Meaningful Quotes

Some helpful (to me) quotes that came my way via my email inbox this week:

What one has to abandon: how to get rid of arrogance by means of an antidote "I'm not beyond my karma, the deeds I've done; I'll still fall ill, age, die, and leave my friends." Think like this again and yet again And with this remedy avoid all arrogance.

"I will be sick, I will grow old, I will die, I will be separated from those I love, my relations and so forth. In such manner, the fully ripened effect of my actions will come to me and to no one else, and I am therefore not above depending on what I did in former lives." To think like this again and again is the antidote to such things as arrogance: make every effort not to become arrogant by meditating on this antidote.

~~ from Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche by Nagarjuna, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group, published by Snow Lion Publications


"The results of karma cannot be known by thought, and so should not be speculated about. Thus, thinking, one would come to distraction and distress."Therefore, Ananda, do not be the judge of people; do not make assumptions about others. A person is destroyed by holding judgments about others."-Anguttura Nikaya

~~From "Teachings of the Buddha," edited by Jack Kornfield, 1993. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston,


All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others.

~~Bodhicaryavatara


“The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary ‘unity’ against all others. The affirmation of the self as simply ‘not the other.’ But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with which to affirm it.

The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say ‘yes’ to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone. “

~~From Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, selected with an Introduction by Christine M. Bochen (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books 2000), Page 142. Originally published in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton (New York: Doubleday, 1966) Pages 128-29.

I read and remember, and meditate quotes because they help me. They help me be patient with myself and others. Too often, I find myself doubting my life, the road I have chosen. Not so much the buddhist path I have chosen. I rarely doubt that as a choice, the part of that I doubt is my own abilities in walking it well.

Mostly what I doubt is the choices I've made in my life - about relationships. Not just my current relationship. But all my past relationships, from parental, to sibling, to lovers, and friends, employers and neighbors. I am questioning them all. What are relationships in detachment and how does one do that? Why have them? Can they not be a part of my life, and yet still live a life giving to others? Is feeding a roaring fire giving?

There is much more I can say. Clearly I am in a state of disatisfaction right now. Not sure if change is needed or if I need to learn detachment. So for now I will just leave it at quotes are of comfort and are mind food for me.