A banquet of diverse and inspirational quotes

"Indeed we have undertaken the task of showing that the world and the instrumental-thing, space and quantity, and universal time are all pure hypostasized nothingnesses which in no way modify the pure being which is revealed through them. In this sense everything is given, everything is present to me without distance and in its complete reality."

Jean Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness, p296)

“The sacred itself is plainly a mystery of consciousness, using the word mystery to signify not a problem that can be intellectually solved, but a process of awakening and transformation that must be acted out in order to be experienced, and experienced if one is to make it one’s own.” Francis Huxley, from his book The Sacred (quoted in Art of Pilgrimage, p96)

“Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time….” Jack Kerouac (Dharma Bums, p122)

“Viewed from the stars, whence I hope some day to view them, all these flat stretches in the landscape of life may be softened by distance, and the whole picture may take on a perspective of beauty which I had not dreamed of while I myself was but a speck upon the canvas.” Elsa Barker (Letters from a Living Dead Man)

“It isn’t what you do, what you know, that you need... You have to forget all that, to let it go. …you forget the names, you let the forms of things go, you go straight to the reality. …The names are gone and the words and the fear, gone. Show me where I get lost, show me, lord… “ Ursula K. LeGuin, (The Farthest Shore, p53)

“You must drink first from the waters of Lethe (Forgetfulness), so you will forget your former self and all the things that have been holding you back.” Robert Moss describing the Cave Initiation (Dreamgates, p132, Random House, NY, 1998)

“We get up everyday, surrounded by mystery and marvel, enthused by all the things we do not know.” Sharman Apt Russell (Anatomy of a Rose, p149)

“Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement.” Jack Cornfield (Buddha’s Little Instruction Booklet, p124) (Bantam, USA, 1994)

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.” Jack Cornfield, quoting the Buddha (Buddha’s Little Instruction Booklet, p23) (Bantam, USA, 1994)

“…utterly impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be.” James Joyce (Finnegan’s Wake)

”The shaman’s path is unending. I am an old, old man and still a baby, standing before the mystery of the world, filled with awe.” Don José Matsuwa, a Huichol shaman (from Shamanic Voices)

“If you have your attention on what is, see its fullness in every moment, you will discover the dance of the divine in every leaf, in every petal, in every blade of grass, in every rainbow, in every rushing stream, in every breath of every living being. ...[For] beyond memory and judgement lies the ocean of universal consciousness.” Deepak Chopra (The Return of Merlin, intro)

“There is such a rigorous custom-house on the frontier that the traveller back and forth cannot afford to carry anything with him- not even prejudice. ...[And] it is the traveller with the open mind who makes discoveries.” Elsa Barker Letters from a Living Dead Man, p155

“…the beauty and mystery available to those using, as the Sufis said, ‘the eyes of the heart’ …[which produces] the moment of awe, the vision, contact with the numinous.” Phil Cousineau (Art of Pilgrimage, p196)

“Has your amazement been amazed yet.” Phil Cousineau (Art of Pilgrimage, p196)

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These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.