A Real Hero

"The Bodhisattva is like the mightiest of warriors; but her enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone, but is with the inner delusions, the afflictions of self-cherishing and ego grasping, those most terrible of demons that catch living beings in the snares of confusion and cause them forever to wander in pain, frustration and sorrow. Her mission is to harm ignorance and delusion, never living beings. These he looks upon with kindness, patience, and empathy, cherishing them like a mother cherishes her only child. She is the real hero, calmly facing any hardship in order 

to bring peace, happiness and liberation to the world."

"The sober men of science are saying the universe sprang from nothing for no reason. This is the limit test for credulity! Science is saying 'give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest'. I'll take mine at the end, thank you. They have the big bang, I have the big surprise."

- Terrance McKenna

Never just me

1. "..So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me.  I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credos and theories.  I vowed to apply my own inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth.

2. ~ Buckminster Fuller

Contemplate this

"Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen."
Teilhard de Chardin

Maintaining peace

"The most important factor, in maintaining peace within oneself, in the face of any difficulty, is one's mental attitude. If it is distorted by such feelings an anger, attachment, or jealousy, then even the most comfortable environment will bring one no peace. On the other hand,

if one's attitude is generally calm and gentle, then even a hostile environment will have little effect on one's own inner peace. Since the basic source of peace and happiness Is one's own mental attitude, it is worthwhile adopting means to develop it in a positive way."

H.H. the XIVth Dalai Lama

Start where you are

"On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up,

as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, companions in awakening from fear."

the absence of God?

Hawking’s writes almost as much about God as about time and the universe, …or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer Einstein’s famous question about whether God had any choice in creating the universe. Hawking is attempting, as he explicitly states, to understand the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion of the effort, at least so far: a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.”

the self one invents

It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits. James Baldwin