“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. Jorge feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of everything truth so that we would not become the slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from the insane passion for truth.”

— Umberto Eco, “The Name of the Rose”

“Underneath all the wanting and grasping, underneath the need to understand is what we have called ‘the body of fear.’ At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world.”

— Jack Kornfield, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”

“A little bit of resistance, you see, is great. So there must always be resistance in change; otherwise there couldn’t even be change. There’d just be a ‘pfft!’ The world would go ‘pfft!’ and that’d be the end of it.

But because there’s always some resistance to change, there is a wonderful manifestation of form, there is a dance of life. But the human mind, as distinct from most animal minds, is terribly aware of time. And so we think a great deal about the future, and we know that every visible form is going to disappear and be replaced by so-called others. Are these others, others? Or are they the same forms returning? Of course, that’s a great puzzle. Are next year’s leaves that come from a tree going to be the same as this year’s leaves? What do you mean by the same? They’ll be the same shape, they’ll have the same botanical characteristics. But you’ll be able to pick up a shriveled leaf from last autumn and say ‘Look at the difference. This is last year’s leaf; this is this year’s leaf.’ And in that sense, they’re not the same. (…)

So this is the nature of change. If you resist it, you have duhkha, you have frustration and suffering. But on the other hand, if you understand change, you don’t cling to it, and you let it flow, then it’s no problem. It becomes positively beautiful, which is why in poetry, the theme of the evanescence of the world is beautiful.”

— Alan Watts

If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

— Laozi, “Tao Te Ching”

“This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything… just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”

— Charles Bukowski

“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them — while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.”

— Eckhart Tolle

“Your body grows old and so does your mind when it is burdened with all the experiences, miseries and weariness of life; and such a mind can never discover what is truth. The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent — he may not be — but the mind that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond to everything — to the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to the tortures and miseries of life — otherwise it is already dead; but it must be capable of responding without being held by the experience. It is tradition, the accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The Book of Life”

“It would not be enough for a poet to have memories. You must be able to forget them.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”

“Sitting quietly, let the mind involve itself in the stories that flow through consciousness. Notice the dynamic that powers each story: the concerns and desires, worries and distractions. As you become more familiar with these patterns, look for second-level stories that support the stories on the surface; for instance, stories about who you are and what you stand for, or stories that make sense of longstanding patterns or conditions. Notice which stories refer more to the past and which to the future. How does the ‘objective’ time that measures out events and sequences figure in the stories you tell? Is it a minor character? Does it have a role to play at all? (…)

As you become familiar with the stories you typically tell, you will notice how many of them express a characteristic negativity. There are stories that explain inaction or justify distraction, that feed daydreams of escape, excuse failures, and calm fears. There are other stories that fuel anxiety and intensify concern. Pay close attention to the patterns of the stories that you typically tell, looking for those that consistently repeat themselves. Can you touch the energy bound up in those stories? Can you release it?”

— Tarthang Tulku, “Dynamics of Time & Space: Transcending Linits on Knowledge”

“It is only when human beings see themselves simply as human beings, no longer as gods, that they are in a position to perceive the wholly other nature of God. It is only when we cease to be unhappy supermen and pathetic mini-gods and permit ourselves to become human beings through and through again that we let God be God.”

— Jürgen Moltmann