Inspiration and Quotes

“One evening at dusk, as I was returning to my room along a narrow path through the pine forest, carrying a blue plastic bucket slopping with water…I was abruptly brought to a halt by the upsurge of an overpowering sense of the sheer strangeness of everything. It was as though I had been lifted onto the crest of a great wave that rose from the ocean of life itself, allowing me for the first time to be struck by how mysterious it was that anything existed at all rather than nothing….The Buddhist texts…did not seem to speak about, let alone value, such experiences as the one that had just shuddered through me.”

-Confession of a Buddhist Atheist; New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010

“Meditation on impermanence, suffering, and no-self, for example, did not—as the Buddha insisted it would—lead me to disenchantment, dispassion, and a resolve not to be born again but to an ever-deepening awareness of life’s infinitely poignant beauty.”

-Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017

“The Buddha was not a mystic. His awakening was not a shattering insight into a transcendent Truth that revealed to him the mysteries of God. He did not claim to have had an experience that granted him privileged, esoteric knowledge of how the universe ticks…In describing…what his awakening meant, he spoke of having discovered complete freedom of heart and mind from the compulsions of craving.”

-Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening; New York: Riverhead Books, 1997

“O monks, during the six years that the Bodhisattva practiced austerities, the demon Papiyan followed behind him step by step, seeking an opportunity to harm him. But he found no opportunity whatsoever and went away discouraged and discontent.”

-The Lalitavistara Sutra; Berkeley, California: Dharma Publishing, 1983

“‘These ways are very ancient and very secret,’ Gopal concluded. ‘I have not seen them, but I am very interested and always talk about them. My vision and intention in this life is to worship Shiva in the mercury. All the faces of God are there.'”

-In search of the Medicine Buddha: a Himalayan journey; New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000

“Health is the best gift, contentment the best wealth, trust the best kinsman, nirvana the greatest joy.”

-The Dhammapada; Berkeley: Blue Mountain Center, 1985

“We must remember that the Buddha’s message was addressed to suffering man, to man caught in the net of transmigration. For the Buddha, as for all forms of Yoga, salvation could be gained only as a result of personal effort, of a concrete assimilation of truth. It was neighter a theory nor an escape into one or another kind of ascetic effort…”

-Yoga: Immortality and Freedom; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958

“These stories from Buddhism’s past also belong to a growing global archive of women’s stories that are currently being reported in other world religions and traditions, where to date women’s stories have similarly been forgotten, redacted, and suppressed…”

-Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life; Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 2016

“The monk Gautama went from meditating on his body to meditating on his feelings, and from meditating on his feelings to meditating on his perceptions, including all the thoughts which rose and fell in his own mind. He saw the oneness of body and mind, that each and every cell of the body contained all the wisdom of the universe.”

-Old path, white clouds: walking in the footsteps of the Buddha; Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1991

“I have achieved the miracle of taming myself. One who has tamed himself has no difficulty in taming others, whether that be a poisonous snake, a lion, or an elephant, or even the most vicious of men,” replied the Buddha.

-The Way of Siddhartha: A Life of the Buddha; Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1982

“Through direct spiritual experience, [these women] realized the truth in the phrase: ‘Look within, thou art the Buddha’…”

-The first Buddhist women: translations and commentary on the Therigatha; Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991

“…the bandit Angulimala, though running as fast as he could, could not catch up with the Blessed One, who was walking at his normal pace…Angulimala called out to the Blessed One: ‘Stop, recluse!’ ‘I have stopped, Angulimala, you stop, too…I have stopped forever, I abstain from violence towards living beings; But you have no restraint towards things that live: That is why I have stopped and you have not.'”

-The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya; Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1995

“Make up an entire mythology out of your own personality–people, animals, elements of nature-or just an inner paint box full of colors and shapes, and each time the shape or character appears in your life simply acknowledge and experience it with as much curiosity and independence as possible. As long as we remember that no single emotion defines us, we can gain enough presence of mind to bring playfulness and imagination to our emotional life, along with mindfulness, of course.”

-Buddha’s Nature: A Practical Guide to Discovering Your Place in the Cosmos; New York: Bantam Books, 1998

“Buddhism considers that there are four stages between waking and deep sleep, dreaming being the second one. We say that deep sleep is a rehearsal of death, whereas dreaming is a rehearsal of the intermediary stage between death and rebirth, or bardo. In this state, our mind casts up all sorts of images in the form of hallucinations that seem very real to us.”

