Wise Quotes Collection

[Urizen]

What attracted me to the Suzuki quote was the similarity of :

First there is a mountain...
Then there is no mountain...
Then there is...

Same analogy

As far as being "modern" or "ancient" , true wisdom is timeless, and can be transmitted regardless of past/present/future, as time is a tool and ultimately non-existent...

Correct; but the modernist deviation is the work of time. Timeless truth can and does speak through individuals born into the modern age, but nonetheless there are certain confusions and heterodoxies peculiar to the modern age, which distort and misrepresent perrenial wisdom.

It is actually a good quotation. Perceptive of essentials. The intention was not to criticise Suzuki, but to caution against the error of anti-rationalism, which some might derive from that particular quotation. So many people have been mislead by the general idea that transcendence means a kind of vague uniformity or nullification: unicity nullifies duality, absolute reality nullifies relative reality, independent being nullifies dependent being, singularity nullifies multiplicity; or in this case, rational thought, in transcendence, is nullified by what we might call direct perception or Intuition, wheras it is actually just subordinated to Intuition. The point is to soar above reason, not to abandon it, which is to sink below it. We keep reason fully intact, just as reason keeps sensation.

Likewise, the daughters of time, while illusory in nature, are not nullified by the transcedence of time; they do not lose any value, truth, beauty or goodness that shines through them. Time was made to manifest eternity, just as the darkness glorifies the light.

[Urizen]

Thanks.
You gave us a bunch of bad guys and a bunch of good guys (good to see the worms got a gong).

Now we've got the victim element:
It's uncanny how that trio turns up in all the conversations.
what would we do without them.

Looks like another job for the Complaints Department.

The ego is merely reacting. The anger will subside shortly. The truth it now despises to hear will remain lodged in the mind. When this conversation is forgotten, it will resurface to the understanding; not knowing whence it came, you will think it your own thought. And you will see that it is true. What you despised to hear from the lips of another, will now be assimilated into your being.

Which recalls an aphorism: "Opposition is true friendship."

[Dennis Mahar]

you provided a bunch of goodies, a bunch of baddies and a bunch of victims.
So what?
it's not new.
It's what you provided.
old script hangin' around.
a format.
a soapbox for rhetoricians.

take it to Complaints.

The ego is merely reacting. The anger will subside shortly.

Quit pulling that stunt.

[Urizen]

.
So what?
it's not new.
It's what you provided

Let only the truth speak itself; take no thought of flattering the ego with novelty, originality, or uniqueness. The truth is greater than all the vanities of this world. Receive the truth, and originality will come of itself - in art, poetry, music, or any other creative striving. Novelty and originality exist only to glorify Eternity.

[Urizen]

"The singing of a bird came from the sky;
The world had been a dream; the song was I."

Frithjof Schuon

[Cahoot]

Anyone who represents nullification as transcendence, however 'enlightened' he makes himself out to be, is a liar and a charlatan.

Assuming that the words “liar” and “charlatan” are attempts to nullify (negate), then according to the statement, attempting to nullify the “anyone” straw man by labeling it a liar and a charlatan, transforms the labeler into the referenced “anyone.”

The obvious logical conclusion, according to your own cosmology, is that you are a liar and a charlatan.

The logical alternative out of this conundrum of ignorance that you created for yourself is to say that your statement is not transcendence, but is simply a statement of nullification based on a belief assigned by you to a straw man.

There are words that describe this kind of myopia.

You could also attempt to make a logical assertion that the words “liar” and “charlatan” are not meant to nullify, or you could premise that they are simple statements of fact, spontaneous as bird tweets and made by no one, but then you would be venturing into the territory where words are just words, center row seat in the theater of the absurd. There’s a place for that or else it wouldn’t be, but other than as a cautionary tale of error, that place is not to be found within logical discourse.

Transcendence is when truth of who you are supersedes the world of conflict, duality and nullification that is mind's own creation.

Transcendence is to see you for who you really are, despite whatever your cosmological mirror defines you to be.

Transcendence subsumes duality in the same way that the transcendental fish is aware of the water in which it lives.

