Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
What we call thought, what we call mind arises in one manner, ceases in another; incessantly, night and day; it is like a monkey who goes through the forest and who progresses by seizing one branch, letting go of it, taking hold of another and so on.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
If one day normal conditions were to return, few civilizations would seem as odd as the present one, in which every form of power over material things is sought, while mastery over one's own mind, one's own emotions is entirely overlooked.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
"I do not know" - it is said - "anything which, when unbridled, uncontrolled, unwatched, untamed, brings such ruin as thought, and I do not know anything which, when bridled, controlled, watched, tamed, brings such benefits as thought."
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Thought, which everyone lightly says is "mine," is, in reality, only to a very small degree in our power. In the majority of cases, instead of "to think" it would be correct to say "we are thought" or "thought takes place in me."
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
The task is to "arrest" thought: to master it and to strengthen the attention; to be able then to say: "Once this thought wandered at its fancy, as it liked: I today shall hold it completely bridled, as a mahout holds a rut-elephant with his goad."
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
If one day normal conditions were to return, few civilizations would seem as odd as the present one, in which every form of power over material things is sought, while mastery over one's own mind, one's own emotions is entirely overlooked.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Impressions are arrested at the limit of the senses. We become endowed with that form of silence that consists of not pronouncing either the exterior word or the interior word, and this in turn implies not hearing, not seeing, not imagining.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
There exist the road and the going, but not he who goes.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
He who cannot strenuously train himself, cannot achieve Truth.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Vision conceived as "transparency" is the Buddhist ideal: as one sees through clear water, the sand, the gravel, and the color of the pebbles, simply by reason of its transparency, so one who seeks the path of liberation must have just such a clear mind.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
If the body is ill, the mind shall not be ill — thus have you to train yourselves.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
The whole world is in flames, the whole world is consumed by fire, the whole world trembles. And with what is it burning? With the fire of desire, with the fire of aversion, with the fire of delusion.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
I do not know anything which, when unbridled, uncontrolled, unwatched, untamed, brings such ruin as thought, and I do not know anything which, when bridled, controlled, watched, tamed, brings such benefits as thought.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Appamāda (vigilance and austere concentration) constitutes the base of every virtue. An ascetic who delights in appamāda and who guards against mental laxity, will advance like a fire, burning every bond, both great and small. He cannot err.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
The decay of the body, in all its crudity, is considered as helpful to progress because, rather than depress the mind, it should awaken a detached consciousness capable of imagining with perfect calm and dispassion the fate of one’s own body after death.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
As the clouds arise, pass, become transformed and dissolve in the open sky, so also is it with the passions in the mind of the wise man.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
There remains only impassibility which is pure, clear, ductile, flexible, resplendent.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Concentration which knows neither increase nor decrease, which, because of its detached nature is constant, because of its constancy is full of bliss, and because of its bliss cannot be destroyed — such concentration has supreme Wisdom as its result.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
There is, O disciples, an unborn, not become, not compounded, not constructed. If there were not this unborn, not become, not compounded, not constructed, no escape could be seen here from that which is born, become, compounded, constructed.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Impressions are arrested at the limit of the senses. We become endowed with that form of silence that consists of not pronouncing either the exterior word or the interior word, and this in turn implies not hearing, not seeing, not imagining.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
If one day normal conditions were to return, few civilizations would seem as odd as the present one, in which every form of power over material things is sought, while mastery over one's own mind, one's own emotions is entirely overlooked.
Traditional Quotes and Symbols:
Being beyond existence and Bliss beyond sensation