Quotes About Spirituality

That American [Philip Kapleau] was asking us whether it is possible for him to attain enlightenment in one week of sesshin. Tell him this for me: don't say days, weeks, years, or even lifetimes. Tell him to vow to attain enlightenment though it take the infinite, the boundless, the incalculable future.4

I think what we are feeling in this place is much too large for one simple soul to understand, too powerful.

then lung-gom may be simplistically regarded as a manifestation of mind over matter, of matter returning to energy

Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it.

the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV

Satchidananda.

Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.

What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol.

But the moment we experience the ground beneath our feet dissolving and feel the loss of all certainties is the moment we touch upon the experience of the Cross.

This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction

In the Bible we read that while Christ hung on the cross a dark cloud engulfed him. What was this dark cloud? Did it signal the victory of nihilism or was it the dark dwelling place of God?

The abbot, perhaps, of a prosperous and deeply tanned order.

Why did God make lonely people? Answer: He was lonely, too.

has profoundly modified the whole trend of modern civilisation, imposing her thought, her standards, her literary forms, her imagery, her visions and dreams wherever she is known. But Germany is the supreme example of her triumphant spiritual tyranny. The Germans have imitated the Greeks more slavishly: they have been obsessed by them more utterly…

What matters most on your journey is how deeply you see, how attentively you hear, how richly the encounters are felt in your heart and soul.

what I like to call the spiritual nature of the game. I can't pretend to be an expert in leadership theory. But what I do know is that the art of transforming a group of young, ambitious individuals into an integrated championship team is not a mechanistic process. It's a mysterious juggling act that requires not only a thorough knowledge of the time-honored laws of the game but also an open heart, a clear mind, and a deep curiosity about the ways of the human spirit.

I was also moved by William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, which not only helped me put my childhood experience in perspective but also showed me how my search to find a new, more authentic spiritual identity fit within the vast landscape of American culture.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron talks about letting go as an opportunity for true awakening. One of her favorite sayings is "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." That's what I was searching

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. RUMI

Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey," writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. "For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our

What is "walking with God?" Simple. Doing what he asks you to do each and every day. Living in active relationship with him. Filling your mind with his Word, and letting that Word penetrate every waking moment.

most of the world is bubbling with religious passions."1

The Yirkalla aborigines of Arnhem Land in Australia hear sacred song words in the babbling of babies. To them, songs are never composed but only discovered: all songs exist already.

The testimony of a clear conscience before God is the priceless and unassailable bulwark of the soul.