Quotes About Being

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.

My trade and art is to live.

All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.

You do not use art as a means to an end, but as a way to inhabit and explore the present. Right and wrong fade away; you recover your sense of what is authentic in you.

I say me, knowing all the while it's not me.

Existence is a Fact, Living is an Art

What thou art, that thou art.

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying.

Our usual attitude is of 'I am this'. Separate consistently and perseveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what is means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'.

You have to 'be'' before you can 'do', and do before you can 'have'.

Accept the present moment without judgement.

But dominance doesn't just originate from brute force or threats of violence. Any relation of unequal power, whether enforced by threats or by other social means, such as customs, will create a form of dominance, because it amounts to being

He who believes in the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection, will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavouring to increase in numbers; and thus if any one being vary ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus gain an advantage over some other inhabitant of the country, it will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different it may be from its own place.

I live because I do not exist.

So there is an issue—or a dualistic aspect of our desire for human perfection or at least progress—that begs for resolution. But I learned years ago that in this kind of no-win philosophical situation, there is probably a higher perspective that dissolves, rather than resolves, the dissonance. In other words, being versus doing may not be the issue.

Mississippi's constitution prohibited anyone who denied the existence of a supreme being from holding state office.

By leaning just beyond your fear, you challenge your limits compassionately, without trying to escape the feeling of fear itself. You step beyond the solid ground of security with an open heart. You stand in the space of unknowingness, raw and awake. Here, the gravity of deep being will attend you to the only place where fear is obsolete: the eternal free fall of home. Where you always are. Own your fear, and lean just beyond it. In every aspect of your life. Starting now.

You are only willing to surrender open if he is fully present you, committed to claiming your heart with his absolute integrity of being. And he is only willing to commit his presence with you if you are willing to surrender open and offer your heart's light and devotion as love's yearning.

It was a good day for a ride, but not a good day for being chased. No day was good for that.

There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us---these are just the hazards of being free.

What kind o' man is he? Why, of mankind.

But whate'er I am, nor I nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleased 'til he be eased With being nothing.

He who lives not in time, but in the present, is happy. —LUDWIG VON WITTGENSTEIN

A human being is an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.