This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson
The white man’s civilization with its inhuman economic competition and rugged individualism has produced millions of physical and mental wrecks. It has produced enough vices to fill Dante’s hell. Nine-tenths of the people who reach forty are suffering from shattered nerves.
Civilization | Competition | Enough | Hell | Man | People | Suffering | Wisdom |
Eventually we'll have to confront the fact that world suffering is the result of ill-conceived thoughts taking form through misdirected action. If we're going to survive as a species, we must relinquish - to unprecedented levels, - qualities such as greed, hatred, and delusion. In other words, our very survival depends on accelerated levels of psychological and spiritual maturation.
Action | Delusion | Greed | Qualities | Suffering | Survival | Wisdom | Words | World |
Tarthang Tulku, fully Tarthang Tulku Künga Gelek Yeshe Dorje
Complete health and awakening are really the same.
If meditation is aimed at curing an illness the practicer should forget all about the thought of curing it, and if it is for improving health he should forget all about the idea of improvement, because when mind and objects are forgotten everything will be void and the result thus achieved will be the proper one... If the thoughts of curing an illness and of improving health are clung to the mind will be stirred and no result can be expected.
Health | Improvement | Meditation | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Viewing health as something to achieve gives rise to effort and striving, which create stress. And this can interfere with the natural healing tendencies already present within us. The meditative traditions see things differently; they regard health as intrinsic to our nature, and thus already fully present within us... Dis-ease results from a loss of connection with our intrinsic health, caused by ignorance, distraction or confusion.
Effort | Health | Ignorance | Nature | Present | Regard | Wisdom | Loss |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
To explain the relative peace of the wicked and suffering of the righteous is beyond us.
The time we spend on earth is but one tick of the eternal clock in an unending eternity. We are here in mortality for a brief moment and then on to the next stage of our development. It does not matter how many trials we have in life, just how we handle them. It does not matter how long we live, just how we live. How can we appreciate eternal good health if we have never experienced sickness, pain, or disease? How can we appreciate eternal joy if we have never experienced disappointment, hardship, or failure? How can we appreciate living forever if we have never known death?
Death | Disease | Earth | Eternal | Eternity | Failure | Good | Health | Joy | Life | Life | Pain | Time | Trials |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |
Like any other major experience, illness actually changes us. How? Well for one thing we are temporarily relieved from the pressure of meeting the world head on. We enter a world of introspection and self-analysis. We think soberly, perhaps for the first time, about our past and future. Illness gives us that rarest thing in the world--a second chance, not only at health, but at life itself!
To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life.
Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Mistake | Pain | Peace | Reason | Suffering | Happiness |