Tag: Stones on the Path

Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it means to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it still differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake.
~ Erich Fromm

The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no “meaning,” they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.
~ Peter Matthiessen

A man traveling from New York came to visit a very famous rabbi living in Europe. The man came to the rabbi’s house, a large house on a city street, and was led to the rabbi’s room, which was in the attic. He discovered the master living in a simple room with a bed, a chair, and a few books, nothing more. Disappointed, the man said as soon as he finished formal greetings, “Rabbi, where are your things?”
The rabbi quickly asked back: “Where are your things?”
“But, Rabbi, I’m only passing through,” the visitor said.
“So am I, so am I,” the rabbi replied.
~ Western mondo

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he must forget all the roses that were ever pained.
~ Henri Matisse

Being incapable of conjugating the verb to be, we conjugate instead the verb to have. But as the verb to have can lead us nowhere, for nothing lasting can be acquired, we seek indefinitely to have more. Such is the source of our enslavement.
~ Robert Linssen

The person who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructable be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening.
~ Karlfried Dürckheim

All are nothing but flowers
In a flowering universe.
~ Soen Nakagawa

It is our very search for perfection outside of ourselves that causes our suffering.
~ The Buddha

I do not seek, I find.
~ Pablo Picasso

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it–exactly and completely.
~ Danin Katagiri