Dharma: General

Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how do you go about finding it? What should you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you refuse to accept? What should you love?

(WCZ 99)

No road, no path,

No land marks

Show the way there.

You must go by the stars.

(CP 319)

It is most important first of all to understand deeply and live one’s own tradition, not confusing it with what is foreign to it, if one is to seriously appreciate other traditions and distinguish in them what is close to one’s own and what is, perhaps, irreconcilable with one’s own. The great danger at the moment is a huge muddling and confusing of the spiritual traditions that still survive.

(WF 313)

The Master said: “Where you do not understand, there is the point for your understanding.”

(ZBA 53)

Faith means doubt. Faith is not the suppression of doubt. It is the overcoming of doubt, and you overcome doubt by going through it.

(AJ 306)

When the right moment arrives, even one who seems incapable of any instruction whatever will become mysteriously aware of Tao.

(WCZ 31)

What is important is not liberation from the body but liberation from the mind. We are not entangled in our own body but entangled in our own mind.

(AJ 90)

You never find happiness until you stop looking for it.

(WCZ 101)

The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship.

(WCZ 43)

Great knowledge sees all in one.

Small knowledge breaks down into the many.

(WCZ 40)

The whole meaning of the Great Learning is that right action depends on the awareness of the person acting.

(MZM 60, italics Merton’s)

We can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment. . . . You cannot rely on structures. The time for relying on structures has disappeared.

(AJ 338)

Don’t read anything that robs you of sleep: sleep is better than reading.

(HGL 633)

Wisdom

I studied it and it taught me nothing.

I learned it and soon forgot everything else:

Having forgotten, I was burdened with knowledge —

The insupportable knowledge of nothing.

How sweet my life would be, if I were wise!

Wisdom is well known

When it is no longer seen or thought of.

Only then is understanding bearable.

(CP 279)