Crumbs: June 29th, 2019. Quotes #1.
Greetings,
I haven’t posted in a while because all my readings led me to something entirely unexpected that I can’t write about.
From now on I will just post quotes that point towards what I discovered. Only because it incentivizes me to finally collect these guys for my bulletin board.
Virtually yours,
Doug “Crumbs” Johnson
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To meet my thousand thousand faces I roam the world;
The dirtiest grass
Wears the sunlight of my skin:
I stand in this stream, myself, and laugh.
Rumi
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I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Walt Whitman
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Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again,
nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own
proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style
who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Walt Whitman
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You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides
and filter them from your self.
Walt Whitman
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Seizing my life in your hands,
you thrashed it clean on the savage rocks of Eternal Mind.
How its colors bled, until they grew white!
You smile and sit back; I dry in your sun.
Rumi
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When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real,
nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
You are neither holy nor wise,
just an ordinary fellow
who has completed his work.
Layman P’ang
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The most useful piece of learning for the
uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
Antisthenes
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Apart from the pulling and hauling
stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent,
compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm
on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head
curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game
and watching and wondering at it.
Walt Whitman
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Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Ryokan
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Do not seek to follow in the footsteps
of the wise. Seek what they sought.
Basho
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In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly,
the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost?
What can be attained?
If we attain something,
it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something,
it is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: This ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?
Ryokan
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I was dreaming that I was a butterfly
fluttering happily.
Suddenly, I awoke—
Now, I wonder who I am—
A man who dreamed he was a butterfly,
or a butterfly dreaming it is a man.
Chuang Tzu
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Let us forget the lapse of time;
let us forget the conflict of opinions.
Let us make our appeal to the infinite,
and take up our positions there.
Chuang Tzu
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If in hell I could hold one curl of your hair
I’d think the saints of heaven in torment.
Rumi
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My birthplace is placelessness,
My sign is to have and give no sign.
You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose;
they are not mine.
I am the life of life.
I am that cat, this stone, no one.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.
Rumi
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All forces have been steadily employ’d
to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
Walt Whitman
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There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a
man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of
comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware
that they are myths and that he believes them only because they
are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover,
since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not
rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
Bertrand Russell
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Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die,
and I know it.
I pass death with the dying
and birth with the new-wash’d babe,
and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects no two alike and every one
good,
The earth good and the stars good,
and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people,
all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
Walt Whitman
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The great path has no gates,
thousands of roads enter it.
When you pass through this gateless gate
you walk the universe alone.
Mumon
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The universe is the unity of all things. If one recognizes his
identity with this unity, then the parts of his body mean no more
to him than so much dirt, and death and life, end and beginning,
disturb his tranquility no more than the succession of day and
night.
Chuang Tzu
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Out of ignorance, I too clung to this notion because I
believed it was this higher self that would be united with God for
all eternity.
It took a long time before my experiences led me to doubt
this conviction and, at the same time, let in the possibility that
this was not the whole truth and that there was still further to
go.
Bernadette Roberts
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Concepts can at best only serve to negate one another, as
one thorn is used to remove another, and then be thrown away.
Words and language deal only with concepts, and cannot
approach Reality.
Ramesh S. Balsekar
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My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
but I’m in total harmony with them.
I don’t hold on to anything,
don’t reject anything;
nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
Who cares about wealth and honor?
Even the poorest thing shines.
My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
drawing water and carrying wood.
Layman P’ang
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Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
Have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
(there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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This day before dawn I ascended a hill
and look’d at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit
When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them,
shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my spirit said
No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer,
you must find out for yourself.
Each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents
and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born
and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine,
and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens,
and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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The clock indicates the moment—
but what does eternity indicate?
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed,
and luckier.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall,
battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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All forces have been steadily employ’d
to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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One world is aware and by far the largest to me,
and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day
or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now,
or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one,
and still pass on.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each
am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much
I am at peace about God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object,
yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more
wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then,
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me,
he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
In the faces of men and women I see God,
and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street,
And every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are,
for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
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Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and
oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the
rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution.
The Hua Hu Ching
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The man in whom Tao acts without impediment
Does not bother with his own interests
And does not despise others who do.
He does not struggle to make money
And does not make a virtue of poverty.
He goes his way without relying on others
And does not pride himself on walking alone.
While he does not follow the crowd
He won’t complain of those who do.
Rank and reward make no appeal to him;
Disgrace and shame do not deter him.
He is not always looking for right and wrong
Always deciding “Yes” and “No.”
The ancients said, therefore:
“The man of Tao remains unknown.
Perfect virtue produces nothing
No-Self is True-Self
And the greatest man is Nobody.”
Chuang Tzu
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My barn having burned to the ground,
I can now see the moon.
Taoist saying
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Die while you’re alive
and be absolutely dead.
Then do whatever you want:
it’s all good.
Bunan
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Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—
it is form, union, plan—
it is eternal life.
It is Happiness.
Walt Whitman
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Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
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In the knowledge of the Atman,
which is the dark night to the ignorant,
the recollected mind is fully awake and aware.
The ignorant are awake in their sense-life,
which is darkness to the sage.
Bhagavad Gita