Quotes About Reality

Ah, yes," he replied, "that's true; this is such a civilized country. They have such marvelous houses for dead corpses. But haven't you noticed? They have such wonderful houses for the living corpses too.

As Cicely Saunders wrote: "The dying have shed the masks and superficialities of everyday living and they are all the more open and sensitive because of this. They see through all unreality. I remember one man saying, 'No, no reading. I only want what is in your mind and in your heart.'"1

The past is the past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past. The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.

Both despair and euphoria about death are an evasion. Death is neither depressing nor exciting; it is simply a fact of life.

will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low.

The word "bardo" is commonly used to denote the intermediate state between death and rebirth, but in reality bardos are occurring continuously throughout both life and death, and are junctures when the possibility of liberation, or enlightenment, is heightened.

from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view, we can divide our entire existence into four continuously interlinked realities: (1) life, (2) dying and death, (3) after death, and (4) rebirth. These are known as the four bardos: (1) the natural bardo of this life, (2) the painful bardo of dying, (3) the luminous bardo of dharmata, and (4) the karmic bardo of becoming.

The "inner science" of Buddhism is based, as one American scholar puts it, "on a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of reality, on an already assessed, depth understanding of self and environment; that is to say, on the complete enlightenment of the Buddha.

The sky is our absolute nature, which has no barriers and is boundless, and the ground is our reality, our relative, ordinary condition.

If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows—I am not the man to recoil from it . . . But it is madness to think that you can succeed . .

Sem is the discursive, dualistic, thinking mind, which can only function in relation to a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.

contemporary master, Nyoshul Khenpo: The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.

If everything dies and changes, then what is really true?

The nature of mind is the nature of everything." I wonder if this threefold process the bardos reveal is true not only, as we discovered, of all the different levels of consciousness and of all the different experiences of consciousness, both in life and death, but also perhaps of the actual nature of the universe itself

Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality.

The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.

There is no clump called "I" moving from this spot to that spot, instant by instant. Rather, through particular encounters with particular people, within each encounter, within each transition, something called "I" makes its appearance. Thus it is that what seems to be an object outside yourself is, in reality, your complement, that which gives this instant of your life its glow.

A writer cannot be a Pollyanna. He is in the business of writing what other people think but don't say

All of these early exposures to offstage happenings contribute to the belief that stories are told. They can be a liability to writers later in life because the writer has to change his mind-set from telling what happened somewhere else to creating an experience for the reader by showing what happened. Twentieth

Modern history has become little more than propaganda, a highly developed kind of fiction which entered the world scene with another form of fiction known as "scientific truth." Neither is concerned with substantial reality, but only with what is useful or politically correct at the moment.

this day is not real. the crowing of the far-away carillons ring out direction less. even you are un real roasting under a man hattan sky while passersby flap their indecent tongues. even i am un real but i am black and thought to be without meaning. - on seeing Pacifist burn

What was life after all, but a constant battle between our hopes and harsh reality?

I think it's easy for people to assume that fame is equal to glory, but it can be a very isolating experience.

We may have, she suggests, a thin boundary between our conscious and unconscious minds, living with one foot in the real world and one in the world inside our heads.