The paradox

"But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think."

 ~Johannes Climacus - Philosophical Fragments

Where's Waldo?

Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. 
I become a transparent eye-ball; 
I am nothing; 
I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; 
I am part or particle of God.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

A Dance with Dragons

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes.
I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles.
I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags.
I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot.
I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians.
I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes.
I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime.
I look upon the judgement of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.

~ Gautama Buddha

Slap!

~ Zach Weiner - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Gnosis

Science, the new nobility!
Progress.
The world moves!... And why shouldn't it?
We have visions of numbers.
We are moving toward the Spirit.
What I say is oracular and absolutely right.
I understand, and since I cannot express myself except in pagan terms,
I would rather keep quiet.

~ Arthur Rimbaud, excerpt from A Season in Hell

Explosions in the sky

Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization.
You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened - at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling.
There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner.
What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you.
The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate.
You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche.
That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right!
You have to think yourself out of it.
 There is no other way.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Zen warnings

To observe the regulations and keep to the rules is tying oneself without a rope.
To act freely and unrestrainedly just as one wishes is to do what heretics and demons would do.
To recognize mind and purify it is the false Zen of silent sitting.
To give rein to oneself and ignore interrelating conditions is to fall into the abyss.
To be alert and never ambiguous is to wear chains and an iron yoke.
To think of good and evil belongs to heaven and hell.
To have a Buddha view and a Dharma view is to be confined in two iron mountains.
He who realizes it as soon as thought arises is one who exhausts his energy.
To sit blankly in quietism is the practice of the dead.
If one proceeds, he will go astray from the principle.

If one retreats, he will be against the Truth. 

If one neither progresses nor retreats, he is a dead man breathing.

Now tell me, what will you do? 

Work hard and be sure to attain "it" in this life, lest you have eternal regret.

~Mumon Ekai