Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Awakened Awareness

What separates humans from animals? From birds and insects? From the biological point of view, not much. All are subject to and mainly controlled by inner genetic traits and external conditioning by family, culture, indoctrination, and media. Awakened Awareness may be the only major difference. Animals and insects adapt, change, and evolve; but, those changes seem mainly instinctual and conditioned. As far as we know, only humans have the possibility of a conscious shift and choice based on awareness. And though unfortunately rare, this re-direction seems to be increasing on the planetary scale foreshadowing an evolutionary leap.

Without awareness, we have no freedom, no choice, no ability to participate in evolution’s inspiring march of progress.

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Quotes (110)

“As the smith melts fragments of metal, fusing the into a single ingot, dissolve the fragments of your knowledge in the vast expanse of your mind's nature.”

Dharmapa thos pa’i shes rab bya ba 1
“The Perpetual Student” — Mahasiddha #36

“Wake, wake up! See with your own eyes what all these years you longed for!”

Homer 1
Primogenitor of Western culture
from Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

“Not wanting anything to be different, we see the inner essence.”

Lao Tzu 老子 1 via Shan Dao, chapter #1
(Lǎozǐ)
from Tao Te Ching 道德经 Dàodéjīng

“To accept destiny is to face life with open eyes; not to accept destiny is to face death blindfolded.”

Lao Tzu 老子 1 via Witter Bynner
(Lǎozǐ)
from Way of Life According to Lao Tzu

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“Awareness floats and drifts... making no distinction between going his way and going that way.”

Lao Tzu 老子 1 via Shan Dao, chapter #34
(Lǎozǐ)
from Tao Te Ching 道德经 Dàodéjīng

“To see things as they really are means to transcend what are nothing but perceptions of your own mind.”

Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE via Red Pine
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth
from Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

“When we realize the universal oneness, there will be nothing we do not know. But if we do not realize the oneness, there will be nothing that we truly know.”

Wenzi 文子 1 via Shan Dao
(Wénzǐ)
"Authentic Presence of Pervading Mystery.”
from The Wenzi, Wénzǐ 文子

“to be aware and to be are the same.”

Parmenides 540 – 450 BCE
Grandfather of Western philosophy
from On Nature

“A non-religious person when awake would make others sleep. Therefore his sleeping is good. A religious person when awake will awaken others. Therefore his awakening is good.”

Mahavira 540 – 468 BCE
(Vardhamāna)
"the great hero”

“Creatures of a day! What is anyone? What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow is our mortal being. But when there comes to men a gleam of splendor given of heaven, then rests on them a light of glory and blessed are their days.”

Pindar Πίνδαρος 522 – 443 BCE
Archetype of poetry

“We cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by suffering unless we realize the nature of things.”

Epicurus ɛpɪˈkjɔːrəs 341 – 270 BCE
Western Buddha
from On Nature

3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

“Amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic.”

Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history

57. Wu Wei

“The kingdom of God comes not with observation… the kingdom of God is within you”

Jesus 3 BCE – 30 CE via Luke
from New Testament Διαθήκη

“Open your eyes: See things for what they really are... It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”

Epictetus Ἐπίκτητος 55 – 135 CE via Sharon Lebell
from Discourses of Epictetus, Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί

“Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.”

Marcus Aurelius 121 – 219 CE

40. Returning

“we call it ‘the formless form.’ But although it has neither shape nor form, neither sound nor echo, there is nothing it cannot penetrate and nowere it cannot go.”

Wang Bi 王弼 226 – 534 CE

14. Finding and Following the Formless Form

“Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

Bodhidharma 菩提達磨 1
(Daruma)

“Whoever realizes that from the very beginning there has been nothing other than mind, has acquired the realization of all the Buddhas of the three times.”

Saraha 1

35. The Power of Goodness

“The teachings are like a flower, the mind like a bee, and realization the honey of awakened life.”

Campaka ཙ་མྤ་ཀ 820 CE – via Keith Dowman, Shan Dao
(“The Flower King”)
Mahasiddha #60

“Realization is like writing in water.”

Ḍeṅgipa ཌེངྒི་པ། 1
(“The Courtesan's Brahmin Slave”)
Mahasiddha #31

1. The Unnamed

“Without self, not thinking, not achieving… I live in consummate pure delight and perfect awareness.”

Virupa བི་རཱུ་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
(“Dakini Master”)
Mahasiddha #3
from Masters of Enchantment

13. Honor and Disgrace

“Whoever realizes the purity of his own mind, sees through the Buddha's eyes.”

Carbaripa ཙ་རྦ་རི་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
(Carpati, “The Petrifier”)
Mahasiddha #64
from Masters of Enchantment

“Armed with the sword of undying awareness, I conquer my enemies, the demons of the 3 realms.”

