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Voyages > Word Gallery
This word gallery features quotes from various sources as well as poetry.
Copyright law limits me from quoting contemporary work without permission, but I have secured permission to use a few. To see a bibliography of those under copyright (Graham, Frost, Elliot), click here and read them in your own anthologies. Please consider purchasing the full book if what is displayed here resonates with you as well. All of the poetry is in the public domain.
To use this section, after each author's name, the opening lines are presented in an introductory section. You can jump to the full quote by clicking on the highlighted words.
I hope you enjoy and are inspired.
Quotes
Dennis Chernin
Pema Chodron
Montaigne
Sharon Salzberg
Dennis K. Chernin
The benefits of meditation can be understood by the following analogy.
The human mind is like the ocean, the conscious mind representing the
surface of the sea and the innumerable fluctuations of though and emotion
representing the ocean waves. Lying beneath the surfaced is the unconscious
mind, analogous to the deep and submerged ocean expanse. The turbulence
of thought waves obscures the depths of knowledge underneath the conscious
mind in a similar way that ocean waves make it impossible to see beneath
the ocean surface. The process of meditation calms the tumultuous ebb
and flow of the mind’s outer layer of wave activity like a calm
day quiets the ocean surface. Unconscious repression and habits deep within
the mind are allowed to rise to the surface to be observed, in a similar
way that bubbles and currents rise and dissipate on the ocean surface.
Since no energy is supplied to suppress them, the bubbles gently burst
and dissipate. The dispassion averts the creation in the unconscious of
further increased psychological pressure that can produce exaggerated
emotional reactions, like tidal waves in the ocean. The conscious mind
becomes quiet and still, and the deeper mysterious layers of the unconscious
can be observed and experienced, similar to the way the ocean depths become
visible on a calm, wind-free day. Finally, the individual, separate self
merges with universal consciousness, like a wave that merges with the
great ocean expanse.
Dennis K. Chernin, How to Meditate (Ann Arbor: Cushing-Malloy, 2002) pp.
34-35.
Pema Chodron
Life’s work is to wake up, to let things that enter into the circle
wake you up rather than put your to sleep. The only way to do this is
to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything
that comes along, to get to know its nature and let its nature and let
it teach you what it well. “
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape (Boston: Shambhala Publications,
2001) p. 32.
Pema Chodron
Both the brilliance and the suffering are here all the time; the interpenetrate
each other. For a fully enlightened being, the difference between what
is neurosis and what is wisdom is very hard to perceive, because somehow
the energy underlying both of them is the same.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape (Boston: Shambhala Publications,
2001) p. 21.
Pema Chodron
Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like
refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like
being so blind that you don’t see a huge black raven when it lands
in the tree you’re sitting under….Resentment, bitterness,
and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and
delighting.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape (Boston: Shambhala Publications,
2001) p. 25.
Pema Chodron
In vajrayana Buddhism it is said that wisdom is inherent in emotions.
When we struggle against our energy we reject the source of wisdom. Anger
without fixation is none other than clear-seeing wisdom. Pride without
fixation is experienced as equanimity. The energy of passion when it’s
free of grasping is wisdom that sees all the angles.
In bodhichitta training we also welcome the living energy of emotions.
When our emotions intensify, what we usually feel is fear. This fear is
always lurking in our lives. In sitting meditation we practice dropping
whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions
and the fear. Thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness
of our own energy. We learn to abide with the experience of our emotional
distress.
Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You (Boston: Shambhala Publications,
2001) p. 29.
Montaigne
We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like
the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones,
sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only
one kind, what would he have to say? He must know how to use them together
and blend them. And so we must do with good and evil, which are consubstantial
with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one
element is no less necessary for it than the other. To try and kick against
natural necessity is to imitate the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook
a kicking match with his mule.
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Trans. Donald M.
Frame (Stamford: Stanford University Press, 1943) p. 835.
Sharon Salzberg
When we take the time to be quiet, to be still, we begin to see the web
of conditions, which is the force of life itself, as it comes together
to produce each moment. When we look deeply, we see constant change; we
look into the face of impermanence, insubstantiality, lack of solidity.
As the Buddha pointed out, given this truth, trying to control that which
can never be controlled will not give us security or safety, will not
give us final happiness. In fact, trying to control ever-changing and
insubstantial phenomena is what gives rise to our sense of isolation and
fragmentation. When we try to hold on to something that is crumbling or
falling apart, and we see that not only is it crumbling but we are changing
in just the same way, then there’s fear, terror, separation and
a lot of suffering.
If we re-vision our world and our relationship to it so that we are no
longer trying to fruitlessly control but rather are connecting deeply
to things as they are, then we see through the insubstantiality of all
things to our fundamental interconnectedness. Being fully connected to
our experience, excluding no aspect of it, guides us right through to
our connectedness with all beings. There are no barriers; there is no
separation. We are not standing apart from anything or anyone. We are
never alone in our suffering and we our not alone in our joy, because
all of life is a swirl of conditions, a swirl of mutual influences coming
together and coming apart. By going to the heart of any one thing, we
see all things. We see the very nature of life.
Salzberg, Sharon. “Becoming the Ally of All Beings.” Shambala
Sun, January 2003, p. 51.
Sharon Salzberg
Desire is call the “near enemy” of metta [loving-kindness].
Because it can fell so similar, it can masquerade as metta – until
it reaches its limit. But metta is boundless. It is open and freely given.
