Buddhists From The United States

"The lampooners and denunciators of our time have as little succeeded in shaking the faith of believers in the reality and value of mystical initiation, as did their precursors in the olden times that of their believing contemporaries. It has been simply the array of conjecture against experience, of surmise against knowledge. The wise have had but a feeling of contemptuous pity for the army of critics whose conclusions have rested upon wholly mistaken premises, and whose verdict has been colored by exaggerated prejudice and foolish mistrust."

"2. Q. What is Buddhism? A. It is a body of teachings given out by the great personage known as the Buddha."

"The neophyte is never in greater danger of falling a victim to delusion than when he has subjected his grosser passions and begun to develop his psychic sight, hearing, and touch. He is like the newborn babe getting its first lessons of cisuterine life, grasping at the pretty silver moon, clutching at fire and lamp, miscalculating distances, tottering upon its feeble legs."

"The mention of religion leads me to a certain fact. While the Protestant Church has, in our time, ever resolutely denied the reality of such manifestations of occult agencies, the Church of Rome has always admitted them to be true. In her rubrics there are special forms of exorcism, and when Miss Laura Edmonds... one of the most remarkable mediums... united herself with the Catholic Church, her confessor, a Paulist Brother of New York, drove out her obsessing “devils” in due form, after - as he told me - a terrific struggle. Mediumship was anathematized by the late Pope himself, as a dangerous device of the Evil One, and the faithful warned against the familiars of the circle, as his agents for the ruin of souls... Though there is never a grain of religious orthodoxy in me, and I do not in the least sympathize with the demoniacal theory, yet I find, after learning what I have of Asiatic psychological science, that the Catholics are much nearer right in recognizing and warning against the dangers of mediumship, than the Protestants in blindly denying the reality of the phenomena. Mediumship is a peril indeed...and if mediumship is to be encouraged at all, it shall be under such protective restriction as the ancient Sybils enjoyed in the temple, under the watchful care of initiated priests. This is not the language of a Spiritualist, nor am I one: in the reality of the phenomena and the existence of the psychic force I do most unreservedly believe, but here my concurrence with the Spiritualists ends."

"26. Q. Did he become Buddha in his splendid palaces? A. No. He left all and went alone into the jungle."

"40. Q. And how did he expect to learn the cause of sorrow in the jungle? A. By removing far away from all that could prevent his thinking deeply of the causes of sorrow and the nature of man... He went away into the forest near Uruvela, and spent six years in deep meditation, undergoing the severest discipline in mortifying his body... five Brāhman companions attended him."

"13. Q. What is its meaning? A. Enlightened; or, he who has the all-perfect wisdom. The Pālī phrase is Sabbannu, the One of Boundless Knowledge. In Samskrt it is Sarvajña."

"123. Q. Do these differ with each individual? A. Yes: but all men suffer from them in degree."

"A great Brahmin Pandit of the Vedantin school came to see us that evening, evidently with the sole object of showing up our ignorance; but in us two old campaigners, especially in H. P. B., with her wit and sarcasm, he got more than he bargained for, and in a couple of hours we were able to expose to the company present his intense selfishness, vanity, and bigoted prejudices. Our victory cost us something, however, for I see a Postscriptum note in my Diary that he subsequently showed himself “our active enemy.” Good luck to him and to all the noble army of our “enemies”; their hatred never did them the least good nor the Society the least harm. Our ship does not sail on the wind of favor."

"The attainment of perfection is but postponed to a future birth. Every preliminary step in self-conquest and self-knowledge is so much experience and developed power, stored up psychic energy, for the use of the individuality in its next incarnation."

"There are fewer potential adepts in an epoch than the superficial imagine. The fate of those who tread this dizzy precipice of wisdom with weak and faltering steps may be readily inferred. What happens to the dizzy-brained and slippery-footed alpine climber? His brain turns, and he falls headlong into the chasm, with a last shriek and a clutching at the air."

"124. Q. How can we escape the sufferings which result from unsatisfied desires and ignorant cravings? A. By complete conquest over, and destruction of, this eager thirst for life and its pleasures, which causes sorrow."

"118. Q. Why does ignorance cause suffering? A. Because it makes us prize what is not worth prizing, grieve when we should not grieve, consider real what is not real but only illusionary, and pass our lives in the pursuit of worthless objects, neglecting what is in reality most valuable."

"117. Q. Can you tell me the remedy? A. To dispel Ignorance and become wise (Prājña)."

"33. Q. How old was he when he went to the jungle? A. He was in his twenty-ninth year."

"27. Q. Why did he do this? A. To discover the cause of our sufferings and the way to escape from them."

