Quotes from DANIELE BOLELLI

I don't doubt that at the dawn of martial arts, the main goal was to beat up one's opponents in the most effective way possible. But then, indirectly, the alchemy of martial arts began to strike some chords deep within the spirit of many individuals, transforming living war-machines into poets, artists, and philosophers.

Rather than being confined to a separate dimension, martial arts should be an extension of our way of living, of our philosophies, of the way we educate our children, of the job we devote so much of our time to, of the relationships we cultivate, and of the choices we make every day.

We need new rituals to awaken us to the fact that we are not separate from the land, water, and sky. We need ceremonies putting us back in touch, and urging us to conserve the resources that give life to everything in existence. We need to once again think as part of something greater, to view reality from a place higher than the narrow confines of a shortsighted ego. Empathy toward other living things should be one of the very first lessons instilled by all religions.

in order to become a master of the unorthodox, you need to know the orthodox very well.

No matter how good the justification, I still see all the identities that divide human beings along racial or national lines as prisons. I'm not about to give artificial categories and man-made borders the right to limit my ties with other human beings and dictate what values I should or should not embrace.

The body is not a product. It is an experience.

Unfortunately, dogmatic, unchanging rules are drunken elephants in the house of crystal that is life.

But" is a three-letter stroke of genius. It keeps things in perspective. It prevents me from turning too rigid and self-righteous. It reminds me that hardly anything in life is black or white.

Internal martial arts such as Tai Chi Chuan, Pa Kua, Hsing-i, and Aikido speak the language of the psychedelic body. What is more psychedelic, in fact, than the ability to feel how an opponent will attack before a single gesture is made?

it's possible to go through our time on this ball floating in space without realizing that Fear has been pulling our strings all along. Our inner tyrant has made for us most of our choices—even those we were not aware of making. The fucked-up part about it is that Fear makes it easy for us to go along with this. It doesn't hurt us in an obvious way. It numbs us before injecting us with its poison—a slow form of euthanasia that takes a few decades to come to its conclusion. In

Openness without strength is useless; strength without openness is oppression.

the enemy that's going to paralyze you with fear is your own sense of self-importance and your excessive ego. The thought of not living up to the image of yourself that you want everyone to see is a source of tremendous anxiety. At

You are like a cross between Eminem and the Dalai Lama. You can be really nerdy, and all deep and shit, but you are also raw as hell. Eminem without the bitterness. A Dalai Lama you can get drunk with." Part

Those who have never approached their bodies as temples have no idea of what they are missing. The frog at the bottom of the well sees only a fraction of light and believes it to be the whole sky.

nothing good will ever come from people who are more familiar with the dust of the library than with the light of the sun.

This notion of eternal punishment strikes me as one of the most perverse ideas ever devised. Monotheistic religions describe their God as merciful and compassionate, and in the same breath tell us that this merciful and compassionate God will sentence people to eternal torture if they don't believe in his existence, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. Is it just me, or are we looking at a bit of a contradiction?

Werner Herzog: "My steps are resolute. And now the Earth shakes. When I walk, a buffalo walks. When I rest, a mountain rests." This is echoed by Zen master D?gen, "If you doubt mountains walking you don't know your own walking.

Answer hopelessness with a defiant smile and a raised middle finger.

Openness without strength is useless; strength without openness is oppression.