Metta does not create a duality between subject and object; it does not
try to control and hold on; it is not subject to the same fears and frailties
of betrayal. Metta is based on desirelessness.
Desirelessness – detachment – is not a cold, hard state in
which we do not care what is going on. The opposite of attachment is not
sullen withdrawal from things or an attitude of indifference. It is very
full, very alive and very open. The energetic manifestation of desirelessness
is love….We must understand the nature of our struggle, and how
to make our experience of life and death all right. To relinquish the
futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of
true detachment, and thus true love.
Sharon Salzberg, Loving Kindness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002)
pp. 56-57.
Poetry
Lord Byron Don Juan, Second Canto, excerpt
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, excerpt
Emily Dickenson #967 Pain-expands the Time
Emily Dickenson #1287 In this short Life
Moschus The Ocean
Pablo Neruda First Movement
Pablo Neruda To Search
Pablo Neruda I want to know if you come with me
Ovid The Amores, excerpt
Rainer Maria Rilke Letter to a Young Poet, excerpt
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind, excerpt
Don Juan
Second Canto 183 – 6
By George Gordon, Lord Byron
It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded
Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
Circling all nature, hush’d, and dim, and still,
With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill,
Upon the other, and the rosy sky,
With one star sparkling through it like an eye.
And thus they wander’d forth, and hand in hand,
Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
Glided along the smooth and harden’d sand,
And in the worn and wild receptacles
Work’d by the storms, yet work’d as it were planne’d.
In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,
They turn’d to rest; and, each clasp’d by an arm,
Yielded to the deep twilight’s purple charm.
They look’d up to the sky, whose floating glow
Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
They gazed upon the glittering sea below,
When the broad moon rose circling into sight;
They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low,
And saw each other’s dark eyes darting light
Into each other – and beholding this,
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss;
A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake, - for a kiss’s strength,
I think it must be reckon’d by its length.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Canto IV Stanza 179 lines 1-4
By George Gordon, Lord Byron
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean – roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with run – his control
Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain.
#967
by Emily Dickenson
Pain-expands the Time-
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain –
Pain contracts – the Time –
Occupied with Shot
Gamut of Eternities
Are as they were not-
#1287
by Emily Dickenson
In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is
The Ocean
By Moschus (translated from Greek by Percy Bysshe Shelley)
3rd century B.C.
When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind. – But when the roar
Of Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of earth and its deep woods, where intersperst,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
Whose prey the wondering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen. – But my languid limbs will fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.
First Movement
by Pablo Neruda
Hour by hour, the day does not pass,
it passes sadness by sadness:
time does not wrinkle,
it doesn't run out:
sea, the sea says,
without rest
earth, the earth says:
man waits.
And only
his bell
rings above the others
keeping in its emptiness
the implacable silence
that will be parceled out when
its metallic tongue rises, wave after wave.
Once I had so much,
walking on my knees through the world:
here, naked,
I have nothing more than the stark noon
of the sea, and one bell.
They give me their voice to feel the pain
and their warning to stop me.
This happens to everybody:
space goes on.
The sea lives.
The bells exist.
To Search
By Pablo Neruda
From the dithyramb to the root of the sea
stretches a new kind of emptiness:
I don’t want much, the wave says,
only for them to stop their chatter,
for the city’s cement beard
to stop growing:
we are alone,
we want at last to scream,
to pee facing the ocean,
to see seven birds of the same color,
three thousand green gulls,
to see out love on the sand,
to break in our shoes, to dirty
our books, our hat, our mind
until we find you, nothing,
until we kiss you, nothing,
until we sing you, nothing,
nothing without nothing, with being
nothing without putting an end
to truth.
I want to know if you come with me
By Pablo Neruda
I want to know if you come with me
toward not walking and not speaking, I want
to know if we finally will reach
no communication: finally
going with someone to see pure air,
rays of light over the daily sea
or a landbound object
and finally having nothing
to trade, without goods to furnish
as the colonizers had,
exchanging coupons for silence.
here I purchase your silence.
I agree: I give you ine
with one provision: that we not understand each other.
The Amores
By Ovid Book 1: 2 lines 1-20
What’s wrong with me nowadays, how explain why my mattress
Feels so hard, and the bedclothes will never stay in place?
Why am I kept awake all night by insomnia, thrashing around ‘till
Every weary bone in my body aches?
If Love were my assailant, surely I’d know it – unless he’s
Craftily gone under cover, slipped past my guard?
Yes, that must be it: heart skewered/by shafts of desire, the raging
Beast, passion, out at prowl in my breast.
Shall I give in? To resist might just bank up the furnace –
All right, I give in. A well-squared load lies light.
Flourish a torch, it burns fiercer. I know, I’ve seen it. Stop the
Motion, and pouf! it’s out.
Yoke-shy rebellious oxen collect more blows and curses
Than a team that’s inured to the plough.
Your restive horse earns a wolf-curb, his mouth’s all bruises;
A harness broken nag scarcely feels the reins.
It’s the same with Love. Play stubborn, you get a far more thorough
Going over than those who admit they’re hooked.
So I’m coming clean, Cupid: here I am, your latest victim,
Hands raised in surrender. Do what you like with me.
Letter to a Young Poet.
By Rainer Maria Rilke’s
August 12, 1904
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around
us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been
put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover,
through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so
greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly
be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor
any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors,
they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if
there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our
life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always
trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget
those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths
about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses?
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting
to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything
that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that
wants our love.
Ode to the West Wind
Part III
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves; O hear!
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