion, return philosophy to its original purity, and replace science with a science that rejects modern science.”
“In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follow his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.”
“People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”
“There is one, and only one solution, and we have almost no time to try it. We must turn all our resources to repairing the natural world, and train all our young people to help. They want to; we need to give them this last chance to create forests, soils, clean waters, clean energies, secure communities, stable regions, and to know how to do it from hands-on experience.”
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“Sí, se puede (Spanish for ‘Yes, it is possible’ or, roughly, ‘Yes, one can’)”
“Desire, any sort of gaining idea only distorts and diminishes the natural progression of wisdom into enlightened society.”
“when we say that human beings are basically good, we mean that they have every faculty they need, so that they don’t have to fight with their world.”
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
“Take a sad song and make it better… it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder”
“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
It's been a long cold lonely winter, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces”
“Religion isn't about believing things. It's about what you do. It's ethical alchemy. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”
“The ultimate goal of meditation is to transform yourself to better transform the world.”
“We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives… and need to constantly examine them… that’s the definition of any living vibrant society—constantly questioning those stories. The argument itself is freedom… that's how societies grow.”
“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.”
“always there are people who know how to gather the essence of life and hold it safely, protect it and nurture it until the next seeding”
“We live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences. Fewer of us are killed, assaulted, enslaved, oppressed, or exploited by others... peace and properity are growing and could someday encompass the globe.”
“Two centuries ago a handful of countries, embracing 1% of the world’s people, were democratic; today, more than half of the world’s countries, embracing 55% of its people, are… Secular liberal democracies are the happiest and healthiest places on earth, and the favorite destinations of people who vote with their feet.”
“treating people well in any economy is more cost effective than not… The best companies almost always make it through hard times because the people rally to make sure they do.”
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