-The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet; New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001

“There was no area of Tantric Buddhism in which women did not participate and attain mastery, including magical techniques and incantations, the performance of rituals, the visualization of deities and mandalas, advanced techniques of innter yoga, and the loftier realms of pure contempation and philosophical reflection.”

-Passionate enlightenment: women in Tantric Buddhism; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995

“…the concept that the seat of enlightenment rests upon…the womb or lap…of a female divinity reflects the widespread South Asian belief in the female as the generator of the poses essential to kingship, whether temporal or religious.”

-Buddhist goddesses of India; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006

“In many tales, [the Buddha’s wife] is highly individual, resourceful and sometimes tempestuous: indeed, her behaviour must have brought plenty of fireworks to enliven aeons of unfailing loyalty to her partner.”

-The Jatakas: birth stories of the Bodhisatta; Penguin Books India, 2006

“[Gautama] was a matter-of-fact person, and after his visit to Alara and Uddaka he had been confirmed in his conviction that it was a sterile occupation to spend all one’s time in trying to attain the state of Nothingness…The years of his ministry he spent instead in attempting an alleviation of the lot of his fellow men, often at the cost of considerable inconvenience to himself.”

-Gautama Buddha; Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994

“Your guru is your practice.”

-Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind; Boston: Shambhala, 2010

“The earliest conception of the nature of Buddha that we find is that he was a human being.”

-The life of Buddha as legend and history; New York: Dover Editions, 2000 (first publication 1927)

“What are the four [foundations of mindfulness]? Here, monks, a monk abides contemplating body as body, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world; he abides contemplating feelings as feelings…; he abides contemplating mind as mind…; he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind objects, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world.”

-The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya; Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1995

“Yet the questing spirit of the Creation Hymn never wholly disappeared, and in the 6th century BCE it bore fruit in a great wave of thought which was to alter the whole religious life of India.”

-The wonder that was India: a survey of the history and culture of the Indian sub-continent before the coming of the Muslims; New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1967

“No land on earth has such a long cultural continuity as India, since, though there were more ancient civilizations, notably in Egypt and Iraq, these were virtually forgotten by the inhabitants of those lands…until nobody remembered the Book of the Dead or the Epic of Gilgamesh…On the other hand in India the brahman still repeats in his daily worship Vedic hymns composed over 3,000years ago…”

-A Cultural History of India; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1975

“Finally, Kashi is described with the most spiritually reverberating term of Sanskrit philosophy: Brahman. This is the Supreme Reality, that which underlies and transcends all. Within the soul, it is called atman…And Brahman not only illumines the world without, it dwells within…’I am Kashi.’ It is this radical interiorization of the tirtha that has led some to conclude one need not go on a pilgrimage at all. The truly luminous place is to be found only within oneself.”

-Banaras: City of Light; New York: Columbia University Press, 1999

“[Maghada’s] location coincided with that of the sacred trails trodden by the Buddha and Mahavira; and its rise coincided with their followers’ concern for an accurate record of their masters’ lives and teachings. In consequence, a succession of authentic historical figures, together with a chain of related events, at last looms dimly from the myth smoke.”

-India: a history; New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2010

“The vedic texts do not throw much light on the political condition of the period which elapsed from the fall of the Videhan monarchy, probably early in the sixth century B.C., to the rise of Kosala under Mahakosala, the father-in-law of Bimbisara…But we learn from the Buddhist Anguttara Nikaya that during this period there were sixteen states of considerable extent and power…”

-Political History of Ancient India; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996

“It is better to blaze up, even for a moment, than to smolder forever with desire.”

-Mahabharata; Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1973

“The Truth upholds the fragrant Earth and makes the living water wet. Truth makes fire burn and the air move, makes the sun shine and all life grow. A hidden truth supports everything. Find it and win.”

-Ramayana; Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1976

“Then he took off a magnificent necklace and told a servant to take it to Kirsa Gautami…she looked at the necklace, moved. ‘Finally,’ she thought, ‘a message of love….’ Her friend hadn’t been paying her any attention for quite some time. She wept for joy, not realizing that the necklace was a gift of farewell.”

