--
...
“You speak with conviction, sir.”
“I have long exercised an honest introspection, the exquisitely painful approach to wisdom. Self-scrutiny, relentless observance of one’s thoughts, is a stark and shattering experience. It pulverizes the stoutest ego. But true selfanalysis mathematically operates to produce seers. The way of ‘self-expression,’ individual acknowledgments, results in egotists, sure of the right to their private interpretations of God and the universe.”
“Truth humbly retires, no doubt, before such arrogant originality.” I was enjoying the discussion.
“Man can understand no eternal verity until he has freed himself from pretensions. The human mind, bared to a centuried slime, is teeming with repulsive life of countless world-delusions. Struggles of the battlefields pale into insignificance here, when man first contends with inward enemies! No mortal foes these, to be overcome by harrowing array of might! Omnipresent, unresting, pursuing man even in sleep, subtly equipped with a miasmic weapon, these soldiers of ignorant lusts seek to slay us all. Thoughtless is the man who buries his ideals, surrendering to the common fate. Can he seem other than impotent, wooden, ignominious?”
“Respected Sir, have you no sympathy for the bewildered masses?”
The sage was silent for a moment, then answered obliquely.
“To love both the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity in all human minds—the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion for one’s fellows, blind to the healing potencies of the soul awaiting exploration.”
“The saints of every age, sir, have felt like yourself for the sorrows of the world.”
“Only the shallow man loses responsiveness to the woes of others’ lives, as he sinks into narrow suffering of his own.” The sadhu’s austere face was noticeably softened. “The one who practices a scalpel self-dissection will know an expansion of universal pity. Release is given him from the deafening demands of his ego. The love of God flowers on such soil. The creature finally turns to his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: ‘Why, Lord, why?’ By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him.”
...
(Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, Ch 5)

--
If by bathing daily God could be realized
Sooner would I be a whale in the deep;
If by eating roots and fruits He could be known
Gladly would I choose the form of a goat;
If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him
I would say my prayers on mammoth beads;
If bowing before stone images unveiled Him
A flinty mountain I would humbly worship;
If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed
Many calves and children would know Him;
If abandoning one’s wife would summon God
Would not thousands be eunuchs?
Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One
The only indispensable is Love.
(Mirabai)

--
Anche sogliono essere odiatissimi i buoni e i generosi perchè ordinariamente sono sinceri, e chiamano le cose coi loro nomi. Colpa non perdonata dal genere umano, il quale non odia mai tanto chi fa male, né il male stesso, quanto chi lo nomina. In modo che più volte, mentre chi fa male ottiene ricchezze, onori e potenza, chi lo nomina è strascinato in sui patiboli, essendo gli uomini prontissimi a sofferire o dagli altri o dal cielo qualunque cosa, purché in parole ne sieno salvi.
(G. Leopardi)

--
All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth.
(Jagadish Chandra Bose)

--

But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,
He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
He, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
He knows - or maybe even he does not know.

(Rig Veda, Nasadiya Sukta)

--
Più piccola è la mente più grande è la presunzione.
(Esopo)

--
The fanatical atheists ... are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who - in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people' - cannot hear the music of the spheres.
(A. Einstein)

--
La stupidità deriva dall'avere
una risposta per ogni cosa.
La saggezza deriva dall'avere,
per ogni cosa, una domanda.
(Milan Kundera)

--
L'uomo non è una forma fissa e permanente [...], ma un tentativo, una transizione, un ponte stretto e pericoloso fra la natura e lo spirito. Verso lo spirito, verso Dio lo spinge il suo intimo destino; a ritroso, verso la Natura, verso la Madre lo trae la sua intima nostalgia: tra l'una e l'altra di queste forze oscilla la sua vita angosciata e tremante.
(H. Hesse, Il lupo della steppa)

--
Del resto anch'io condivido la convinzione che il nostro spirito non muore, anche se non so bene che cosa accada dopo la morte del corpo.
(F. Lenoir, La saggezza spiegata a chi la cerca)

--
L’umanità verso gli animali inferiori è una delle virtù più nobili di cui sia dotato l’uomo e corrisponde all’ultimo stadio dello sviluppo dei sentimenti morali. È solo quando arriviamo a preoccuparci della totalità degli esseri sensibili che la nostra moralità raggiunge il suo livello più alto.
(C. Darwin)

--
Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus.
(Virgilio, Georgiche)

--
The years pass in silence; then one day, at some special hour, speech comes knocking at one’s door. If one fails, at that moment, to find the key to unlock the door, never again can one receive the divine power to utter the truth without embarrassment.
(R. Tagore, Farewell Song)

--
There are two kinds of freedom to be found in our world: the freedom of desires, and the freedom from desires. Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires. It is remarkable that in such abstemious communities like my monastery, people feel free.
(Ajahn Brahm)