“Once you label me, you negate me.”
- Kierkegaard

Once you label yourself …

[Urizen]

Assuming that the words “liar” and “charlatan” are attempts to nullify (negate), then according to the statement, attempting to nullify the “anyone” straw man by labeling it a liar and a charlatan, transforms the labeler into the referenced “anyone.”

And you nullify yourself with such serpentine sophistries. You only blaspheme yourself, God.

[Cahoot]

Only your inner conflict makes it seem that way.

Read slowly. Focus. The statement is logically simple and easy to comprehend.

Often what aids comprehension is to return later to what inner conflict of mind cannot initially grasp.
Of course, reading in context does improve initial comprehension.

[Urizen]

"I am like a watry bow, and like a parting cloud;
Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows in the water;
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face;
Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gentle hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time."

William Blake

[Urizen]

Only your inner conflict makes it seem that way.

Read slowly. Focus. The statement is logically simple and easy to comprehend.

Often what aids comprehension is to return later to what inner conflict of mind cannot initially grasp.
Of course, reading in context does improve initial comprehension.

Your nihilism is nothing but the negative reverse image of the truth, your sophistry is simply the inversion of the correct formulation. And every lie is a glorification of truth.

[Cahoot]

Don’t worry about it.

You’ll like this tune better.

Esperanza Spalding | Little Fly music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2JRGv91urY

[Cahoot]

“Out of my confusion, bewilderment, uncertainty, the feeling of being incapable of clarity - out of this I act. I choose a leader; I choose a certain course of action; and I commit myself to a particular activity, but that activity, that pattern of action, the pursuit of a particular mode of thought is the result of my confusion. If I'm not confused, if there is no confusion whatsoever, then there is no choice; I see things as they are. I act not on choice."

ergo*

“A mind capable of choosing is really a very confused mind.”

New York 3rd Public Talk 30th September 1966
http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/19 ... ublic-talk

[Urizen]

"The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between the Real and the illusory. The essential function of the will is attachment to the Real. This discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of spirituality. This and nothing else is the religion of the sages."

Frithjof Schuon

[Urizen]

"The machine is opposed to man, consequently it is opposed to God; in a world where it poses as norm, it abolished both the human and the Divine. One of the greatest successes of the devil was to create around man surroundings in which God and immortality appear unbelievable."

Frithjof Schuon

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Damn them machines. Damn genius forums and the interwebs to hell, may the devil take them!

[Urizen]

Damn them machines. Damn genius forums and the interwebs to hell, may the devil take them!

True, though it is not so much any particular technology that is destructive to humanity and spirituality, but the technological system as such. Ellul is quite enlightening on this subject.

[Cahoot]

The alternative to technology is merciless nature. Is technology a less merciful master of slaves?

[Urizen]

The alternative to technology is merciless nature. Is technology a less merciful master of slaves?

Don't worry, the system will destroy itself; we'll figure out the alternative if we survive it.

[Cahoot]

Oh I’m not worried. ;)

Imagine what tools the pre-Luddite crows might invent if they had hands with opposable thumbs.

Are crows the ultimate problem solvers? - Inside the Animal Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVaITA7eBZE

[Cahoot]

One possibility: they would invent more efficient stomachs for themselves (eventually) so they wouldn’t have to spend all their time eating and could invent more things, then they’d get too fat to fly which would transform the brilliant invention into a curse. Cursed, they would either devolve into easy pickings or transcend these self-imposed limitations. What are the odds.

“This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that's what it is. Blind alley, though. If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.”
- Robert Pirsig

[Urizen]

One possibility: they would invent more efficient stomachs for themselves (eventually) so they wouldn’t have to spend all their time eating and could invent more things, then they’d get too fat to fly which would transform the brilliant invention into a curse. Cursed, they would either devolve into easy pickings or transcend these self-imposed limitations. What are the odds.

You joke about it so that you don't have to think about it very deeply. You are afraid that if you thought about it, what you wish were false may be found to be true.

“This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that's what it is. Blind alley, though. If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.”
- Robert Pirsig

Yes, falsehood doesn't solve anything. Knowledge is 'ingratitude' only in the eyes of a tyrant. That which is destructive of humanity is not worthy of human gratitude. The truth doesn't owe anything to anyone.