Khaḍgapa ཁཌྒ་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
("The Fearless Thief")
Mahasiddha #15
from Masters of Mahamudra

12. This Over That

“The flame of pure awareness burns away all delusion.”

Kumbharipa ཀུམྦྷ་རི་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman, Shan Dao
(“The Eternal Potter”)
Mahasiddha #63

“The soul of the poet is a most delicate instrument, extremely susceptible to everything that comes in contact with it.”

Solomon ibn Gabirol שלמה בן יהודה אבן גבירול 1021 – 1070 CE via Israel Zangwill
(Avicebron)

“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight”

Omar Khayyám 1048 – 1131 CE via Edward Fitzgerald
Persian Astronomer-Poet, prophet of the here and now

from Rubaiyat

“Realization of mind’s nature is the king.”

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

25. The Mother of All Things

“When there is continuous awareness from mind-moment to mind-moment you will naturally meet the Source on all sides.”

Yuanwu Keqin 圜悟克勤 1063 – 1135 CE
(Yuánwù Kèqín)
from Zen Letters

6. The Source

“Once you discover the original, inherently complete and real mind, no matter what situation you meet, you will understand completely.”

Yuanwu Keqin 圜悟克勤 1063 – 1135 CE
(Yuánwù Kèqín)
from Zen Letters

“Free from duality, preconception, and discursive thought; the realization of pure awareness and knowledge assures freedom.”

Jayānanda ཛ་ཡཱ་ནནྡ།། 1
("Crow Master")
Mahasiddha #58

“Clear out obsessive thinking and distraction, see the vast radiance without barriers, the genuine awakened field, and immediately respond to the ten thousand changes”

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

“Wisdom probes the ignorance and dispels the longtime darkness. Eye cataracts worn away, illusory flowers naturally fade. Spirit radiance simply shines; recurring falseness dissolves.”

Hóngzhì Zhēngjué 宏智正覺 1091 – 1157 CE
(Shōgaku)

52. Cultivating the Changeless

“You are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.”

Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 CE via Stephen Mitchell

“I hear the song of the nightingale,
The sun is warm the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore,
Here no bull can hide.”

Kakuan Shien 廓庵師遠 1100 – 1200 CE via Paul Reps
(Kuo-an Shih-yuan, Kuòān Shīyuǎn )
Most popular Ten Bulls artist/poet

from 10 Bulls

51. Mysterious Goodness

“Remembering that human life is difficult to gain and easy to lose, don’t waste a moment sleeping away your time like a fool.”

Sakya Pandita ས་སྐྱ་པཎྜ་ཏ་ཀུན་དགའ་རྒྱལ་མཚན། 1182 – 1251 CE via John T. Davenport, Shan Dao #420
(Kunga Gyeltsen)
from Ordinary Wisdom, Sakya Legshe (Jewel Treasury of Good Advice)

“A thunderclap under the clear blue sky… all beings on earth open their eyes.”

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

32. Uncontrived Awareness

“Everything is Buddha nature.”

Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 1200 – 1253 CE

“HUM!”

Karma Pakshi ཀརྨ་པཀྴི་ 1204 – 1283 CE

“I will be waiting for your silence to break, your soul to shake, and your love to wake!”

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”

76. The Soft and Flexible

“Those who stay asleep will watch their life drift past them like a dream, and the traces of their memory will fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”

Dante 1265 – 1321 CE
(Durante degli Alighieri)
from Divine Comedy

“The root of confused and harmful activity arise from the loss of awareness.”

Longchenpa ཀློང་ཆེན་རབ་འབྱམས་པ། 1308 – 1364 CE via Herbert V. Guenther, Shan Dao
(Longchen Rabjampa, Drimé Özer)
from Kindly Bent to Ease Us, Trilogy of Finding Comfort and Ease ངལ་གསོ་སྐོར་གསུམ་

“Awakened mind is the actual state of everything.”

Longchenpa ཀློང་ཆེན་རབ་འབྱམས་པ། 1308 – 1364 CE via Padma Translation Committee
(Longchen Rabjampa, Drimé Özer)
from The Basic Space of Phenomena

“What is this precious love and laughter budding in our hearts?
Is is the glorious sound of a soul waking up!”

Hafiz خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی 1315 – 1394 CE via Daniel Ladinsky
(Hafez, Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad)
Inspiring friend to the true and free human spirit

“Seeing one's nature is Buddhahood.”

Bassui Tokushō 抜隊 得勝 1327 – 1387 CE
Meditation master without distraction

“Experience will be my mistress.”

Leonardo da Vinci 1452 – 1519 CE

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few see clearly.”

