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“He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“The purpose of life is the lesson.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Your dream is to feel good; God’s dream is for you to do good.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced?”
― U.G. Krishnamurti, The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U.G. Krishnamurti

“It's impossible to fall of mountains you fool!”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.

When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.”
― Namkhai Norbu, Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

“But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am continuing my travels—not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to hold something between their fingers. That was all well and good, but there was nothing quite like actually smoking it: Leigh loved inhaling. To pull with your lips on that filter and feel the smoke drift across your tongue, down your throat, and directly into your lungs was to be transported momentarily to nirvana. She remembered- every day- how it felt after the first inhale, just as the nicotine was hitting her bloodstream. A few seconds of both tranquility and alertness, together, in exactly the right amounts. Then the slow exhale- forceful enough so that the smoke didn't merely seep from your mouth but not so energetic that it disrupted the moment- would complete the blissful experience.”
― Lauren Weisberger, Chasing Harry Winston

“Ah Buddha, you boastful charlatan. You may have learned nothing after 6 years of suffering, but then what of 7 years? What of 17? What might you have learned from a lifetime of pain? [...] From what I can tell, the wisest man in all these scriptures was the first person Buddha ever tried to teach - an Ajivika named Upaka. Buddha bragged to him of how he achieved nirvana, to which Upaka simply replied: "That may be so," and walked away.”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“For Persons are selves and, in one respect at least, I was now a Not-
self, simultaneously perceiving and being the Not-self of the things around me. To this new-born Not-
self, the behavior, the appearance, the very thought of the self it had momentarily ceased to be, and of
other selves, its one-time fellows, seemed not indeed distasteful (for distastefulness was not one of the
categories in terms of which I was thinking), but enormously irrelevant.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

“And the Buddha pointed out that his confusion was justified, for 'the dharma is profound, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful, excellent, beyond the sphere of logic, subtle, and to be understood by the wise'. The reason for this is that it is not readily comprehended by one who holds a different view and has different learnings and inclinations, different involvements and instruction. It is clear from this statement that the conception of nibbāna in beyond logical reasoning, not because it is an Ultimate Reality transcending logic, but because logic or reason, being the 'slave of passions', makes it difficult for one who has a passion for an alien tradition to understand the conception of nibbāna.”
― David J. Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis

“Eso es la �ڴdzٴDz�������í��. Es un estado mental. Un nirvana espiritual al que te acoplas para adquirir conocimiento y gracia.”
― alberto fernandez de agirre, rastros de jirafa

“As for karma itself, it is apparently only that which binds "jiva" (sentience, life, spirit, etc.) with "ajiva" (the lifeless, material aspect of this world) - perhaps not unlike that which science seeks to bind energy with mass (if I understand either concept correctly). But it is only through asceticism that one might shed his predestined karmic allotment.

I suppose this is what I still don't quite understand in any of these shramanic philosophies, though - their end-game. Their "moksha", or "mukti", or "samsara". This oneness/emptiness, liberation/ transcendence of karma/ajiva, of rebirth and ego - of "the self", of life, of everything. How exactly would this state differ from any standard, scientific definition of death? Plain old death. Or, at most, if any experience remains, from what might be more commonly imagined/feared to be death - some dark perpetual existence of paralyzed, semi-conscious nothingness. An incessant dreamless sleep from which one never wakes? They all assure you, of course, that this will be no condition of endless torment, but rather one of "eternal bliss". Inexplicable, incommunicable "bliss", mind you, but "bliss" nonetheless.

So many in the realm of science, too, seem to propagate a notion of "bliss" - only here, in this world, with the universe being some great amusement park of non-stop "wonder" and "discovery". Any truly scientific, unbiased examination of their "discoveries", though, only ever seems to reveal a world that simply just "is" - where "wonder" is merely a euphemism for ignorance, and learning is its own reward because, frankly, nothing else ever could be.

Still, the scientist seeks to conquer this ignorance, even though his very happiness depends on it - offering only some pale vision of eternal dumbfoundedness, and endless hollow surprises. The shramana, on the other hand, offers total knowledge of this hollowness, all at once - renouncing any form of happiness or pleasure, here, to seek some other ultimate, unknowable "bliss", off in the beyond...”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night ; we come to wish for—or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle—thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose."

I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist."��"I know—let's get on!")

Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known—and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be.

How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law !”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“The message was clear for baby boomers everywhere: Kurt Cobain was not merely some rock 'n' roll icon who couldn't handle drugs. In ways that were important to recognize, he was every parent's child.”
― Kurt St. Thomas, Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects

“There is nothing we could add to that which has already been created....perfection.”
― Vivian Amis, The Essentials of Life

“We seek love in relationships, peace in security, and joy in material things...but these feelings are divine and not dependent on any outer circumstances.”
― Vivian Amis, The Essentials of Life

“I dare us to give up �� maybe we’ll reach nirvana by the time we’re sixty.”
― Hanako Stephens, Versions of Violence

“Only when the seeker is lost, the truth is there. Seek, and you will miss. Seek not, and you will find. The very seeking becomes a barrier to truth, to the ultimate experience.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten