Quotes about Nature

[jedimasters]

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop." 

~ Rumi 

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished" 

- Lao Tzu 

[Moksha]

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.

- Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

- Einstein

This is the true joy in life … the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

- Bernard Shaw

Earth, water, fire, air, akasha, mind, intellect, and ego – these are the eight divisions of my prakriti. But beyond this I have another, higher nature, Arjuna; it supports the whole universe and is the source of life in all beings. In these two aspects of my nature is the womb of all creation.

- Bhagavad Gita 7:4-6

Those who take refuge in me, striving for liberation from old age and death, come to know Brahman, the Self, and the nature of all action. Those who see me ruling the cosmos, who see me in the adhibhuta, the adhidaiva, and the adhiyajna, are conscious of me even at the time of death.

- Bhagavad Gita 7:29-30

Under my watchful eye the laws of nature take their course.

- Bhagavad Gita 9:10

O Lord, neither gods nor demons know your real nature. Indeed, you alone know yourself, O supreme spirit. You are the source of being.

- Bhagavad Gita 10:14-15

If you egotistically say, "I will not fight this battle," your resolve will be useless; your own nature will drive you into it. Your own karma, born of your own nature, will drive you to do even that which you do not wish to do, because of your delusion.

- Bhagavad Gita 18:59-60

We require a more ardent fire and a nobler love…if our spiritual nature were not on fire with other and nobler passions, we should never cast off the yoke of the senses.

- St. John of the Cross

I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say.

- Socrates

You seem, Antiphon, to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme.

- Socrates

Remembering that this body is like froth, of the nature of a mirage, break the flower-tipped arrows of Mara. Never again will death touch you.

- Buddha

The wise live without injuring nature, as the bee drinks nectar without harming the flower.

- Buddha

It is astonishing that every soul should forget its own nature, and think itself as a living soul residing in the body…as if confined in a pot.

- Valmiki

The insights called vipassana are not intellectual. Rather, they are experientially based, deeply intuitive realizations that transcend, and ultimately shatter, our commonly held beliefs and understandings. The five most important of these are Insights into impermanence, emptiness, the nature of suffering, the causal interdependence of all phenomena, and the illusion of the separate self (i.e., "no-Self").

You can experience the first four of those Insights using stable attention (samadhi) and mindfulness (sati) to investigate phenomena (dhamma vicaya) with persistence and energy (viriya). The fifth, Insight into no-Self, is the culminating Insight that actually produces Awakening, because only by overcoming our false, self-centered worldview can we realize our true nature. But this crucial Insight requires, in addition to the first four Insights, that the mind also be in a state of samatha, filled with deep tranquility and equanimity.

- John Yates

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and of sentient beings. If you look upon the Buddha as presenting a pure, bright or Enlightened appearance, or upon sentient beings as presenting a foul, dark or mortal-seeming appearance, these conceptions resulting from attachment to form will keep you from supreme knowledge, even after the passing of as many aeons as there are sands in the Ganges. There is only the One Mind and not a particle of anything else on which to lay hold, for this Mind is the Buddha. If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek the Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge.

- Huang Po