A nything humans can think of, is a possibility in reality.

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quote 4538  |   1

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A nd they say, "Be Jews or Christians and you shall be guided." Say, "Nay, rather the creed of Abraham, a man of pure faith; he was no idolator." Say you, "We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets; of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender."

mosque

quote 4333  |   The Quran Qur'an 2:135-136

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V imalakirti, "Manjusri, all worlds are empty." Manjusri, "What makes them empty?" "They are empty because [their ultimate reality is] emptiness." "What is 'empty' about emptiness?" "Constructions are empty, because of emptiness." "Can emptiness be conceptually constructed?" "Even that concept is itself empty, and emptiness cannot construct emptiness."

temple_buddhist

quote 4112  |  (Yuima) Vimalakirti Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti 5

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A bsolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence. It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfills or perfects all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental intelligence it is like Heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the Infinite itself. Such being the nature of absolute truth, it manifests itself without being seen; it produces effects without motion; it accomplishes its ends without action.

candle

quote 4100  |   The Zhongyong Doctrine of the Mean 26

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A ll beings with two, three, four, or five senses. . . . in fact all creation, know individually pleasure and displeasure, pain, terror, and sorrow. All are full of fears which come from all directions. And yet there exist people who would cause greater pain to them. . . . Some kill animals for sacrifice, some for their skin, flesh, blood, . . . feathers, teeth, or tusks; . . . some kill them intentionally and some unintentionally; some kill because they have been previously injured by them, . . . and some because they expect to be injured. He who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds of sin. . . . He who understands the nature of sin against animals is called a true sage who understands karma. . . .

temple_hindu

quote 3943  |   The Panchadasi Acharanga Sutra, I, 1, Translation by A. L. Basham; from abridged version in Theodore de Bary, Sources of Indian Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 62-3

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D o you know how a lover of God feels? His attitude is: "0 God, Thou art the Master, and I am Thy servant. Thou art the Mother, and I am Thy child." Or again: "Thou art my Father and Mother. Thou art the Whole, and I am a part." He doesn't like to say, "I am Brahman."

temple_hindu

quote 3899  |   Ramakrishna Nikhilananda, 1942; p. 134

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G od dwells in all beings. But you may be intimate only with good people; you must keep away from the evil-minded. God is even in the tiger; but you cannot embrace the tiger on that account (Laughter.) You may say, "Why run away from a tiger, which is also a manifestation of God? The answer to that is: Those who tell you to run away are also manifestations of God; why shouldn't you listen to them?

temple_hindu

quote 3172  |   Ramakrishna Mahendranath Gupta. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942, 1948, 1958, pp. 131-132

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T he world is a creation of Shakti, and a spiritual seeker, a meditator, should not look down upon the world or regard it as something other than Shakti. Shakti does not only manifest Herself as Divine Energy within the body; it is Shakti who projects the cosmos in the pure void. It is Shakti who makes this world while staying different from this world. It is Shakti who becomes good as well as bad. It is Shakti who manifests Herself in our worldly pursuits and also in our spiritual pursuits. So we should not regard our mundane life as being different from Shakti. That is an aspect of the same Shakti we are trying to attain through meditation. The Shakti creates the universe and dwells in a human being in the form of Divine Energy. A yogi worships Her and awakens Her. So nothing is really different or apart from the Shakti. Wherever you are you will receive guidance from the Shakti, because Shakti Herself manifests as your worldly life.

temple_hindu

quote 3117  |   Muktananda Muktananda, Swami. I Have Become Alive. South Falisburg, NY. SYDA Foundation, 1985, p. 29, and from a lecture given in Miami, Florida, 1980.

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I will never ask God to give Himself to me. All I ask is that He makes me pure and empty. For it is God's very nature to give Himself to those who are pure, and to fill those who are empty.

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quote 3081  |   Meister Eckhart Pfeiffer, Frantz, and Evans, C de B., trans. Meister Eckhart. London: John M. Watkins, 1924, 193 1, Vol. 1: 118, 157, 221-222, 287, 338, 348, 363, 429, and Vol. 2: 41, 114.

