This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You may pursue worldly fame and gain, but unless you follow the teachings of the Buddha, such activity will only be the cause for throwing you back into further samsara. So adhere to the teachings of the Buddha!
A man of letters is often a man with two natures,--one a book nature, the other a human nature. These often clash sadly.
Grit is the grain of character. It may generally be described as heroism materialized,--spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance of the man.
Conscience | Mercy | World |
It is a great thing, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips, to feel that it is not fate or necessity, but divine love working upon us for good ends.
O, how much those men are to be valued who, in the spirit with which the widow gave up her two mites, have given up themselves! How their names sparkle! How rich their very ashes are! How they will count up in Heaven!
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.
Fame | Man | Reputation |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
The hanging gate, of something like trelliswork, was propped on a pole, and he could see that the house was tiny and flimsy. He felt a little sorry for the occupants of such a place--and then asked himself who in this world had a temporary shelter.
Better | Cause | Enough | Generosity | Guidance | Husband | Little | Magnanimity | Man | Means | Memory | Patience | Quiet | Resentment | Wife | Will | Woman | Guidance | Guilty |
Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL
What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan.
Spirit |
A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago.
Man |
The eyes of a man are of no use without the observing power. Telescopes and microscopes are cunning contrivances, but they cannot see of themselves.
Things That Lose by Being Painted - Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful. Things That Gain by Being Painted - Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene
But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
We are not told of things that happened to specific people exactly as they happened; but the beginning is when there are good things and bad things, things that happen in this life which one never tires of seeing and hearing about, things which one cannot bear not to tell of and must pass on for all generations. If the storyteller wishes to speak well, then he chooses the good things; and if he wishes to hold the reader’s attention he chooses bad things, extraordinarily bad things. Good things and bad things alike, they are things of this world and no other. Writers in other countries approach the matter differently. Old stories in our own are different from new. There are differences in the degree of seriousness. But to dismiss them as lies is itself to depart from the truth. Even in the writ which the Buddha drew from his noble heart are parables, devices for pointing obliquely at the truth. To the ignorant they may seem to operate at cross purposes. The Greater Vehicle is full of them, but the general burden is always the same. The difference between enlightenment and confusion is of about the same order as the difference between the good and the bad in a romance. If one takes the generous view, then nothing is empty and useless.
Care | Cause | Compassion | Despise | Fault | Good | Listening | Object | Opinion | People | Slander | Taste | Will | World | Slander | Fault |
Never before had China seen a religion so rich in imagery, so beautiful and captivating in ritualism and so bold in cosmological and metaphysical speculations. Like a poor beggar suddenly halting before a magnificent storehouse of precious stones of dazzling brilliancy and splendor, China was overwhelmed, baffled and overjoyed. She begged and borrowed freely from this munificent giver. The first borrowings were chiefly from the religious life of India, in which China's indebtedness to India can never be fully told.
A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. - They create an ideal character the perfections of which compensate in some degree for imperfections of their own.
Immortality | Instinct | Life | Life | Words |
There is a very large and very knowing class of misanthropes who rejoice in the name of grumblers, persons who are so sure that the world is going to ruin that they resent every attempt to comfort them as an insult to their sagacity, and accordingly seek their chief consolation in being inconsolable, and their chief pleasure in being displeased.
It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. - "Get a reputation, and then go to bed," is the absurdest of all maxims. - "Keep up a reputation or go to bed," would be nearer the truth.
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Now examine the gentlemen of the present age. They only know thar wives must be controlled, and that the husband's rules of conduct manifesting his authority must be established. They therefore teach their boys to read books and study histories. But they do not in the least understand that husbands and masters must also be served, and that the proper relationship and the rites should be maintained. Yet only to teach men and not to teach women -- is that not ignoring the essential relation between them? According to the "Rites," it is the rule to begin to teach children to read at the age of eight years, and by the age of fifteen years they ought then to be ready for cultural training. Only why should it not be that girls' education as well as boys' be according to this principle?
Disgrace | Life | Life | Reputation | Woman |
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
All people entrusted with office should attend equally to their duties. Their work may sometimes be interrupted due to illness or their being sent on missions. But whenever they are able to attend to business they should do so as if they knew what it was about and not obstruct public affairs on the grounds they are not personally familiar with them.