Finding God in the Body Quotes

“Shantideva writes, “All enemies are helpers in my spiritual work and therefore they should be a joy to me.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“The only true joy on earth,” writes Merton, “is to escape from the prison of our own false-self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion.” ~ Albert Einstein”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Thoughts are only problematic when we mistake them for direct experience.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“When we take the present moment as our starting place, life is straightforward and easygoing.[145] Truth is self-existing. There is nothing to create or maintain. We accept the situation as it is and work with that. This is grace, and faith alone can enter the experience of grace because faith is silent.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“We intend to come back to ourselves as soon as everything calms down. We are running ourselves to death to create time for relaxation. Take a moment to consider the backwardness of this approach: to produce peace and calm we rely upon the causes of stress and anxiety. We are chasing stillness and worrying about peace of mind.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Life is change. Change is life. They are the same thing. Trying to organize impermanent phenomena into permanent categories of thought is a frustrating and impossible waste of energy.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Spiritual perfection is not defined by external demands. It is the heartfelt desire to be true to our Self and the degree of willingness with which we respond to that desire. The willingness to be honest with ourselves is the practical foundation of humility.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Meditation looks within, which is the practice of insight. Insight exposes the gap between reality and our thoughts. As a result, the seriousness we attribute to our thoughts diminishes.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“We watch the mind as it turns the present moment into a problem and entertains itself by chasing after a solution to the problem it just created.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“In fact, creative love is art—it is the aspect of love that lends shape to the unformed inspiration of our inner life.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Unconditional love is an expression of unconditional freedom.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“The word “crisis” comes from the Greek word krísis, meaning “a turning point.” A crisis is a crack in the false-self system, through which the light of our True Life”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“When asked to sum up the Buddha’s teachings in one phrase, Suzuki Roshi said, “Everything changes.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“clear conscience is a prerequisite for contemplative practice. You cannot come to the altar when you are not right with your fellow man.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Shantideva asks, “Is it easier to cover the world with leather or to put on a pair of shoes?”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“In meditation, we commit to reality by renouncing our escape plans. We will not stop running away from our suffering until we see there is nowhere to run. There are no other options, just what is. To retreat into what is not is to slip into self-deception, which is the way of suffering.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“rather than seeing this as a problem to be solved, just notice it and return to the present moment.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Transformation requires action. It takes practice. We have to learn how to sit with our experience: the good, the bad, and the boring. This skill is called meditation.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Spiritual practice moves beyond belief and theory and into the realm of action where change takes place.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” ~ Basho”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude,” Tillich concludes.[ 53] This is worth repeating: God is not a name for the highest of all beings, but a symbol for Being-Itself. This is God beyond god; Infinite Being beyond name and form. “God” does not exist; it is a symbol for existence itself. Thus, it is the final symbol, as it symbolizes the absolute center that is always everywhere.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Most of their claims do not hold water when subjected to critical analysis. But instead of taking the debunked claims of religious literalists as a poor reading of scripture, the New Atheist accepts the basic assumption of fundamentalism. They fervently reject the paranormal conclusions but accept the irrational method of interpretation that generated those claims. They accept the means but reject the end. This turns religion into a straw-man stuffed with wacky paranormal propositions. The New Atheist then demonstrates their intellectual superiority by knocking this straw man over. They set their considerable minds to the task of proving that hobbits don’t exist and that Narnia isn’t real.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“New Atheism is the strange bedfellow of religious fundamentalism. The fundamentalist and the New Atheist don’t agree on much but they do agree on one crucial point: religious literature should be interpreted literally. They both suffer from the idea that religion is to be treated as a set of truth-claims.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“However, for all of religion’s strengths, it has many drawbacks as well. When it gets wrapped up in unearthly concerns that cannot be verified by reason or direct experience, religion becomes a sedative that deadens us to the pain and dissatisfaction of this life by distracting us with the promise of the next. In a word, when religious symbols fail to point past themselves, religion denigrates into fundamentalism.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Believers agree with non-believers 99% of the time, the notable exception being the myths to which they subscribe.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside of you. What this suggests is that the interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our unconscious and our conscious. To put it plainly, our unconscious is God. God within us… If the reader is horrified by the idea that our unconscious is God, he or she should recall that the idea is hardly a heretical concept, being in essence the same as the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit which resides in us all.” ~ M. Scott Peck, M.D.[ 35]”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“If we look outside ourselves for the causes of our suffering, frustration follows. If we look at ourselves, we make progress. The proper function of the intellect is not to judge others, but to search ourselves for beliefs and behaviors that deviate from the truth of who we are. So when we apply the intellect to this end, we grow.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“In reality, we are not stuck. Happiness and suffering—peace, fear, love, anger, joy, jealousy, clarity, stress, depression, freedom, and addiction—arise from internal causes and conditions.[”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West

“Is it easier to cover the world with leather or to put on a pair of shoes?” Most of us are quick to proclaim the latter, but in practice subscribe to the former. “Everyone thinks of changing the world,” said Tolstoy, “but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Benjamin Riggs, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West