Machiavelli 1469 – 1527 CE
(Niccolò Machiavelli)
from The Prince

21. Following Empty Heart

“The very contemplation of things as they are—without superstition, imposture, or confusion—is in itself more beneficial than all the fruits of technology and invention.”

Francis Bacon 1561 – 1626 CE via Shan Dao
from The New Organon, 1620

“Hell is truth seen too late.”

Thomas Hobbes 1588 – 1679 CE
from Leviathan

“All success depends on timing. To turn out well, an endeavor must be done on its own day. At that time, seize the opportunity without hesitation.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, Shan Dao, chapter #139
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

“Without thinking of anything whatsoever, rest vividly awake in the practice of mind essence.”

Karma Chagme Rinpoche I ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་རཱ་ག་ཨ་སྱས། 1613 – 1678 CE via Erik Pema Kunsang
from Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen

29. Not Doing

“Enlightened awareness is within each one of us, right at this moment… without effort rest naturally as the Unborn Mind, as a living Buddha.”

Bankei 盤珪永琢 1622 – 1693 CE
(Bankei Yōtaku)

57. Wu Wei

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778 CE

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE

32. Uncontrived Awareness

“Awake, awake, O sleeper in the land of shadows, wake!”

William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

“The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.”

Madame de Staël 1766 – 1817 CE
(Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein)
"The greatest woman of her time"

“I may lose a battle but I shall never lose a minute.”

Napoleon Bonaparte 1769 – 1821 CE

“A moment's realization of the luminosity of one's mind purifies the accumulated evil deeds and obscurations of countless aeons.”

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

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE

73. Heaven’s Net

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822 CE
from The Triumph of Life

“Make yourself at home in the natural state of pure presence, just being, not doing anything in particular.”

Jamgon Kongtrul the Great འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་བློ་གྲོས་མཐའ་ཡས། 1813 – 1899 CE via Judith Hanson
(Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé)
from Torch of Certainty

57. Wu Wei

“The refuge of radiant awareness is closer, more profound, easier, and more wondrous than we can imagine.”

Jamgon Kongtrul the Great འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་བློ་གྲོས་མཐའ་ཡས། 1813 – 1899 CE via Judith Hanson
(Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé)
from Torch of Certainty

33. Know Yourself

“The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawn to which we are awake is there more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from Walden or Life in the Woods

68. Joining Heaven & Earth

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from Walden or Life in the Woods

14. Finding and Following the Formless Form

“To be awake is to be alive… millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in hundreds of millions is awake enough for a poetic or divine life.”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi

“We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский 1821 – 1881 CE via Constance Garnett
from Brothers Karamatzov

“Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it well. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors that describe it best.”

William James 1842 – 1910 CE
"Father of American psychology”
from Principles of Psychology, 1890

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900 CE

“Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show us a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins our journey of awakening.”

Henri-Louis Bergson 1859 – 1941 CE

“Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.”

Dean Inge 1860 – 1954 CE
Christian mystic and philosopher

“adolescence is the only period during which we really leaned anything... later we see things from a more practical point of view in conformity with the rest of society”

Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922 CE via Justin O'Brien
Apostle of Ordinary Mind
from A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs

“The play and counterplay between two personalities... plays out in every individual. In my life, No. 2 has been of prime importance... but he is perceived only by the very few. Most people's conscious understanding is not sufficient to realize that he is also what they are.”

Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist
from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.”

Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962 CE

2. The Wordless Teachings

“When one realizes one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”

Ouspensky Пётр Демья́нович Успе́нский 1878 – 1947 CE
(Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii)

“Zorba taught me to love life and have no fear of death... he had just what a quill-driver needs for deliverance: the primordial glance which seizes its nourishment arrow-like from on high, the creative artlessness, renews each morning which enabled him to see all things constantly as though for the first time.”

Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE via P. A. Bien
from Report to Greco

“If we can keep our minds and eyes open, the world will be our best textbook.”

Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE

“Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951 CE
One of the world's most famous philosophers
from Culture and Value (1980)

“What has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example.”

Boris Pasternak Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к 1890 – 1960 CE
Russia's greatest poet

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

Henry Miller 1891 – 1980 CE

“what you are… that is what we must realize. And to this realization Zen practice leads us step by step. This is the aim of Zen.”

Ruth Fuller Sasaki 1892 – 1967 CE

“‘You're assuming,' said Dr. Robert, 'that the brain produces consciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness.”

Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE
from Island

“as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island—a fresh green breast of the new world... vanished trees [that] had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams... for a transitory enchanted moment many must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor denied”

F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896 – 1940 CE
Prototype of "Jazz Age" exuberance
from Great Gatsby

“performers and spectators are welded into one and have both become active participants in a magic rite, which initiates them into one of the most ancient mysteries which is the origin of all religious life and the beginning of the awakening of man.”

