Thread: Favourite quotes on spirituality/religion!

Alan Watts:

“The menu is not the meal.”

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

"Nope" - Engineer from TF2.

Just as it is

"The struggle in life isnt complicated, our admired destination isn't that far, it's our mind that makes things seem to be impossible." ~Rain Afan

"Not all who wander all lost>" ~?

"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way." ~Henry David Thoreau

and also my signature

Originally Posted by OneUpBoy71

"Not all who wander all lost>" ~?

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

I remember this girl got "Not all who wander are lost" tattooed on her and I gave her props for getting a nerd tattoo. She had no idea where it was from :\

Originally Posted by Original Poster

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

I remember this girl got "Not all who wander are lost" tattooed on her and I gave her props for getting a nerd tattoo. She had no idea where it was from :\

Hahahaha, never knew it was from Lord of the Rings but hey it does have some deep meaning in it besides it role in fantasy books and films.

"i know many people spend many years in meditation and spiritual practice without achieving full awakening, and i know that they think it's because they haven't crossed the finish line yet, but it's actually because they haven't crossed the starting line yet." - jed mckenna


"millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. it looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it, looks as if it is only for people who are dead, or almost dead. a really meditative person is playful. life is fun for him, life is a play. he enjoys it tremendously. he is not serious. he is relaxed." - osho

Consider the fact that no matter how many planets and stars are reflected in a lake, these reflections are encompassed within the water itself; that no matter how many universes there are, they are encompassed within a single space; and that no matter how vast and how numerous the sensory appearances of samsara and nirvana may be, they are encompassed within the single nature of mind.

Buddhahood without meditation

When we aren't feeling that "clear openness that is spacious and serene" we feel we have lost Awareness. But Awareness has no definition, all experience is the experience of Awareness. Awareness has no form or state of its own. That then allows Awareness to be every state, every feeling,every emotion,every thought, every identity sensation, every perception. That being so, what is there left to achieve? Every experience, happy, sad or neutral is the appearance of Awareness. We give up completely the notion that Awareness has to have some particular flavor or color. Oh my god, we can finally really relax! Its over! Every experience is equal in Awareness! What could you possibly practice? You are already aware, so you don't need to become aware. Everything is already happening however its happening, so there is nothing special to do. No special "state" to attain! If you experience a special state, that's fine, but it will never become stable. The only stability is your unchanging perceiving of whatever is experienced. That unchanging perceivingness is Awareness, the heart of the Dharmakaya (Pure Primordial Being).

http://nomindsland.blogspot.pt/2013/...teachings.html

All the suffering that we see in this world is only a dream that arises due to the rising of our own mind, so if we are truly concerned about the sufferings of others, we should earnestly try to wake up from this dream by surrendering our self-deceptive mind in the clarity of our own essential selfconscious being. However, though true heart-melting love for our own essential being, which is also the essential being of every other person and creature, is the only means by which we can wake up from this dream of duality or otherness, our present finite love will blossom as the absolute fullness of infinite love only when we have actually destroyed this illusory dream of duality in the perfect clarity of true non-dual self-knowledge.

Michael James, Happiness and the art of being (free book)

"And now these three remain,
Hope, Faith and Love. The greatest of these is love."

“Imagine you’re in the audience watching a play, and you slowly come to realize that the actors don’t know they’re actors. They think that they’re normal people going about their normal lives, unaware that they’re on a stage, performing. You could never even believe such a thing would be possible if you hadn’t been up there yourself believing the same thing.” –Jed McKenna

Originally Posted by Original Poster

Alan Watts:

“The menu is not the meal.”

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

Thanks for mentioning them, the quotes are great, he is a great man. Honestly: Listening to Alan Watts is the most life changing event I have ever experienced. These are two Alan Watts quotes that I wrote in the beginning of my DJ:

"The journey is the goal. So relax, you've made it, you're already there! Enjoy the ride!"

"The basic principle of the universe governs the universe - not by ruling - but by allowing everything in it to follow it's own nature and to be itself"

"What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

- Stephen Hawking in newsmagazine Der Spiegel

"A bet is a tax on bullshit"

-Alex Tabarrok

LouiaB just posted this in another thread, and I think it deserves a place on my favourites list:

Because he's been on my mind lately:

Spoiler for The words of H.V. Miller:

"Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."

"If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms."

"If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without."

"The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless."

"The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble."

"Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?"

"Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it."

"Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil." 1 Peter 3:8-12

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in dues season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith." Galations 6:9-10

"The color of truth is grey."

"Believe those who are seeking the truth, doubt those who find it"

― Andre Gide

A really simple but profound statement

“Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.”~ Zen Master Dogen.

How much better it would be if we knew we could tap our inner wisdom without needing to rely on techniques, precepts, and so on.

"Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours." -- R. Bach

“One day I will be free of the ego.” Who is talking? The ego. To
become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you
need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions – as they happen. This
is not really a “doing,” but an alert “seeing.” In that sense, it is true that there
is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens,
which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than
the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even
thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature
is recognized. there is no longer a self in them. They are just human
emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately
no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of
secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your
consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity.

A New Earth, E. Tolle

I very nearly forgot one of my favourites!

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
- Henry Miller

And what good is Miller without a little Nin?

Spoiler for the words of Anaïs Nin:

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic."

"In creation alone there is the possibility of perfection."

"The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything."

"There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person."