christopher leibow > christopher's Quotes

“In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream.”
― Tom Waits

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
― Richard Lingard, A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University Concerning His Behaviour and Conversation in the World

“Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn’t we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn’t have made. Real healing won’t begin until we stop saying, “God prevented this or that.” Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don’t take chances. Or, we don’t work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can’t be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“There are a great number of ego defenses, and the combinations and circumstances in which we use them reflect on our personality. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum of its ego defenses, which are constantly shaping, upholding, protecting, and repairing it.
The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home.”
― Neel Burton, Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception

“I have learned to walk lighthearted among the "dead.”
― Leibow, christopher

“Enlightenment was not just Gautama Buddha's, but you too, individually, must find this new perspective of life, this new point of view in your life and in all things." -”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“There is no "I" as such apart from others.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“When we are truly able to see and understand life, its reality, its value and beauty as well as its troubles, we are able to accept life dynamically and walk its path with appreciation and gratitude. This way of life is Buddhism.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“Acceptance IS transcendence.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“The reality of nature, the reality of life is oneness. But we humans have such a strong egotistic nature. We are the ones who create dualism; we are the ones who talk about two sides: front and back, right and wrong, me and you. As soon as life is dichotomized, tension is created.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“Oneness and individuality coexist. There is no question about the importance and uniqueness of each individual life. However, difference is no difference. The very difference is equality, is one.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“Everything changes; nothing is permanent.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“Only when I see myself truly is Gautama Buddha is present in me.”
― Gyomay M Kubose

“Enlightenment was not just Gautama Buddha's, but you too, individually, must find this new perspective of life, this new point of view in your life and in all things.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“What we usually think of as the self is very temporal and an illusion.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, The Center Within

“Forget self pity, live life! Be the artist of your own life.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“May we be free of the tyranny of our expectations of others.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“We do not understand that we are literally able to live and enjoy life only because of other people and things. If one really understands this truth, he cannot help but become humble and appreciate others.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“It is a great mistake to say ”Conquer it,” for we can never conquer nature; we can only harmonize with it.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“We must find the way of love rather than that of being loved.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“In the nembutsu we see and feel the Buddha everywhere and in everything. Life itself becomes the unfolding of Buddha”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“Modern man has too many masks to wear. We must unmask and be ourselves, sincerely, earnestly and live truly as we are,”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“...“living in oneness with Buddha’s teaching, is a creative life in which everything becomes meaningful.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“In each time, in each place, in each life, there is absolute value and beauty”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“Concepts are not real things; a conceptualized world is a dead world. Living actualities lose their life when put into concepts.”
― Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living

“Who am I? I am not nothing but this moment in the flow of life. This flow of life is not in my control; it is the life of the universe itself. The life of the universe flows in me and I just flow with this life and that is myself.”
― Kiyozawa Manshi

“There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night