Quotes About Clarity

had sought, and with that comprehension came a new clarity, a return to sanity, and even a kind of wisdom.

The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame.

Deprived of the income he had received from Homi Catrack, my uncle had taken his booming voice and his obsessions with hearts and reality up to the roof of his Marine Drive apartment block; he had stepped out into the evening sea-breeze, frightening the beggars so much (when he fell) that they gave up pretending to be blind and ran away yelling … in death as in life, Hanif Aziz espoused the cause of truth and put illusion to flight.

No shortage of explanations for life's mysteries. Explanations are two a penny these days. The truth, however, is altogether harder to find

Sometimes it is necessary to touch bottom in order to know which way is up; to go a long distance down the wrong road before you know the right way

While you were anesthetized to the tragedy of life you were able to survive. When clarity was returned to you, when it was painstakingly restored, it could drive you mad.

To be thin-skinned, far-sighted, and loose-tongued," he said, "is to feel too sharply, see too clearly, speak too freely. It is to be vulnerable to the world when the world believes itself invulnerable, to understand its mutability when it thinks itself immutable, to sense what's coming before others sense it, to know that the barbarian future is tearing down the gates of the present while others cling to the decadent, hollow past. If

Actually I think it's the left eye that sees the truth," he added. "It sees everything distorted and deformed. Which in fact everything is. The right eye is the one that sees the fiction of normality. So I have truth and lies, one eye for each. It's good.

if you are thinking without knowing you are thinking, you are confused about who and what you are.

Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity.

Becoming a part of a movement doesn't help anybody think clearly.

I don't always communicate the truth in the way that I want to—but one of the strengths of telling the truth is that it remains open for elaboration. If what you say in the heat of the moment isn't quite right, you can amend it. I have learned that I would rather be maladroit, or even rude, than dishonest.

Thoughts themselves are not a problem, but being identified with thought is.

The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured.

What we need to become happier and to make the world a better place is not more pious illusions but a clearer understanding of the way things are.

That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I am lost in thought, however, I'm as confused as anyone else.

My friend Joseph Goldstein, one of the finest vipassana teachers I know, likens this shift in awareness to the experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall.

Dzogchen masters.

The practice of recognizing nondual awareness is called trekchod, which means "cutting through" in Tibetan, as in cutting a string cleanly so that both ends fall away. Once one has cut it, there is no doubt that it has been cut. I recommend that you demand the same clarity of your meditation practice.

From the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. It's a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis. Thoughts themselves are not a problem, but being identified with thought is. Taking

texts don't speak for themselves

the truth is that most people are simply too distracted by their thoughts to have the selflessness of consciousness pointed out directly.

Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. Knowing that we told the truth in the past leaves us with nothing to keep track of. We can simply be ourselves in every moment.

Are you saying that the assistant had the answers all along, he just wasn't telling anyone?