John Dunphy

“The centipede was happy, quite, Until a toad in fun Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?” This worked his mind to such a pitch, He lay distracted in a ditch, Considering how to run.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Way of Zen

“When you listen to someone speak, or when you speak yourself, bring some attention to the silent space between the sounds. Can you sense in the same way a figure is dependent on the background that sound is dependent on silence? Without silence, sound would have no meaning.”
― Chris Niebauer, No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart...”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

“We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in comparing, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because, at the end of your ambition, you are either a so-called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.”
― J. Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness