(no subject)
Meme from my friend bobby1933
You leave me a comment to this post and I will ask you a question. You put the question I ask and your answer to it up in your own journal with the text of this master post at the top as an explanation. Your responsibility is to then ask a question of anyone who comments on your post. That person is then responsible for putting the question you asked of them and their answer to it into their journal. And the questions keep getting asked and answered, passed member to member through the community. In the end, this should propagate a whole bunch of interesting questions and answers by different members of the community!
His question to me was: Aside from Rumi, and not counting artists and composers, who, for you, is the most inspiring mystic? (you may name more than one.)
I'm glad I don't have to pick just one.
My first choice is the Catholic saint who I have been very close to since I was 16 years old. I have written about my personal connection with her throughout my journal (which always remains fully viewable to my friends) as well as favorite quotes from her. Here is a personal favorite: “To be His, one must remain little, little like a drop of dew! ... Oh! how few are the souls who aspire to remain little in this way!”
Other favorites along with favorite thoughts of theirs:
Jesus - "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you."
the Buddha - "Life is suffering."
Huang-Po - “Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, actions, ignorance, or knowledge. In it there are no things, no people, and no Buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price.”
Plato - “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing,”
Yogananda Paramahansa - “Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.”
Abu Yazi al-Bistami - “I sloughed off my self as a snake sloughs off its skin. Then I looked into myself and saw that I am He.”
Meister Eckhart - “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me, my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
William Blake - “To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
Rainer Maria Rilke - "We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it
is not against 'us'. If it has terrors, they are 'our' terrors; if
it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we
must try to love them. And only if we arrange our lives in
accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always
trust in the difficult, what now appears to us as the most alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we
forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races,
the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into
princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who
are only waiting to se us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love."
Kalil Gibran - “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.
For love is sufficient unto love.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which part and particle is equally related, the eternal One.”
I know I’m skipping a lot, but these are the ones that come to mind tonight.
You leave me a comment to this post and I will ask you a question. You put the question I ask and your answer to it up in your own journal with the text of this master post at the top as an explanation. Your responsibility is to then ask a question of anyone who comments on your post. That person is then responsible for putting the question you asked of them and their answer to it into their journal. And the questions keep getting asked and answered, passed member to member through the community. In the end, this should propagate a whole bunch of interesting questions and answers by different members of the community!
His question to me was: Aside from Rumi, and not counting artists and composers, who, for you, is the most inspiring mystic? (you may name more than one.)
I'm glad I don't have to pick just one.
My first choice is the Catholic saint who I have been very close to since I was 16 years old. I have written about my personal connection with her throughout my journal (which always remains fully viewable to my friends) as well as favorite quotes from her. Here is a personal favorite: “To be His, one must remain little, little like a drop of dew! ... Oh! how few are the souls who aspire to remain little in this way!”
Other favorites along with favorite thoughts of theirs:
Jesus - "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you."
the Buddha - "Life is suffering."
Huang-Po - “Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, actions, ignorance, or knowledge. In it there are no things, no people, and no Buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price.”
Plato - “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing,”
Yogananda Paramahansa - “Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.”
Abu Yazi al-Bistami - “I sloughed off my self as a snake sloughs off its skin. Then I looked into myself and saw that I am He.”
Meister Eckhart - “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me, my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
William Blake - “To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
Rainer Maria Rilke - "We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it
is not against 'us'. If it has terrors, they are 'our' terrors; if
it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we
must try to love them. And only if we arrange our lives in
accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always
trust in the difficult, what now appears to us as the most alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we
forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races,
the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into
princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who
are only waiting to se us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love."
Kalil Gibran - “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.
For love is sufficient unto love.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which part and particle is equally related, the eternal One.”
I know I’m skipping a lot, but these are the ones that come to mind tonight.