Quotes

Quotes that are relevant to Living with Open Hands 2.0

For quotes used in Living with Open Hands 1.0, click here.

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging prejudices." (David Bohm)

Tao Te Ching

"Mastery of the world is achieved by letting things take their natural course. You can not master the world by changing the natural way." (Lao Tzu)

Certainty and other such stories we tell ourselves

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that,
wherever you happen to be born,
the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
— Richard Dawkins
Your Religion is a Reflection of Your Culture



Recognizing and removing dogma is
“just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.” (Sam Harris)

"A man with a conviction
is a hard man to change.
Tell him you disagree
and he turns away.
Show him facts or figures
and he questions your sources.
Appeal to logic
and he fails to see your point."— Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger

“The very desire to be certain, to be secure, is the beginning of bondage. It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty, and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.” (Krishnamurti)

"Can we not look at the truth without creating ideas? It is almost instinctive with most of us when something true is put before us to create immediately an idea about it. And I think if we can understand why we do this so instinctively, almost unconsciously, then perhaps we shall understand if it is possible to be free from effort."
- Krishnamurti, On Truth

Myth and the subconscious

“But in the same measure the myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity because it is intrinsically conservative. It encourages us to follow the Faith of our Fathers, to hold to the time-honored truth, to imitate the way of the heros, to repeat the formulas and rituals in exactly the same way that they were done in the good old days. As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned, and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes -- a natural catastrophe, the military defeat, the introduction of a new technology -- the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty. As Marshall McLuhan said, it tries to ‘walk into the future looking through a rear view mirror.’” (Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, p. xiii)

"I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)

"It’s hard being a human being. Not only is our external world often demanding, but inside we’re a confusing mix of conflicting emotions and competing desires.

"Complicated creatures, we are each a mix of light and dark. For those of us on a spiritual path, it is essential that we explore this inner territory, for what lies outside our awareness exerts a powerful control over it."
(Leia Marie Faith)

On Silence

"What is your life about, anyway?
Nothing but a struggle to be someone.
Nothing but a running from your own silence."
(Rumi)

Images of God

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. - Christopher Hitchens


Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills - Schopenhauer

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. (Voltaire)

The problem for me is that the only people I can ask about God are fellow humans. I’ve had enough of God created in our image. So the only questions I can ask are without words and in silence; waiting… not for an answer… but waiting for the sake of waiting. Embracing the mystery in sheer wonder of it all. (RI)

and other quotes for skeptics 

and all us "others" that can no longer fool ourselves

“We attain wisdom not by creating ideals but by learning to see things clearly, as they are.” (Jack Kornfield)

“The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown” (Gil Scott-Heron)

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." (Charles Bukowski)

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers. . . . Live the questions now.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)