Powerful Quotes Post Here

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When you're in a unfamiliar terrain, it is sensible to take directions.

-Sadhguru

[Guest username]

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Die while you're alive

and then be absolutely dead.

Then do whatever you want:

it's all good.

Bunan

This translation comes from page 250 of Spiritual Enlightenment, the Damndest Thing by Jed McKenna.

Background on Bunan:

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Shido Bunan Zenji (1603–1676)

Shido Bunan Zenji was a Japanese Zen master. He wrote much poetry and prose. Bunan lived an austere and simple life as a lay innkeeper, practising Zen under the guidance of National Teacher Gudo. He did not become a monk until late in life. He led his Zen meditation group with a few very simple rules. His most famous student, Shoju Rojin, was the root teacher of Hakuin Ekaku Zenji. For sayings by Bunan, see The Original Face, edited by Thomas Cleary.

Source:

http://www.headless.org/Biographies/bunan

[Guest username]

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From the day you are born, everybody is trying to educate you on something that has not worked in their life.

-Sadhguru

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If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced the factory is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves...there's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

--Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

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I think this quote is a great representation of Grave's Model Stage Yellow thinking:

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I don't think the systems way of seeing is better than the reductionist way of thinking. I think it's complementary, and therefore revealing. You can see some things through the lens of the human eye, other through the lens of a microscope, other through the lens of a telescope, and still others through the lens of systems theory. Everything seen through each kind of lens is actually there. Each way of seeing allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete.

From Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. 

[Shin]

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Science knows that self-organizing systems can arise from simple rules. Science, itself a self-organizing system, likes to think all of the complexity of the world must arise, ultimately, from a set of simple rules. Whether that actually happens is something that science does not yet know.

From Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows.

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Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses to turn human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers.

Self-organization produces heterogeneity and unpredictability. It is likely come up with whole new structures, whole new ways of doing things. It requires freedom and experimentation and a certain amount of disorder. These conditions that encourage self-organization can often be scary for individuals and threatening to power structures. As a result, education systems might restrict the creative powers of children instead of stimulating those powers. Economic policies might learn toward supporting established enterprises rather than upstart, new ones. And many governments prefer their people not to be too self-organizing. 

Fortunately, self-organization is such a basic property of living systems that even the more overbearing power structure can never fully kill it, although in the name of law and order, self-organization can be suppressed for long, barren, cruel, boring periods.

From Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

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The trouble...is that we are terrifyingly ignorant. The most learned of us are ignorant... The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance--almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it.

--Wendell Berry, writer and Kentucky farmer.

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The simple systems in the zoo may have perplexed you with their behavior. They continue to surprise me, although I have been teaching them for years. That you and I surprised says as much about us as it does about dynamic systems. The interactions between what I think I know about dynamic systems and my experience of the real world never fails to be humbling. They keep reminding me of three truths:

1. Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head-- my mental models. None of these is or will ever be the real world.

2. Our models usually have a strong congruence with the world. That is why we are such a successful species in the biosphere. Especially complex and sophisticated are the mental models we develop from direct, intimate experience with nature, people, and organizations immediately around us.

3. However, and conversely, our models fall far short of representing the world fully. That is why we make mistakes and why we are regularly surprised. In our head ,we can only keep track of a few variables at one time. We often draw illogical conclusions from accurate assumptions, or logical conclusions from inaccurate assumptions. Most of us, for instance, are surprised by the amount of growth an exponential process can generate. Few of us can intuit how to damp oscillations in a complex system.

In short, this book is poised on a duality.

We know a tremendous amount of how the world works, but not nearly enough. Our knowledge is amazing; our ignorance even more so. We can improve our understanding, but we can't make it perfect. I believe both sides of this duality, because I have learned so much from the study of systems.

Excerpt from Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows.

For those of you who prefer the concise version:

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Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Our models have strong congruence with the world. Our models fall far short of representing the real world fully.

 

[egoeimai]

Fuck them all.

[Shin]

[Siim Land]

"Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody doesn't want to change themselves" - Leo Tolstoy

 

[Guest Annetta]

This guy is wonderful!  Last night, I decided to be real instead of faking joy - and we had such a great conversation.  And he accepted me fully.  He's the One.  I am so overjoyed...
Love can happen to anyone!  And this time it's not some wacky delusion... lmfao!  
Happy girl, happy girl, happy happy happy girl!!!!

[Guest Annetta]

@Fidelio lmfao.

[Shin]

[Angelique]

In my suffering I touch luck, I feel compassion, I don't shoot to short.

[egoeimai]

Inspired by recent thread ! "Getting things further with  crush"

 

Side note: Having a crush on someone and not really being able to tell is just fear of rejection..We all know it by now. Also,it's low self esteem and immaturity...I'm pretty sure. It's more likely to see a teenager with this attitude. This age is mostly insecure people who haven't found themselves yet. Such difficult years, I can recall. Pretty happy I'm not a teenager ,looking back I was afraid to take the first step too, no regrets though. Everything happens for a reason. 

Edited June 22, 2017 by egoeimai

[Guest username]

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4:61 This honesty principle should be applied to even the taken-for-granted and the mundane experiences that occur for you, such as observing what you say to yourself, or what you're thinking or feeling at any given moment. Is what you're saying to yourself actually the truth? Don't stop with asking whether you think it's true, or whether you really feel that way. Is it actually true? People assume that any thought or feeling they have is true simply because it's thought or felt. Don't assume this.

--From Pursuing Consciousness: The Book of Enlightenment and Transformation by Peter Ralston.

Edited June 30, 2017 by username