-Ka: stories of the mind and gods of India; New York: Vintage Books, 1999

“The Goddess is the source of all, the universal creator.”

-The Myths and Gods of India; Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1991

“It is not always appropriate to refer to shifts in religious affiliation, between Buddhism, Jainism, and the Vaishnava and Shaiva bhakti sects, as ‘conversion’; it is generally better to reserve that term for…religions that have jealous gods, like Islam and Christianity. For ordinary people in ancient South India, religious pluralism was more of a supermarket than a battlefield…”

-The Hindus: an alternative history; New York: The Penguin Press, 2009

“The earliest mythology of Rudra-Siva reveals a process of assimilation well under way; the dark outsider is already beginning to be included in the Vedic ritual, but he is still regarded warily, worshipped more in fear than in the spirit of devotion which came to characterize the later cult of Siva.”

-Hindu Myths; London: Penguin Books, 1975

From the Creation Hymn: “Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in highest heaven, only he knows, or perhaps he does not know.”

-The Rig Veda: an anthology; London: Penguin Books, 1981

“The most ancient hymns of the Rig-Veda are the basis upon which comparative mythology rests, and they have already supplied the means of unfolding the real source and signification of several Greek and Zoroastrian myths…”

-A classical dictionary of Hindu mythology and religion: geography, history, literature; New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1982

“Shakti, therefore, is the energizing power of deities that is marked as female and, reflecting the classical idea, in popular Hinduism the gods commonly require female consorts-their shaktis-in order to act…Goddesses can stand alone because they actually embody power as shakti and can therefore act by themselves.”

-The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and society in India; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992

“Affirmation of a unity underlying all goddesses is usually expressed in one of two ways. First, a particular goddess, such as Parvati or Lakshmi, will be affirmed at the highest deity or perhaps the consort of shakti of the highest deity, and all other goddesses will be understood as portions or manifestations of her…The second way in which the unity…is asserted is by assuming the existence of one transcendent great goddess who possesses most classical characteristics of ultimate reality as understood in the Hindu tradition and then subsuming all goddesses under her as partial manifestations…”

-Hindu goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu religious tradition; Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1986

From the introduction: “In one of the world’s earliest recorded philosophical dialogues, the Indian sage Yajnavalka pointed to the multiplicity of theological views concerning the number of gods in India. He then went on to show how, following different ways of enumerating them, each of these views could make sense. Much the same can be said about the religions of India.”

-Religions of India in practice; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995

“Krishna said: ‘You grieve in vain, Arjuna; the wise grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. For there is no time that I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these warriors: and there is not time we shall not exist hereafter. The body dies, but not the living spirit within it. Know this, and do your duty; without grief.'”

-Sons of gods: Mahabharata; Germany: Karna Books

From the Katha Upanisad:
“Know the self as a rider in a chariot,
and the body, as simply the chariot.
Know the intellect as the charioteer,
and the mind, as simply the reins.”

-Upanisads; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

“From fear comes all corruption.”

-7 Secrets of Shiva; Chennai: Westland Ltd, 2011

“Ancient Hindu seers knew myth as mithya. Mithya was truth seen through a frame of reference. Sat was truth independent of any frame of reference. Mithya was delusion, open to correction. Sat was truth, absolute and perfect…”

-Myth=mithya: a handbook of Hindu mythology; Penguin Books India, 2006

“With so many retellings and so widespread a popularity, some argue that the Mahabharata actually means the tale of the greatness of India, and not the great epic of India, for it contains all that has made Indians what they are—a tolerant people who value inner wisdom over outer achievement.”

-Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata; Haryana, India: Penguin Books, 2010

“Hindu mythology makes constant references to queerness, the idea that questions notions of maleness and femaleness. There are stories of men who become women, and women who become men, of men who create children without women, and women who create children without men, and of creatures who are neither this, nor that, but a little bit of both…”

-Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You; Delhi: Penguin Books, 2014

“One’s own dharma,
however badly done,
is a higher good than
another’s dharma,
however well done…”

-The Bhagavad Gita; London: Penguin Classica, 2008

From the preface: “…it is a strange and distant world the Mahabharata conjures…And yet I am repeatedly struck by parallels…between that world and our own. Perhaps most striking is the epic’s moral complexity.”

