Quotes About Monks

Over twelve centuries ago, the congregation was entrusted to Brazilian monks.

Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.

Tal vez los monjes que se concentran en sus cantos y meditaciones son un pouco autistas. He observado que hay una gran similitud entre ciertos rituales de oraciones y cantos y el balanceo de un niño autista. Creo que tiene que haber algo más en eso que simplemente colocarse con endorfinas.

the monks were not comfortable with raising a girl child, as they were accustomed only to raising boys. They addressed her simply as "Girl." Although the monks were the most spiritually enlightened and progressive men of their day, they were still possessed of the widespread view of women expressed by the general male population of ancient China. As

The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar);

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.' 'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.

If monks and nuns do not cherish their time of practice, they will have nothing to offer the world.

It is through the close interaction of the laity and the monks that the essence of Zen penetrates social life.

Particularly in the East, in the fourth and fifth centuries, dirtiness became a uniquely Christian badge of holiness. This particular mortification of the flesh was known as alousia, "the state of being unwashed," and was largely chosen by hermits, monks and saints.

Gonpo Tso was born a princess. As a young woman, she dressed in fur-trimmed robes with fat ropes of coral beads strung around her neck. She lived in an adobe castle on the edge of the Tibetan plateau with a reception room large enough to accommodate the thousand Buddhist monks who once paid tribute to her father.

Can monks, even if they are free of desire, cultivate rituals designed to cater to laypersons' attachments and longings and still remain immune to corruption? Or, should questions raised about compromise in the name of a standard of incorruptible purity be set aside as the unrealistic expectations of an idealism that is not appropriate to observing Buddhism on the ground?

Nearly all of the stories [in The Heptameron ] are about the sexual relations between men and women, with a large percentage dealing with the unromanic side: with rape, infidelity, the seduction of nuns and wives by monks (everyone in the Renaissance seems to have despised monks), loveless marriages, incest, and borderline necrophilia.

To practice as monks is to train ourselves in mindfulness and awakening, to first free ourselves from suffering and then to help others do the same.

O monks, in the world there is birth, being, made, and conditioned. But there is also no birth, no being, the not-made, and the not-conditioned; for these are the way out of birth, being, made, and conditioned.

Many people are just waking to the reality that unlimited expansion, what we call progress, is not possible in this world, and maybe looking to monks (who seek to live within limitations) as well as rural Dakotans (whose limitations are forced upon them by isolation and a harsh climate) can teach us how to live more realistically. These unlikely people might also help us overcome the pathological fear of death and the inability to deal with sickness and old age that plague American society.

That morning, for all I sat behind the stinking coffin of a murdered man, I found myself lulled along by the monks' beautiful, polyphonic chant. The psalms, and the Latin reading from Job, struck a chord. 'And thou sayest, how doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seest not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.' Thick clouds indeed, I thought. I am still in a fog here.

World-Honored One, You must know that in the muddied age Evil monks who do not understand The Buddha's skillful means— How the Dharma is taught In accord with What is appropriate— Will frown upon and abuse us. Repeatedly we will be driven out And exiled far from stupas and monasteries. Remembering the Buddha's orders, We will endure all such evils.

A catastrophic earthquake razed Cahokia in the beginning of the thirteenth century, knocking down the entire western side of Monks Mound.

The thing with darts players is they have always appeared available. They don't have to live like monks. I've only ever met one dry player in 35 years.

I would go from one city to the next, inspired by the monks in the Middle Ages, who would carry knowledge from one monastery to the next monastery.

On the whole, monks do not become famous - and that is a good thing - but monasteries do - and that is an excellent thing. In other words, it is the community that matters.

We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.

An impressionistic map of the South China Sea has been dashed across these covers by molecularly reconstructed Ming Dynasty calligraphers using brushes of combed unicorn mane dipped into ink made of grinding down charcoal slabs fashioned by blind stylite monks from hand-charred fragments of the True Cross.