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I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.

candle

quote 2992  |   Kabir Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.213

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O ne day, Rabia was seen running, carrying fire in one hand and water in the other. They asked her the meaning of her action and where she was going. She replied, I am going to light a fire in Paradise and pour water on Hell, so that both veils (hindrances to the true vision of God) completely disappear."

mosque

quote 2909  |   Rabia al-Adawiyya Rabia, Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.86

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H abib had one cloak that he used to wear both summer and winter. One day, when he went out of his house to make ablutions, he left his cloak behind on the road. Hasan al-Basri came by and saw Habib's cloak lying in the middle of the road. He thought to himself, "Habib has left his cloak; may God forbid that someone take it. " Hasan stood there and watched over the coat until Habib returned. When Habib arrived, he greeted Hasan and said, "0 Iman of the Muslims, what are you doing standing there?" Hasan exclaimed, "Don't you know that your coat should not be left here? Someone might take it. Tell me, in whom were you trusting leaving it here?" Habib replied, In He who appointed you to watch over it.'

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quote 2895  |   Others Sufis Teaching Al-‘Ajami, Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.75

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O abyss! 0 eternal Godhead! 0 deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self? You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light. In your light you have made me know your truth: You are that light beyond all light who gives the mind's eye supernatural light in such fullness and perfection that you bring clarity even to the light of faith. In that faith I see that my soul has life, and in that light receives you who are Light… Truly this light is a sea, for it nourishes the soul in you, peaceful sea, eternal Trinity. Its water is not sluggish; so the soul is not afraid because she knows the truth. It distills, revealing hidden things, so that here, where the most abundant light of your faith abounds, the soul has, as it were, a guarantee of what she believes. This water is a mirror in which you, eternal Trinity, grant me knowledge; for when I look into this mirror, holding it in the hand of love, it shows me myself, as your creation, in you, and you in me through the union you have brought about of the Godhead with our humanity.

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quote 2842  |   Saint Catherine of Siena Saint Catherine of Siena, adapted from the translation by Suzanne Noffke in Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1980).

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R ather, all these things must remain below, for this infinite resplendence so blinds the eyes of reason that they have to give way before this incomprehensible light. However, that simple eye that dwells above reason in the ground of our understanding is always open, contemplating with unhindered vision and gazing at the light with the light itself - eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.

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quote 2829  |   John Ruusbroec John Ruusbroec, adapted from John Ruusbroec: The Spritual Espousals and Other Works, translated by James Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985)

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A master says whoever speaks of God in any likeness, speaks impurely of him. But to speak of God with nothing is to speak of him correctly. When the soul is unified and there enters into total self-abnegation, then she finds God as in Nothing. It appeared to a man as in a dream – it was a waking dream - that he became pregnant with. Nothing like a woman with child, and in that Nothing God was born; he was the fruit of nothing. God was born in the Nothing….

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quote 2823  |   Meister Eckhart Meister Eckhart, SERMON NINETEEN, from Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. 3, translated and edited by M. O'C. Walshe (Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, 1979).

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A ll that the Father is, we see revealed in the Son; all that is the Son’s is the Father's also; for the whole Son dwells in the Father, and he has the whole Father dwelling in himself… The Son who exists always in the Father can never be separated from him, nor can the Spirit ever be divided from the Son who through the Spirit works all things. He who receives the Father also receives at the same time the Son and the Spirit. It is impossible to envisage any kind of severance or disjunction between them: One cannot think of the Son apart from the Father, nor divide the Spirit from the Son. There is between the three a sharing and a differentiation that are beyond words and understanding.

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quote 2801  |   Saint Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Nyssa, from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, translated and edited by Herbert Mursillo (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. V1adimir's Seminary Press, 1979).

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I f then you have become the throne of God, and the Heavenly Charioteer has seated himself within you, and your soul is entirely transformed into a spiritual eye, and is made into light

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quote 2798  |   Saint Macarius of Egypt Saint Macarius of Egypt, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in The Mystic Way (Atlanta, Ga.: Ariel Press, 1994).

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T his is the secret of the unity of God: no matter where I take hold of a shred of it, I hold the whole of it. And since the teachings and all the commandments are radiations of his being, he who lovingly does one commandment utterly and to the core, and in this one commandment takes hold of a shred of the unity of God, holds the whole of it in his hand, and has fulfilled all.