Anagarika​ (Lama) Govinda 1898 – 1985 CE
(Ernst Hoffmann)
Pioneer of Tibetan Buddhism to the West

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

“Heaven in our author’s thought is synonymous with Tao. Tao is the absolute, the enduring, the ever-so.”

Arthur Waley 1899 – 1969 CE
from The Way and its Power

20. Unconventional Mind

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944 CE
from Wisdom of the Sands (1950)

“Into the sphere of clear light, empty, without edge or center, the nature of the mind, grasping nothing, dissolves as one taste. If only I had the good fortune to practice this day and night, knowing for myself unspoken untainted bliss.”

Gendün Chöphel དགེ་འདུན་ཆོས་འཕེལ། 1903 – 1951 CE

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

George Orwell 1903 – 1950 CE
English, poet, humanist, apostle of doubt, and powerful political influence

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

12. This Over That

“At a particular moment, in an immaculately white alcove, a white skeleton appeared that tried to catch me. And then instantly everything around me became white.”

Hergé 1907 – 1983 CE
(Georges Prosper Remi )
Intrepid reporter of world culture

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot...for he sees what no one else does: things that, to everyone else, are not there.”

Marshall McLuhan 1911 – 1980 CE

41. Distilled Life

“awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet — worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.”

Lewis Thomas 1913 – 1993 CE
Gestaltist of science and art
from Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (1984)

“The face of nature is unknowable. Trying to capture the unknowable in theories and formalized doctrines is like trying to catch the wind in a butterfly net.”

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

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from Beyond the Postmodern Mind

“Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dream-like vagaries of ordinary awareness. It begins with a man who woke up.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from World's Religions

Plato described ordinary life as unthinking, lived in a dim cave of shadowy reflections, but said that it is possible to leave the cave and see things in sunlit clarity as they actually are.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from World's Religions

“If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh tʰǐk ɲɜ̌t hɐ̂ʔɲ 1926 CE –

“In the expectation of wonderful things to happen in the future, one doesn’t hear the sound of the wind and rain, the breath and heartbeat this instant.”

Toni Packer 1927 – 2013 CE
A Zen teacher minus the 'Zen' and minus the 'teacher.’
from Light of Discovery

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

Robert M. Pirsig 1928 – 2017 CE
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are… To ask is to break the spell.”

Neil Postman 1931 – 2003 CE
from Amusing Ourselves to Death

80. A Golden Age

“Whenever we stay in the extreme of nihilism or in the extreme of eternalism, we divide phenomena from emptiness, and because of our division habit, we cannot go beyond in the pure light secret essence of the elements.”

Thinley Norbu གདུང་སྲས་ཕྲིན་ལས་ནོར་བུ 1931 – 2011 CE
(Kyabjé Dungse)
from Magic Dance (1981)

“Consciousness is a combination of speech and our basic, sharp intelligence.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE via The Six Chakras and the Four Karmas (tr: Judith Lief, editor, Shan Dao)
from Secret Beyond Thought, Boston, 1971

“Awareness without choice or awareness that contains no experience…you begin to see yourself as tables and chairs or rocks and sky and water. You begin to identify with the phenomenal world completely.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

“Iinstead of seeing things as new, you see them as very ordinary and full of details… You yourself become a living teaching; you yourself become living dharma… the reference point takes the form of awareness… choiceless awareness.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

40. Returning

“But you know I know when it's a dream”

John Lennon 1940 – 1980 CE
from Magical Mystery Tour

49. No Set Mind

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”

Bob Dylan 1941 CE –

“Every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware.”

Louise Erdrich 1954 CE –

“When we wake up from our confused state of mind, that is enlightenment.”

Dzogchen Pönlop 1965 CE –

“beauty is something to be found rather than passively encountered, it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea... Chardin opens our eyes to the beauty of salt cellars, Elstir paints nothing grander than cotton dresses and harbors”

Alain de Botton 1969 CE –
Philosophic link between ancient wisdom and modern challenge
from How Proust Can Change Your Life

“We think we are a One, but you and I know an 'I' is a 'Many.' There's a Nice Guy Me. Psychopath Me... I is an Empire of 'I's.”

David Mitchell 1969 CE –
from Utopia Avenue

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”

Mingyur Rinpoche 1975 CE –
Modern-day Mahasiddha

“Even though thoughts and emotions come and go, the mind’s natural clarity is never disturbed or interrupted… Just as space isn’t defined by the objects that move through it, awareness isn’t defined by what it apprehends.”

Mingyur Rinpoche 1975 CE –
Modern-day Mahasiddha

Sources

Maha Ati

by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
"Mind" incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo

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