Quotes from Rodger Kamenetz

We can't choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.

According to the Buddhist tradition," he began, "there is no sort of conversion or missionary work. It is not good to ask someone to follow a different faith. Yet, because there are so many different mental dispositions, one religion simply cannot serve, cannot satisfy all people.

The preservation of Buddhism is preserving your own internal heart. If Tibetans became terrorists they might win back Tibet, but Buddhism would be destroyed by that attitude.

Because, in our society, to be obsessed with a vision about how to make a better automobile makes you a genius, but to be obsessed with a vision about the nature of reality makes you a nut.

Everyone wants a revelation, but no one wants to be revealed.

So, Art [Green] said, it's hard to do Judaism and travel light. Judaism is not mostly about letting go, but mostly about attachment to God, through attachment to tradition, attachment to forms.

The ancient sages said, 'He who is angry—it is the same as if he worshiped idols.' They also said, 'One who yields to anger—if he is a sage, his wisdom departs from him; if he is a prophet, his prophetic gift departs from him.' Those of an irate disposition—their life is not worth living.

a haimish group—a warm group of Jewish homies.

In our society, to be obsessed with a vision about how to make a better automobile makes you a genius, but to be obsessed with a vision about the nature of reality makes you a nut.

Your dreams change. Initially the belly-buttons help establish the dreamer's predicament - the situation you are trapped in or held back by.

I'm too intellectual. I don't think that the theological vocabulary is as important as the experience.