20th Century Psalms (August 2016)

From the out-of-print book, 20th Century Psalms, excerpted and reprinted with permission from Good Karma Publishing.

~ Nothing is so plentiful as unasked for advice.

~ We believe what we want to believe and we doubt our own experience.

~ The one who always tells the truth is thought to be a humorist.

~ Truth and human sentiment do not mix. It’s sad but a fact.

~ How quick we are to anger when others do not agree with us.

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~ One time I opened a lecture by saying: ‘You’re all dying!’ You’d think I had thrown a bomb in the room. Another time, to young people, I declared: ‘You’ve all been conned since you were born – by your parents, your school, your church, and, finally, by advertisers.’ The young people smiled and gladly accepted me, knowing I was not there to exploit them.

~ Vows of silence are useless if the person merely writes his message on paper or a slate. The groove in the brain (vritti) is the same; he has just changed the means of communication. True silence is a stilling of the brain waves.

~ Some societies speak of Divine Mother and others worship God the Father. Our society worships youth and money, often closely tied together – other societies venerate old age. It is very difficult to differ with the societal pull in which we have been indoctrinated, or brainwashed, if you will. When our instincts differ from the norm of our society, the subconscious stress that is the result can greatly influence health.

~ A locked church door is a contradiction. If churches are more interested in hoarding possessions than being open to comfort distraught seekers – at any hour of the day or night – they become clubhouses for the few “in” people. How contrary to the teachings of the Founder of Christianity.

~ Some feel that the precise mathematical relationships of music can lead one to a glimpse of Reality. The Sufi Master, Inayat Khan, was once considered the greatest musician in India.

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~ The scholar gets caught up in words, but he can’t eat them and couldn’t digest them if he did.

~ Strangely, the drive for the taste of food seems to be the last remaining desire for older people. “Man mostly loves his ease,” say the Chinese.

~ Is making unneeded fortunes more important than feeding the starving children of Bangladesh? Apparently so.

~ We honor the violent and the acquisitive. We do not know the gentle man. But animals seem to serve him.

~ Animals can sense who is violent — and poses a threat — and who is not. Perhaps plants can, too.

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A familiar philosophic question is this: you can go back to age 18 and live your life again, but it must be exactly as you lived it before, no changes. Would you?

The usual answer is: “No way. I’m not going to go through that again.” As the Pennsylvania Dutch say: “We get too soon oldt and too late schmardt.” But I have one friend, an elderly lady who has led a colorful life, who would love to do it all over again.

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~ An inspiring teacher in our school years is worth a fortune in gold.

~ Teachers and leaders are servants, not masters, of their followers. They would do best to live simple, almost ascetic lives. Only then can teh – the power of inner sincerity – and jen – human-heartedness – reach the world.

~ Insensitivity does not mark the spiritual person, and the latter is often found to be aesthetic.

~ Only the fool second-guesses inexorable Nature. Do you really think that man can conquer Nature? Man can put causes into motion, but can he control the effects?

~ Loud grief is not helpful to the dying person. Clinging to the dead is harmful to that one.

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~ The Buddha explained: “All that you are, all that you ever have been, and all that you ever will be is the result of what you have thought.” He really laid it all on the line. Could anything be plainer and more to the point?

~ Those who attempt to look into former lives are just indulging in child’s play. Why not explore the nature of Consciousness, of Sentience – the real mystery?

~ Properly understood, there is nothing but Religion. This has nothing to do with Religion as a business or an institution.

~ Those who believe in the New Age evidently do not read the papers.

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~ We, in the West, think in words ([Easterners] in symbols), so the sorry state to which language has sunk gives us some idea of the chaos in modern-day thought. How many adults can write a theme on even an eighth-grade level?

~ The strangest thing is that people come to a teacher to learn and then try to tell him what and how to teach.

~ Sometimes when I am alone, I wish I was with friends, and sometimes, in company, I fervently wish I was alone. Why?

~ From the artificial to the natural, from diversity to Unity – that is the Way. Unfortunately, most follow the opposite path.

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~ Some snakes and spiders are beautiful if you look at them without prejudice.

~ Without objects (projected) and without name and form (word-objects), where is the world? If you can free yourself from projecting objects and thinking words, you are liberated.

~ You cannot “sense” the Real. Human emotion and sentiment screen the Real.

~ People do not live what they profess to believe. Their beliefs come from the head, but their fears and hopes are from the heart.

~ Salvation is always an individual matter. If one doesn’t want to evolve at the slow pace of the Strain or Species, he must go on alone.

~ Yin-yang can be thought of as acid and alkaline.

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The Zen Master, Tokusan, was walking thru the hallway one night, accompanied by an attendant, when he came upon two monks quarreling. The Master stopped and crossed his arms, waiting for an explanation.

“Didn’t you tell us that we should do so-and-so and follow such-and-such a path?” asked the first.

“You are right,” replied the Master.

The other Monk was astonished. “But I understood just the opposite,” he protested. “I thought we should do such-and-such.”

“You too are right,” agreed the Master.

At that the bewildered attendant, hearing that the two parties with opposing views were both right, exclaimed: “But they can’t both be right!”

Tokusan smiled. “I perceive that you, too, are right” was all he said.

We eagerly dig the pit and then wail piteously when we fall into it.

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~ The man who enters a bank or business establishment in old clothes gets different treatment from the one who is expensively dressed. The con man is usually well dressed and looks you right in the eye.

~ Yoga traces effect back to cause, and then erases cause. How few can do that.

~ Illness is purification. The worst illness is resentment.

~ There is enough for all. It is greed that brings wars. If there were no profits in armaments, would there still be wars?

~ What cannot be imagined is called Void by the Buddhists and God by other religions.