Post: #1

Feel free to post yours.

Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?

- Milarepa

My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back, and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.

- Chogyam Trungpa

Post: #2

From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius...

"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind."

Post: #3

“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.”

― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

Post: #4

Beliefs are more powerful than facts.

Post: #5

In the beginning, God made the heaven and the earth.

-La Biblia

Post: #6

“The one who has conquered himself is a far greater hero than he who has defeated a thousand times a thousand men.”
― Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
― Gautama Buddha, Sayings Of Buddha

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.

[Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65]”
― Gautama Buddha

Post: #7

"Gentle Lord, that suffering causes men so much distress and yet at the same time should make them so beautiful spiritually, this is certainly a strange dispensation of God."

Henry Suso, Dominican, 1290-1365

http://www.dominicans.ca/Family/Figures/suso.htm

Post: #8

"If you fight, you will either be slain on the battlefield and go to the celestial abodes, or you will gain victory and enjoy the kingdom on earth. Therefore arise with determination, O son of Kunti, and be prepared to fight."

Bhagavad Gita 2.37

Post: #9

Post: #10

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." –St. Augustine

Post: #11

Havamal, stanza 16

"An unwise man
thinks he'll live forever
if only he can avoid a fight,
but old age
will give him no peace,
even if weapons do."

Post: #12

Your only obligation in this lifetime,
Or any other lifetime ... (for those who believe the Soul is reborn in new bodies)
.. Is to be, TRUE to YOUR SELF.
Trying to be true,
..to anybody else or anything else,
is not only IMPOSSIBLE, but completely FAKE.

Post: #13

From Nietzsche: Schopenhauer as Educator, Section 1

When the great thinker disdains human beings, it is their laziness he disdains, for it is laziness that makes them appear to be mass-produced commodities, to be indifferent, unworthy of human interchange and instruction.

The human being who does not want to be a part of the masses need only cease going easy on himself; let him follow his conscience, which cries out to him: "Be yourself! You are none of those things that you now do, think and desire."

Every young soul hears this cry night and day, and trembles, for when it thinks of its true liberation, it has an inkling of the measure of happiness for which it is destined from eternity.

As long as it is shackled by the chains of opinions and fear, nothing can help it attain this happiness.

And how bleak and senseless life can become without this liberation! There is no more desolate or repulsive creature in nature than the human being who has evaded his genius and who then casts furtive glances left and right, behind himself and all about.

But even if the future were to give us no cause for hope- our curious existence in precisely this Now gives us the strongest encouragement to live according to our own standards and laws.

We are accountable to ourselves for our own existence; consequently, we also want to be the real helmsmen of our existence and keep it from resembling a mindful coincidence.

We have to approach existence with a certain boldness and willingness to take risks: especially since in both the worst and best instances we are bound to lose it.

"None of this is you yourself," the young soul tells itself. No one can build for you the bridge upon which you alone must cross the stream of life, no one but you alone.

To be sure, there are countless paths and bridges and demigods that want to carry you through this stream, but only at the price of your self; you would pawn and lose your self.

There is one single path in this world on which no one but you can travel. Where does it lead? Do not ask, just take it.