The techophile may feel that his blindly idealistic conception of technology is not being accorded sufficient 'gratitude' by its critics, but the only real ingratitude on display here is that of the technophile towards nature. Be grateful to the worm, not the atom bomb. The worm is an infinitely greater thing than every scrap of technology combined.

[Cahoot]

Ripe conditions.

The need, the hook, the line, and the sinker.

[Cahoot]

The premise that technology destroys humanity, when humanity is defined as the human race, is unsubstantiated.

Do a head count, or count feet and divide by two.
To the resulting number add the footless and an estimate of the undetected to empirically reveal that technology has increased the amount of humanity walking and riding around on the planet.

The premise that technology destroys “humanity,” when humanity is defined as benevolence, is also unsubstantiated.

One has to wonder at the motives of these nullifiers of technology who play word games to project their own assertions as motives for others, that technology only exists to nullify Luddites.

Fact is, technology yawns at the nullifying Luddites.

:D

[Urizen]

The premise that technology destroys humanity, when humanity is defined as the human race, is unsubstantiated.

Do a head count, or count feet and divide by two.

Three things can be said to that. First, the population may be quantitatively increasing, but humanity is qualitatively deteriorating; material increase is not equivalent to spiritual elevation. The more that Quantity exceeds the functional or aesthetic minimum, the lower the quality of the resulting structure, whether it be the bricks of a building or the individuals comprising a human collectivity. Beyond certain limits, quantity tends to be antagonistic to quality. The second point: one is not justified in killing a million people, if there are two million more humans a generation later. Individuals are not interchangeable. And finally: it is fatally short-sighted to assume that the astronomical increase of the human population is not ultimately destructive to the species.

To the resulting number add the footless and an estimate of the undetected to empirically reveal that technology has increased the amount of humanity walking and riding around on the planet.

Yes, one of the particularly disastrous effects of technology is overpopulation - thanks for conceding this point, by the way.

The premise that technology destroys “humanity,” when humanity is defined as benevolence, is also unsubstantiated.

Nuclear warfare and mass extinction are not acts of benevolence.

One has to wonder at the motives of these nullifiers of technology

The motive is truth, which is more interesting than speculating about people's motives.

Fact is, technology yawns at the nullifying Luddites.

Of course technology is mindlessly indifferent to human welfare. All the more reason to oppose it.

[Cahoot]

“The motive is truth …”

Since the motive is truth, you must look beyond your conditioned beliefs and circular reasoning for evidence of the belief-based assertions.

A belief and circular reasoning that uses the belief as evidence to support the legitimacy of the belief is an absurdity that only works when you preach to the choir.

There’s a center row seat in a theater for such games, but it’s not the theater of the rational.

The condition of humanity at present is: more people, better fed, with a longer life expectancy. Plus, room for a lot more.

Indeed, because of technology there is so much food and the capacity for so much more that obesity is becoming a world-wide health concern in both industrialized and third-world regions. To blame technology for this condition is evidence of the aforementioned error in reasoning.

That some people are hungry in this world of abundance reveals the consequence of politicking and ineffectual food distribution systems, not over population. Politics that demonize, and food distribution that does not intend to feed the hungry, are indictments of ignorance, not technology.

And even if the ignorance is overcome, people still must overcome the comfortable herd mentality of habit. For example, when fresh produce is introduced to the food deserts of urban U.S., it rots on the shelf.

Despite the assertions of conditioning, just as human welfare does not equate to Luddism, pockets of high population density do not equate to human overpopulation. To imply that it does, using belief or myopia as evidence, proves nothing more than an unquestioning preference for that flavor of propaganda.

Despite resistance to this factual evidence, a resistance likely born of a love/hate conflict with technology that affects perception and judgment, the trajectory of humanity since the good old cave days has been progress, not self-destruction.

Fact-denying, belief-based chimeras concerning the quality of that progress have their place or they would not be, and in the days before technology afforded soapbox preachers and others with a platform, the place of belief-based beliefs was more of a personal matter, and a self-assessed personal failing for the honest with an interest in awakening.

No need to hit yourself in the head with the hammer provided by technology. Simply say, thank you the gifts,
Technology. For Technology is only guilty of not measuring up to your fantasies. But really, what ever does?

:D