This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A state without some means of change is without the means of its conservation.
Change | Conservation | Means |
Dudjom Rinpoche, fully Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche or Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje NULL
Action is being truly observant of your own thoughts, good or bad, looking into the true nature of whatever thoughts may arise, neither tracing the past nor inviting the future, neither allowing any clinging to experiences of joy, nor being overcome by sad situations. In so doing, you try to reach and remain in the state of great equilibrium, where all good and bad, peace and distress, are devoid of true identity.
Action | Distress | Future | Good | Joy | Nature | Past | Peace |
Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues - constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness - are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so jut an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.
Cause | Constancy | Excess | Fidelity | Firmness | Fortitude | Magnanimity |
No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.
Happiness depends not on what happens, but on how we handle what happens. Our happiness is determined by how we interpret, perceive, and integrate what happens into our state of mind. And how we perceive things is determined by our commitment… Happiness comes from experiencing moments of happiness… Making comparisons is probably the shortest route to unhappiness. We can never be happy if we compare ourselves to others.
Commitment | Happy | Mind | Unhappiness | Happiness |
People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
In the present state of medical knowledge a pronouncement of the sentence of "Incurable" on a patient places a serious responsibility on the physician and implies a greater knowledge than he possesses.
Knowledge | Present | Responsibility |
Happy are the families where the government of parents is the reign of affection, and obedience of the children the submission of love.
Children | Government | Happy | Love | Obedience | Parents | Submission | Government |
The mind or spirit is present everywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place. And it can remain present because, even when related to this or that object, it does not cling to it and thus lose its original mobility. Like water filling a pond, which is always ready to flow off again, it can work its inexhaustible power because it is free, and be open to everything because it is empty. This state is essentially a primordial state, and its symbol, the empty circle, is not empty of meaning for him who stands within it.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
To adhere to man’s absolute freedom - one aspect of the matter - is eo ipso to condemn slavery. Yet if a man is a slave, his own will is responsible for his slavery, just as it is its will which is responsible if a people is subjugated. Hence the wrong of slavery lies at the door not simply of enslavers or conquerors but of the slaves and the conquered themselves. Slavery occurs in man’s transition from the state of nature to genuinely ethical conditions; it occurs in a world where a wrong is still right. At that stage wrong has validity and so is necessarily in place.
Absolute | Freedom | Man | Nature | People | Right | Slavery | Will | World | Wrong |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself - it is independent and so free. When the state or our country constitutes a community of existence; when the subjective will of man submits to laws - the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes.
Contradiction | Existence | Law | Liberty | Man | Necessity | Will |
My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worse. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.
Character | Heart | Man | Mind | Nothing | Retirement | Solitude | Tenderness | Wants |
Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.
Tyranny |
Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
Duty and genuine goodness are mutually exclusive… The sense of “ought” shows me the Good at an infinite impassable distance from my will. Willing obedience is never the fruit of an “ought’ but only of love.