love

watched house the other night. not a regular viewer, but will on occasion when i feel like vegging out and nothing else is on (that's what happens when you don't have cable). but i loved this exchange:

"he isn't in love with me, he just thinks he is." - female doctor

"it's the same thing." - house

perception is speculative

the belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of "physical reality" indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. it follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. we must always be ready to change these notions - that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics - in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way logically.
- einstein

the light from which everything in the universe comes

remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. the natural state of the universe unmanifest.
let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. it is your own true nature, it is home.
- tibetan book of the dead

observe life for what it is

so much fear and desire come from that commitment to "i am" - to being somebody. eventually they take us to anxiety and despair; life seems much more difficult and painful than it really is.
but when we just observe life for what it is, then it’s all right: the delights, the beauty, the pleasures are just that.
-ajahn sumedho, "seeing the way"

every man is more than just himself

every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.
-hermann hesse

incredibly sad...

but life is beautiful.
here, from within my heart, i make the vow to shun all evil - to achieve the good. from deep within my heart i seek my refuge.
-buddha

what are you grateful for in this moment?

that very seeing does not see
itself at all.
how can something that cannot see itself
see another?
-nagarjuna

see everyone as buddha

see everyone as buddha. this purifies the mind of ignorance and arrogance.
-master baek, "polishing the diamond"

holding onto anger

holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
-buddha

way of the mind

the world is apprehended by way of the mind
the world is acted upon by way of the mind
and all good things and bad
exist in the world by way of the mind.
-samyutta nikaya

peace

peace comes from within. do not seek it without.
-buddha

passion overwhelms the mind

as rain penetrates an improperly shingled roof, so passion overwhelms a confused mind.
-buddha

who is buddha?

buddha is no longer buddha when you enclose him in your mind - buddha becomes only your mind's discriminative notion.
- jae woong kim, "polishing the diamond"

attachment

attachment is the mind stuck to an object.
-lama zopa rinpoche, the door to satisfaction

dr. ecstasy

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30ECSTASY.html?ex=1264827600&en=edb29c075c8aceed&ei=5090
great article on alexander shulgin. excerpt:
It was an acquaintance of Shulgin's named Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist and researcher into the effects of mescaline and LSD, who coined the word ''psychedelic'' in the late 1950's for a class of drugs that significantly alter one's perception of reality. Derived from Greek, the term translates as ''mind manifesting'' and is preferred by those who believe in the curative power of such chemicals. Skeptics tend to call them hallucinogens.
Shulgin is in the former camp. There's a story he likes to tell about the past 100 years: ''At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only two psychedelic compounds known to Western science: cannabis and mescaline. A little over 50 years later -- with LSD, psilocybin, psilocin, TMA, several compounds based on DMT and various other isomers -- the number was up to almost 20. By 2000, there were well over 200. So you see, the growth is exponential.'' When I asked him whether that meant that by 2050 we'll be up to 2,000, he smiled and said, ''The way it's building up now, we may have well over that number.''
The point is clear enough: the continuing explosion in options for chemical mind-manifestation is as natural as the passage of time. But what Shulgin's narrative leaves out is the fact that most of this supposedly inexorable diversification took place in a lab in his backyard. For 40 years, working in plain sight of the law and publishing his results, Shulgin has been a one-man psychopharmacological research sector. (Timothy Leary called him one of the century's most important scientists.) By Shulgin's own count, he has created nearly 200 psychedelic compounds, among them stimulants, depressants, aphrodisiacs, ''empathogens,'' convulsants, drugs that alter hearing, drugs that slow one's sense of time, drugs that speed it up, drugs that trigger violent outbursts, drugs that deaden emotion -- in short, a veritable lexicon of tactile and emotional experience. And in 1976, Shulgin fished an obscure chemical called MDMA out of the depths of the chemical literature and introduced it to the wider world, where it came to be known as Ecstasy.
In the small subculture that truly believes in better living through chemistry, Shulgin's oeuvre has made him an icon and a hero: part pioneer, part holy man, part connoisseur. As his supporters point out, his work places him in an old, and in many cultures venerable, tradition. Whether it's West African iboga ceremonies or Navajo peyote rituals, 60's LSD culture or the age-old cultivation of cannabis nearly everywhere on the planet it can grow, the pursuit and celebration of chemically-induced alternate realms of consciousness goes back beyond the dawn of recorded history and has proved impossible to fully suppress. Shulgin sees nothing strange about devoting his life to it. What's strange to him is that so few others see fit to do the same thing.

suffering is caused by ignorance

as a buddhist monk my concern extends to all members of the human family and, indeed, to all sentient beings who suffer. i believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. people inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
-his holiness the dalai lama, nobel peace prize acceptance speech, oslo, december 1989

existence is not mutuallly exclusive

what is meant by nonduality, mahatmi? it means that light and shade, long and short, black and white, can only be experienced in relation to each other; light is not independent of shade, nor black of white. there are no opposites, only relationships. in the same way, nirvana and the ordinary world of suffering are not two things but related to each other. there is no nirvana except where the world of suffering is; there is no world of suffering apart from nirvana. for existence is not mutuallly exclusive.
-lankavatara sutra

scarred but smarter

are you kidding me with that? i can't do it anymore. trapped in delusions, i'm waking up.

removing barriers

the only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. to the degree we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confidant and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
-pema chodron

delusion

those who have great realization about delusion are buddhas. those who are greatly deluded within realization are sentient beings.
- dogen, "flowers fall"