Emptiness Quotes - Page 6

• Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

  William Faulkner

  Depression, Pain, Numbness

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• Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. These divisions need somebody to happen to, a conscious separate center. But reality is all and nothing, the totality and the exclusion, the fullness and the emptiness, fully consistent, absolutely paradoxical. You cannot speak about it, you can only lose yourself in it.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Reality, Space, Mind

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• Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?

  Margaret Atwood

  Loneliness, Islands, Water

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• Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it.

  Marilyn French

  Men, Roots, Effort

  "The Anti-Male New York Times", www.foxnews.com. June 10, 2003.

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• I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

  Raymond Chandler

  Stars, Numbness, Space

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.252, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, "Form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two seperate things.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Thinking, Two, Phrases

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo, William Scott Wilson (2002). “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai”, p.70, Kodansha International

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• To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true non-duality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream.

  Adyashanti

  Dream, Night, Sky

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• The highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. So empty yourself out totally and completely. All of your ideas, your feelings, all have to be emptied out of you. When you become totally and completely empty there is nothing you have to do to fill it up again. Emptiness is realization. Emptiness is Brahman. Emptiness is the Self. Emptiness is your real nature.

  Robert Adams

  Real, Believe, Self

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• Attain utmost emptiness. Abide in steadfast stillness.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Steadfast, Stillness

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• The experience of emptiness is not found outside the world of ordinary appearance, as many people mistakenly assume. In truth, we experience emptiness when the mind is free of grasping at appearance.

  Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

  People, Mind, Ordinary

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• We should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust body, speech and mind.
  Stretching out in inconceivable nonaction, in the unstructured matrix, the actuality of emptiness,
  where the natural perfection of reality lies, we should gaze at the uncontrived sameness of every experience,
  all conditioning and ambition resolved with finality.

  Longchenpa

  Lying, Ambition, Reality

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• And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

  T. S. Eliot

  Book, Writing, Silence

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Rock: A Pageant Play”, p.40, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• People who don't see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

  Bodhidharma

  Liars, Practice, People

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.19, Macmillan

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• When I fell out of the light, I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

  Sylvia Plath

  Light, Numbness, Indifference

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “The Colossus”, p.72, Faber & Faber

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• Henry Blodget does occasionally have a new idea. If you're making a point about aggregation or the emptiness of modern journalism, he's far from the best target. Try Huffpo - or Gawker writers whose souls have been corroded by irony.

  Nick Denton

  Ideas, Modern Journalism, Soul

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• The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.

  Epicurus

  Life, Gratitude, Lying

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• I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

  Sylvia Plath

  Moving, Eye, Numbness

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.3, Hamilton Books

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• The emptiness I speak about is not the emptiness the mind imagines. It is not blank. Your body can continue expressing in a natural way. Intelligence is there. Emotions can come. Everything can play, but inside there is total serenity and peace. No planning, no strategising, no personal identity is there. Just the space of pure being. It is what we are, but we dream and believe we are not.

  Mooji

  Dream, Believe, Play

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• Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment.  When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Communication, Enlightenment, Sound

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• The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad people and good people, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.

  Huineng

  Stars, Fall, Moon

  Huineng (1967). “The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch”

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• Our only qualitifcation for God's grace is our emptiness, not our fullness; our undeservingness, not our deservingness.

  Peter Kreeft

  Grace, God's Grace, Fullness

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• The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Inspirational, Education, Travel

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• In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

  Carl Sagan

  Found, Contact, Bearable

  "Fictional character: Alien". "Contact", 1997.

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• It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.

  Mother Teresa

  Realizing, Silence Of The Heart, Nothingness

  Mother Teresa (2016). “No Greater Love, Commemorative Edition”, p.8, New World Library

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• My acts are irrevocable
  Because they have no essence...
  Where are the doers of deeds
  Absent among their conditions?
  Imagine a magician
  Who creates a creature
  Who creates other creatures.
  Acts I perform are creatures
  Who create others.

  Akkineni Nagarjuna

  Essence, Deeds, Doers

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