just be it It’s about the work involved in establishing a dedicated practice to feelings of a bigger belonging through practices aimed at increasing feelings of compassion, gratitude and forgiveness

Quotes on ‘Being’

Published on 24/11/08
by randy

I’m looking for more quotes from you or writers who’ve inspired you in verbally trying to aim to a sense of ‘being’.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi describes it as follows in Returning to Silence When you want to express the total function of a thing, say a fish when it swims in the water, the function of the fish is exactly one with the function of the water.  That is why you cannot see exactly the total function of the fish becoming one with the water.  But real fish is no-discrimination-between-water-and-fish.  They are one, but they are not one because they are two, but they are not two.  They are really working together, so we can say, “Looks like a fish.”  “Looks like a fish” means it is not exactly a fish.  If this is true is it water?  No, it is not water, it’s a fish, but it’s not a fish.  It is just oneness.  This is called “looks like just going, looks like just coming.”   P. 35

From The Protean Body by Don Johnson

…I walked out onto a dock in the Gulf of Mexico.  I ceased to exist.  I experienced being a part of the sea breeze, the movement of the water and the fish, the light rays cast by the sun, the colors of the palms and tropical flowers.  I had no sense of past or future.  It was not a particularly blissful experience: it was terrifying.  It was the kind of ecstatic experience I’d invested a lot of energy in avoiding. I did not experience myself as the same as the water, the wind, and the light, but as participating with them in the same system of movement.  We were all dancing together.

In The Silent Pulse, George Leonard writes:

At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, made up of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe.  The act of getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way alter the world around us.  P. 11

A Course in Miracles describes it as follows:

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself.  This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes hoped for in special relationships.  It is a sense of actual escape from limitations.  If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it.  It becomes part of you, as you unite with it.  And both become whole, as neither is perceived as separate.  What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union.  The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed you, and unites with it.  And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It.  You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it.  You have accepted this instead of the body, and have let yourself be one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be limited by it.  Chapter 18, v. 11-12

Gratefulness, by Brother David Steindl Rast describes it as follows:

If we want to know what God says in a tomato, we must look at a tomato, feel it, smell it, bite into it, have the juice and seeds squirt all over us when it pops.  We must savor it and learn this tomato poem ‘by heart’.

The New Being, by Paul Tillich, touches it with these words:

Life accepts you; life loves you as a separated part of itself; life wants to reunite you with itself, even when it seems to destroy you.

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