Quotes About Self-discovery

You may not be a Picasso or Mozart but you don't have to be. Just create to create. Create to remind yourself you're still alive. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself.

The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather

to feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed toward ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward ourselves

Pies pa' que los quiero, si tengo alas pa' volar

The first great thing is to find yourself and for that you need solitude and contemplation - at least sometimes. I can tell you deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.

Give me the raw materials; the black holes, The cold floors and confusion of needles-as-thoughts That make me feel myself, Over any stupefying potions That would turn me into someone else.

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again.

I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.

In order to deal with the fear of annihilation you have to face annihilation again and again and again. It's not enough just to understand this intellectually. It's not enough just to read about this. You need to watch yourself being annihilated right now. If you can manage to sit quietly as you disappear from existence moment by moment, then you can see it's really nothing to be afraid of. You gotta meditate. Nobody likes to hear that. But it's true.

In conclusion, polishing a stone really does transform it into a mirror. If stones couldn't become mirrors, regular people couldn't become Buddhas. If we hate stones for being hunks of dirt, you might as well hate people for being hunks of dirt. If people have minds, stones must also have minds. Who can notice that there are mirrors in which stones are reflected? Who can notice that there are mirrors in which mirrors are reflected?

The practice of zazen can help you gradually clear away the layers of mental noise that prevent you from seeing how the things you're going through now relate to the stuff you did in the past.

I never entered a monastery as a full-time live-in monk, which many people consider the only way to practice what D?gen preached. But this would ignore the fact that D?gen taught a number of lay students throughout his life and, indeed, recommended zazen as a daily practice not only for those who live in monasteries but also to anyone interested in self-discovery.

So Buddhism is not the worship of a guy named Buddha; it's learning to manifest your unique inner Buddha.

People always get worried about whether they're doing zazen right. But basically if you're doing it at all, you're probably doing it right — even if your thoughts won't stop, even if you're sleepy or irritable, even if it just feels boring.

There they go, off to Mars, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a planet like a seer's crystal, in which to read a miraculous future. What they'll find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a mirror, not a crystal.

somehow I realized that the same part of me that had been responsible for creating the tumor would also be responsible for un-creating it.

My biggest fear will be the rescue of me.

You get to choose who you are. Legacy, memories of the past, can serve us well. But we cannot let them define us. When heritage becomes a box instead of an inspiration, it has gone too far.

There has to be a balance, Vin," Elend said. "Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be." He sighed. "But for now," he said, nodding to the side, "we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.

A man is what he has passion about," Breeze said. "I've found that if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you'll just end up miserable.

No one ever accomplished anything by being content with who they were, Shallan," Adolin said. "We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become." "As long as it's what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.

I'm an amalgamation of what I've needed to be. Part scholar, part rebel, part nobleman, part Mistborn, and part soldier. Sometimes I don't even know myself. I had a devil of a time getting all those pieces to work together. And, just when I'm starting to get it figured out, the world up and ends on me.

They say a man doesn't know himself until he faces death for the first time. . . I don't know about that. It seems to me that the person you are when you're about to die isn't as important as the person you are during the rest of your life. Why should a few moments matter more than an entire lifetime?