Emptiness Quotes - Page 8

• The fullness or emptiness of life will be measured by the extent to which a man feels that he has an impact on the lives of others.

  Kingman Brewster, Jr.

  Wrestling, Men, Impact

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• Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.

  Dogen

  Blossoming, Grass, Openness

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• The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Nature, Practice, Doubt

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.14, Shambhala Publications

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• the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

  Matsuo Basho

  Infinity, Empty, Intimate

  Matsuo Basho (2003). “A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen”, p.18, Counterpoint Press

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• It's only through form that we can realize emptiness

  Jack Kerouac

  Realizing, Form

  Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.24, Penguin

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• There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Kind, Form

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• Stop. Breathe. Allow yourself the luxury of doing nothing for a moment, or an hour, or even a day. It is in emptiness that inspiration will appear.

  Carole Katchen

  Inspiration, Luxury, Doing Nothing

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• Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

  John Berger

  Stars, Night, Sky

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.8, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Quality, Unlikely, Heavy

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• Zen is a very quick path. Zen is the path of meditation. The word Zen means emptiness or fullness, meditation. Meditation is the quickest path to enlightenment.

  Frederick Lenz

  Mean, Meditation, Enlightenment

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• It's a long road when you face the world alone, when no one reaches out a hand for you to hold. You can find love if you search within your soul, and the emptiness you felt will disappear.

  Mariah Carey

  Music, Hands, Long

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• A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Spiritual, Despair, Desert

  "Papal Homily at Closing Mass in Sydney: 'May This 23rd World Youth Day Be Experienced as a New Upper Room'". Speech by Pope Benedict XVI given at the World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, www.catholic-church.org. July 19, 2008.

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• The emptiness of play is when there is no self present. There is no one playing - there is only play itself taking place, perfect fluid motion.

  Frederick Lenz

  Health, Buddhism, Self

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• At last the cold crept up my spine; at last it filled me from foot to head; at last I grew so chill and desolate that all thought and pain and awareness came to a standstill. I wasn't miserable anymore: I wasn't anything at all. I was a nothing-- a random configuration of molecules. If my heart still beat I didn't know it. I was aware of one thing only; next to the gaping fact called Death, all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing, all I felt conveyed nothing. This was no passing thought. It was a gnawing, palpable emptiness more real than the cold.

  David James Duncan

  Pain, Real, Heart

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• There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.

  Albert Camus

  Hurt, Indifference, Terrible

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• Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere to a higher plane, and purify yourself by drinking as if it were ambrosia the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness. Free from the futile strivings and the cares which dim existence to a realm of mist, happy is he who wings an upward way on mighty pinions to the fields of light; whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked, outreaches life and readily comprehends the language of flowers and of all mute things.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Morning, Drinking, Flower

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.14, David R. Godine Publisher

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• People have to be engaged. Enough of nihilism! Enough of emptiness and defeatism! Fighting for a better world is not only the decent thing to do, it is also fun; it is meaningful and fulfilling.

  Andre Vltchek

  Meaningful, Fun, Fighting

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault.

  Tom Perrotta

  Arms, Faults, Inevitable

  "The Leftovers". Book by Tom Perrotta, August 30, 2011.

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• I have not lost my fascination with death. I have not become a noticeably less intense person. I have not, nor will I ever, completely lose the longing for that something, that thing that I believe will fill an emptiness inside me. I do believe that the emptiness was made greater by the things that I did to myself.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Believe, Fascination, Longing

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• When the heart becomes empty, the mimbar of the Divine Oneness is placed therein and the sultan of gnosis sits upon it.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Heart, Oneness, Gnosis

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• You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, you’ll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. You’ll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, you’ll weep for nothing, pine for what’s not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you.

  John Banville

  Rain, Heart, Night

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• From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Buddhist, Mean, Views

  "Buddhism: Between Desire and Emptiness" by Sharon Salzberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 3, 2010.

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• Most human beings are completely out of touch with their spiritual nature and with the inner dimensions that exist within themselves. They don't realize each person has a soul, an inner core of light and intelligence as vast as the ten thousand worlds, whose inner nature is emptiness, ecstasy and happiness.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Buddhism

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

  W. S. Merwin

  Morning, Stars, Numbness

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• An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife.

  Nikki Gemmell

  Good Night, Lying, Hate

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