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quote 2759  |   Martin Buber Martin Buber’s ten rungs, collected Hassidic saying, p.54

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T he spiritual man is the sign of this new evolution, this new and higher endeavor of Nature. But this evolution differs from the past process of the evolutionary Energy in two respects: it is conducted by a conscious effort of the human mind, and it is not confined to a conscious progression of the surface nature, but is accompanied by an attempt to break the walls of the Ignorance and extend ourselves inward into the secret principle of our present being and outward into cosmic being as well as upward toward a higher principle. Up till now what Nature had achieved was an enlarging of the bounds of our surface Knowledge Ignorance; what it attempted in the spiritual endeavor is to abolish the Ignorance, to go inward and discover the soul and to become united in consciousness with God and with all existence. This is the final aim of the mental stage of evolutionary Nature in man; it is the initial step toward a radical transmutation of the Ignorance into the Knowledge. The spiritual change begins by an influence of the inner being and the higher spiritual mind, an action felt and accepted on the surface; but this by itself can lead only to an illumined mental idealism or to the growth of a religious mind, a religious temperament or some devotion in the heart and piety in the conduct; … much has to be done, we have to live deeper within, we have to exceed our present consciousness and surpass our present status of Nature. It is evident that if we can live thus deeper within and put out steadily the inner forces into the outer instrumentation or raise ourselves to dwell on higher and wider levels and bring their powers to bear on physical existence, not merely receive influences descending from them, which is all we can now do, there could begin a heightening of our force of conscious being so as to create a new principle of consciousness, a new range of activities, new values for all things, a widening of our consciousness and life, a taking up and transformation of the lower grades of our existence-in brief, the whole evolutionary process by which the Spirit in Nature creates a higher type of being.

temple_hindu

quote 2712  |   Aurobindo Ghose The New Being, in the Teaching of the Hindu Mystics, by Andrew Harvey, Shambala.

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A UM STANDS for the supreme Reality. It is a symbol for what was, what is, And what shall be. AUM represents also What lies beyond past, present, and future.

temple_hindu

quote 2658  |   The Upanishads Mandukya Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran, 1987; Nilgiri Press, Tomales, California

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T his is only another way of saying that the phenomena of all things is of one 'suchness' with Buddhahood and Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and that it is neither reality nor unreality but abides together with all phenomena in emptiness and silence, inconceivable and inscrutable.

temple_buddhist

quote 2525  |   The Maha Prajna Paramita Diamond Sutra, 17, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

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T hus, 0 Sariputra, all things having the nature of emptiness have no beginning and no ending. They are neither faultless nor not faultless; they are neither perfect nor imperfect. In emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no discrimination, no consciousness. There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no sensitiveness to contact, no mind. There is no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no mental process, no object, no knowledge, no ignorance. There is no destruction of objects, there is no cessation of knowledge, no cessation of ignorance. There is no Noble Four-fold Truths: no pain, no cause of pain, no cessation of pain, no Noble Path leading to the cessation of pain. There is no decay and no death, and no destruction of the notion of decay and death. There is no knowledge of Nirvana, there is no obtaining of Nirvana, there is no not obtaining of Nirvana.

temple_buddhist

quote 2513  |   The Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible, p. 86

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T his principle fills the universe. Who can escape from it? Those who follow it will enjoy good fortune and those who violate it will encounter calamities. People (whose minds) are obscure and beclouded are darkened and stupid, and those (whose minds) are penetrative and discerning are intelligent and wise. The darkened and stupid do not see this principle and therefore they often violate it and suffer calamity. The intelligent and wise understand this principle and are therefore able to follow it and achieve good fortune.

candle

quote 2400  |   Lu Hsiang Shan Complete Work of Lu Hsiang-shan (Hsiang-shan ch’uan-chi), 21: 1 a, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 33

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B efore the feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy are aroused it is called equilibrium (chung, centrality, mean). When these feelings are aroused and each and all attain due measure and degree, it is called harmony. Equilibrium is the great foundation of the world, and harmony its universal path. When equilibrium and harmony are realized to the highest degree, heaven and earth will attain their proper order and all things will flourish.

candle

quote 2368  |   The Zhongyong Doctrine of the Mean, Chapter 1, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 5.

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W here did you learn this?" asked Nan-po Tzu-k'uei. "I learned it from the son of Writing the Assistant (for writing is no more than an aid)," Nu-yu said. "The son of Writing the Assistant learned it from the grandson of Repeated Recitation (which precede writing), the grandson of Repeated Recitation learned it from Clear Understanding, Clear Understanding learned it from Whispering, Whispering learned it from Earnest Practice, Earnest Practice learned it from Joyful Singing, Joyful Singing learned it from Noumenon (hsuan ming) (1) Noumenon learned it from Penetration of Vacuity, and Penetration of Vacuity learned it from Doubtful Beginning."

quote 2239  |   Tchuang Tzu Chuang Tzu, chapter VI, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 8.

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