-Mahabharata: a modern retelling; New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015

“…the courtesan…played in cultural society an artistic role comparable to that of the hetaera of Pericles’ Athens or the geisha in Japan. She was an accomplished musician, dancer, actress, and singer, and she probably contributed more to the special grace and elegance of [Gupta] civilization than she will every be credited for…”

-Tales of Ancient India; New Delhi: Srishti Publishers, 2000

“To my surprise, the statue was not to be seen. I was about to return to the entrance of the tomb…when a slight sound made me spin round. There before my very eyes was the missing statue! But no, this figure moved; it was the living reality of the statue and it stood between me and the door of the chapel…”

-The Search for Omm Sety: Reincarnation and Eternal Love; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987

“Silence is absence, is nothingness. For the world to come into being silence has to be broken, ended, replaced. Even in this most modern of myths [the Big Bang], this creation by random accident, without intention or purpose, without a Grand Narrative or a divine directive, we still apparently need an articulation of sound; a noise, a very specific and precise moment in which the silence is broken.”

-A Book of Silence; Berkeley, Counterpoint, 2008

“Thang-Ta…is a martial art found in Manipur (northeast India)…It involves the practice of forms and use of unarmed techniques as well as weapons…Reference to mystical physiological concepts may appear that parallel [yoga]…However, distinctions between the goals of Yoga and Thang-Ta are clear.”

-Spiritual dimensions of the martial arts; Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1996

“Our young warriors are raised in possibly the only culture on the planet that thinks death is an option.”<br>”The ideal response to killing in war should be one similar to a mercy killing, sadness mingled with respect.” <br>”…the transcendent realm one reaches through violence is on that society says it condemns but in fact celebrates everywhere, on film, on television, and in the news.”

-What it is like to go to war; New York: Grove Press, 2011

“This claim [that studying the martial arts leads to aggression] runs directly counter to the common statement of martial artists that their study of the martial arts has led them to become more moral, more nonviolent, more peaceful, and less aggressive.”

-The Overlook martial arts reader: classic writings on philosophy and technique; Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1989

From the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said: ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.'”

-Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas; New York: Vintage Books, 2003

“…the experience of some hardship or difficulty is critical to the development of Ego strength. Whether or not the externals of our lives are difficult, the period of preparation for the journey often seems very hard—if only because we do not yet possess the skills that can make life easier.”

-Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World; San Francisco: Harper, 1991

“Another scene, found on more than one seal and on clay tablets from Harappa, shows a female figure…holding apart two tigers…”

-Tiger: the ultimate guide; New York: CDS Books, 2004

“His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.”

-Lord of Light; New York: Avon, 1976

“I recommend never adopting the attitude toward one’s spiritual teacher of seeing his or her every action as divine or noble…if one has a teacher who…is engaging in unsuitable or wrong behavior, then it is appropriate for the student to criticize that behavior…” The Dalai Lama in an essay by Katy Butler, “Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America.”

-Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature; New York: Putnam, 1991

“…It is helpful to understand that meditation is not just about feeling good…Meditaiton takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity…Trying to fix ourselves is not helpful. It implies struggle and self-denigration…”

-The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times; Boston: Shambhala, 2001

“Mindfulness…is not shackled to logic. Nevertheless, mindfulness can be experienced-rather easily-and it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the thing itself.”

-Mindfulness in Plain English; Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991

“At the end of a long life dedicated to teaching mindfulness, the Buddha, who probably had his share of followers who were hoping he might make it easier for them to find their own paths, summed it up for his disciples this way: ‘Be a light unto yourself.’ ”

-Wherever you go, there you are; New York: Hachette Books, 1994

“When I use the word awakening in this book, I mean the development of mindfulness, the evolutionary process of expanding consciousness, and not a perfected static state of bliss.”

-Writing as a Path to Awakening; Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True, 2017

“Sometimes, when I’m in the midst of writing, I feel like I am suddenly walking on one of those moving sidewalks that you find in a big airport terminal; I still have a long slog to my gate, and my baggage is still heavy, but I can feel myself being gently propelled by some exterior force. Something is carrying me along-something wonderful and generous-and that something is decidedly not me.”

-Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear; New York: Riverhead Books, 2015

“…I can tell which [students] are really on and present at a given time in their writing. They are more intensely involved and their bodies are hanging loose…In writing, when you are truly on, there’s no writer, no paper, no pen, no thoughts…”

-Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within; Boston: Shambhala, 1986

“The fear of writing badly, of revealing something you would rather keep hidden, of losing the good opinion of the world, of violating your own high standards, or discovering something about yourself that you would just as soon not know–those are just a few of the phantoms scary enough to make the writer wonder if there might be a job available washing skyscraper windows. All of which bring up yet another reason to read. Literature is an endless source of courage and confirmation.”

-Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want To Write THem; New York: HarperCollins, 2006

“You need to know who has privilege and who doesn’t regardless of whether your characters are modern American blacks and whites, or ancient Roman citizens and slaves and barbarians, or different socioeconomic classes of Alpha Centaurean gas-bag intelligences.”

-Writing the Other: A Practical Approach; Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2005

“But the truth is that between sophisticated advertising and national-level politics, I am at a loss as to what people’s use of language is now meant to convey and connote to the receiver. It’s so different from the way I myself am wired that I just don’t get it…”

-Quack This Way; Dallas: Rosepen, 2013

“We must remember that the Buddha’s message was addressed to suffering man, to man caught in the net of transmigration. For the Buddha, as for all forms of Yoga, salvation could be gained only as a result of personal effort, of a concrete assimilation of truth. It was neighter a theory nor an escape into one or another kind of ascetic effort…”

-Yoga: Immortality and Freedom; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958

“I have often said that yoga is meditation and meditation is yoga. Meditation is the stilling of the movements of consciousness…When you ruffle the waters, you create. You create everything in the manifest world, from nuclear war to Mozart’s syphonies. The yogi is journeying in the opposite direction, from the world of things and events…because [she] wants to answer the question, ‘Who am I?'”

-Light on Life; Rodale, 2005

“Yoga is an ocean of lore and this book is a drop in it.”

-Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali; London: Thorsons, 1996

“Philosophically speaking, inhalation is the movement of the self to come into contact with the periphery: the core of being moves with the breath and touches the inner layer of the skin…This is the outward or evolutory process of the soul. Exhalation is the return journey: it is the involutory process, where the body, the cells and the intelligence move inwards to reach their source, the atma, or the core of being. This evolutory and involutory process within each individual is pranayama.”

-The Tree of Yoga; Boston: Shambala, 2002

“The sacred feminine can be nurturing but also appropriately ruthless, chaotic, and orderly…Sacred feminism wants to embrace everything that is beautiful in the feminine, as well as everything that is terrifying.”

-Awakening Shakti: the transformative power of the goddesses of yoga; Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True

“Explorations within the subtle body are something like cultivating a garden ‘where strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.’…I have found that the real joy of discovery occurs in the multiple and intricate connections to be made in the body-mind, connections that ultimately provide a profound sense of wholeness and integration.”

-Yoga of the Subtle Body: A Guide to the Physical and Energetic Anatomy of Yoga; Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 2016

“The first level of stillness is about being with yourself in order to know yourself…The second level of stillness involves living your daily life with this new and growing inner certainty of who you really are: in other words, meditation in action.”

-Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness; New York: Pocket Books, 1996

“…recent studies have made it amply clear that yoga, in its dissemination in the Western world, has undergone radical transformation in response to the differing worldviews, logical predispoaitions, and aspirations of modern audiences. These modern forms…it is also evident, were the result of a reframing of pracices and belief frameworks within India itself over the last 150 years…”

-Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010

“Your guru is your practice.”

-Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind; Boston: Shambhala, 2010

“…why is it that not a single yogi in [tales of sinister yogis] is ever seen assuming a yogic posture (asana); controlling his breath, senses, and mind; engaging in meditation (dhyana); or realizing transcendent states of consciousness (samadhi)–all of the practices of what has been deemed ‘classical yoga’? If these be yogis, then what is yoga?”

-Sinister Yogis; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009

“In fact, a healthy and balanced amount of desire, attachment, and even ego, can be shown to be necessary, inseparable aspects of life with purpose and use…it may be wiser to learn to live intelligently with these inherent dimensions of ourselves rather than to try to annihilate them.”

-Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice; Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2007