"If the tendency of Fellowship in the Society is to develop certain habits of philosophic thought, its tendency is even stronger to give rise to definite ethical views and moral principles. However much and bitterly the Fellows may disagree as to... [details concerning] occult doctrine, it would be hard to get up a dispute among the brethren as to the evil of intemperance, or the abomination of cruelty, or about any other of the crying sins of our times."

"Buddhism, it may be said, finds religious authority not only in texts and institutions, but also in enlightened people. Certainly, those undersood as realized have occupied and important if not always well defined place within the early and developed tradition."

"Although one can sympathize with lay persons trying to break their attachment to a diet featuring meat, it is something else again to extend those sympathies to monks, priests, and teachers. What business have these latter to propound the Dharma when they possess neither the perception nor compassion to see the connection between meat eating and the killing of harmless animals, and when they lack the self-discipline to put Buddhist compassion before the pleasures of their palates? What right have they to wear the Buddha's robes when they won't or can't honor the bodhisattvic vows they recite daily to liberate all beings?"

"Anyone familiar with the numerous accounts of the Buddha's extraordinary compassion and reverence for living beings … could never believe that he would be indifferent to the sufferings of domestic animals caused by their slaughter for food."

"Every individual who eats flesh food, whether an animal is killed expressly for him or not, is supporting the trade of slaughtering and contributing to the violent deaths of harmless animals."

"Ultimately the case for shunning animal flesh does not rest on what the Buddha allegedly said or didn't say. What it does rest on is our innate moral goodness, compassion, and pity which, when liberated, lead us to value all forms of life. It is obvious, then, that wilfully to take life, or through the eating of meat indirectly to cause others to kill, runs counter to the deepest instincts of human beings."

"The stresses the ideal of the , who out of boundless compassion dedicates oneself to helping others. A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, "To hell, for that's where help is needed most.""

"To put the flesh of an animal into one's belly makes one an accessory after the fact of its slaughter, simply because if cows, pigs, sheep, fowl, and fish, to mention the most common, were not eaten they would not be killed."

"Travel, arrival Years of an inch and a step toward a source I'm coming to you I'll be there in time"

"Those whole girls... Breathe with ease Need no mercy Move in light Run in grace"

"You're the jester of this courtyard With a smile like a girl's Distracted by the women With the dimples and the curls By the pretty and the mischievous By the timid and the blessed By the blowing skirts of ladies Who promise to gather you to their breast"

"You come from far away With pictures in your eyes Of coffeeshops and morning streets In the blue and silent sunrise But night is the cathedral Where we recognized the sign We strangers know each other now As part of the whole design"

"Oh Mom, the old man is telling me something His eyes are wide and his mouth is thin And I just can't hear what he's saying Oh Mom, I wonder when I'll be waking It's just that there's so much to do And I'm tired of sleeping"

"Solitude stands by the window she turns her head as I walk in the room I can see by her eyes she's been waiting Standing in the slant of the late afternoon"

"When the darkness takes you With her hand across your face Don't give in too quickly Find the thing she's erased"

"And she turns to me with her hand extended Her palm is split with a flower, with a flame ...And she says, "I've come to set a twisted thing straight", And she says, "I've come to lighten this dark heart""

"Kids will grow like weeds on a fence She says they look for the light, they try to make sense They come up through the cracks like grass on the tracks She touches him goodbye"

"The light and sweet coffee color of her skin"

"By day give thanks By night beware Half the world in sweetness The other in fear"

"If language were liquid It would be rushing in Instead here we are In a silence more eloquent Than any word could ever be These words are too solid They don't move fast enough To catch the blur in the brain That flies by and is gone."

"My name is Luka. I live on the second floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes, I think you've seen me before."

"I open up the paper, there's the story of an actor who had died while he was drinking, it was no one I had heard of."

"If you hear something late at night, Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight, Just don't ask me what it was."

"I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee and he fills it only halfway and before I even argue he is looking out the window at somebody coming in."

""It is always nice to see you" Says the man behind the counter To the woman who has come in She is shaking her umbrella And I look the other way As they are kissing their hellos And I'm pretending not to see them"

"They only hit until you cry, After that, you don't ask why."

"I'd like to meet you In a timeless, placeless place Somewhere out of context And beyond all consequences ...And we'll sit in the silence (That flies by and is gone) That comes rushing in And is gone"

""I've watched your palace up here on the hill And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will Only first I am asking you why."

"The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door, He said "I am not fighting for you any more.""

"I have swallowed a secret burning thread."

"I won't march again on your battlefield."

"If you were to kill me now right here, I would still look you in the eye"

"And when they ask me, "What are you looking at?" I always answer, "Nothing much" (Not much)"

"I think they know that I'm looking at them I think they think I must be out of touch But I'm only In the outskirts And in the fringes On the edge And off the avenue And if you want me You can find me Left of center Wondering about you"