This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Even if the water falls drop by drop, it will fill the pot; and the fool will become full of evil, even though he gather it little by little.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind.
As long as anger lives, she continues to be the fruitful mother of many unhappy children.
Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable.
Friend | Future | Giving | Happy | Impulse | Life | Life | Little | Need | Personality | Rest | Time | Will |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul... I know god is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone.
“How many times in our comfortable lives,” I asked myself, “have we been moved to rise at half-past two of a winter night to feast and give thanks because we have so lived that we are suddenly pierced to the heart with the sheer blessedness of everyday existence?”
Blessedness | Existence | Heart | Past |
Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.
Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |
Axial sensibility: the sense that we find ourselves caught up largely in appearances and are trapped in and subject to various forms of bondage, such as political, psychological, and possibly spiritual ones. Coupled with this sense is the further sense that there must be an elsewhere, or another and better way of being here in the world as it is not, one that better engages reality and gives us a sense of liberation rather than confinement. This axial sense may prove to be but an inchoate [just begun, lacking order, origin] and unrealistic longing, but it has been and continues to be experienced by many as genuine and inescapable. It has often been described as a longing for a belonging, driven in part by a sense of not belonging to the world as it is, of being displaced in it.
Better | Longing | Order | Reality | Sense | Sensibility | World |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
We may not be God, but we are of God even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. Imagine it torn away from the ocean and flung millions of miles away; it becomes helpless, torn from its surroundings, and cannot feel the might and majesty of the great ocean. But if someone could point out to it that it was of the ocean, its faith would revive, it would dance with joy and the whole might and majesty of the ocean would be reflected in it.
The medical establishment, focusing on pathology and chemical treatment by drugs, has long equated diet with what’s put on hospital trays. Even today, when five of America’s major health problems – heart, liver, cancer, diabetes and cerebrovascular diseases – have been proved to be related to diet, just 23 percent of American medical schools require a course in nutrition, and many offer none.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The “societal purpose” of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate.
Better | Consciousness | Ego | Evolution | Experience | Extreme | Hate | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Peace | People | Progress | Society | Truth | War | Society | Learn |
I cannot believe that the life eternal is one endless idleness. If it were endless duration only, it would be endless boredom and scarcely willed by God. What we may be given to do in the next life we cannot say, and with so many forms of work in this life related to physical existence, it is useless to speculate. But if there is a fellowship of persons, God will give us tasks for their enrichment.
Eternal | Existence | God | Idleness | Life | Life | Will | Work | God |
It’s often said that there are three requirements for a fulfilling life. The first two – a clear sense of personal identity and a strong sense of personal mission – are rooted in the third: a deep sense of life’s meaning. In our time especially, many people are spurred to search for that meaning because they’re haunted by having too much to live with and too little to live for
Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Mission | People | Search | Sense | Time |