“The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 224)
Sheldon Kopp Quotes
“The most important things, each man must do for himself.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 224)
“All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 223)
“If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 223)
“The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 223)
“For a long while now I have trusted my dreaming self as wiser than that waking self whose head is cluttered with reason and practicalities, so by trying to control things that he sometimes forgets that the heart has reasons that reason does not know. When I dream, I never forget to trust myself.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 216)
“Along the way, like everyone else, I must bear my burdens. But I do not intend to bear them graciously, nor in silence. I will take my sadness and as I can I will make it sing. In this way when others hear my song, they may resonate and respond out of the depths of their own feelings.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 214)
“My pilgrimage of repeated return to the sea will not end so long as I live. And now I know that I shall live, for as long as is given to me. And should my body be battered even more, then I will live as I can, enjoying what I might, having what joy is available to me, and being what I may to the people whom I love. I must continue my pilgrimage, for it is my only way of remaining open to this vision. It is to this end that I must struggle for the remainder of that pilgrimage that is my life.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 214)
“One of the reasons I stopped getting high was that that colorful fog came to seem like the only reality. Living in between highs was too often an empty drag. Many of my fellow hipsters began to bridge the gap with heroin. Some of them are now dead junkies, overdosed with illusion. I never tried heroin myself, because instinctively I knew that I would have liked it so much that in an instant I would have become the hippest of junkies, lost to myself forever. Since that time, chemically induced pilgrimages have seemed to me to be misleading detours. The way must not be sought by putting ecstasy into my body, but by finding it within my Self. Drugs can give pleasure and being high can be fund but the essence of pilgrimage cannot be found in a vial.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 203)
“Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free. Condemned to this freedom, it is difficult for a man to face the fact that he feels like a misfit in this life, difficult until he discovers the secret that ‘all men, finally, are misfits.’ There seems to be no way out of it.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 196)
“[A man] stands somewhere between absolute freedom on the one hand, and total helplessness on the other. All of his important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. It is enough if a man accepts his freedom, takes his best shot, does what he can, faces the consequences of his acts, and makes no excuses. It may not be fair that a man gets to have total responsibility for his own life without total control over it, but it seems to me that for good or for bad, that’s just the way it is.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 194)
“So it is that there is nothing to be taught, but yet there is something to be learned. There is something we may come to understand, but not if we demand that it be explained to us. There is something that may happen to us, but not if we await its coming from outside of ourselves.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 190)
“The Zen master warns: ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!’ This admonition points up that no meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Philosophy, religion, patriotism, all are empty idols. The only meaning in our lives is what we each bring to them. Killing the Buddha on the road means destroying the hope that anything outside of ourselves can be our master. No one is any bigger than anyone else. There are no mothers or fathers for grown-ups, only sisters and brothers.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 188)
“The Zen way to see the truth is through your everyday eyes. It is only the heartless questioning of life-as-it-is that ties a man in knots. A man does not need an answer in order to find peace. He needs only to surrender to his existence, to cease the needless, empty questioning. The secret of enlightenment is when you are hungry, eat; and when you are tired, sleep.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 187)
“As children we owned all of ourselves. As adults, in response to the expectations of others, we have had to hide much of ourselves away, out of sight even from our own eyes. The cost of such voluntary losses is great. No one can afford to give up any part of himself. All of you is worth something. Even the evil can be a source of vitality if only you can face it and transform it.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 141)
“The continuing struggle was once described in the following metaphor by a patient who had successfully completed a long course of psychotherapy: ‘I came to therapy hoping to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.'”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 138)
“We each learned again a bit more clearly that our old problems would remain temptations to messing-up for the rest of our lives, that we must each remember to remember that we will never be beyond error. Nothing important gets solved once and for all, finally and forever.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 138)
“When a psychotherapy patient does do the work of facing up to some of what he must endure, he is often rewarded by a sense of increased freedom and joy. However, as he comes to realize that there will be no light without some darkness, no rest without further toil, he may balk disappointedly to find that troubles never end. New solutions lead to new problems. New freedom leads to new responsibilities.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 136)
“[The patient] was sure that if he worked hard enough, suffered long enough, or (failing that) at least if he were to be rescued by me, then Nirvana could be his. He can bear his pain for a while if only someday, someway, he will be able to reach a state of blissful perfection, a time when he will have no more conflicts, anxieties, or uncertainties. As I come toppling down off the pedestal on which he has placed me, he is horrified to learn that enlightenment does not provide perfection. Instead, it simply offers the pedestrian possibility of living with the acceptance of imperfection.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 134)
“Patients are often disappointed to learn that I too wander unredeemed, that I am no better off than they are. Eventually, they may realize comfort implied in my turning out to be just another struggling human being. At least then I can bring a fellow-pilgrim sort of understanding to his journey. Recognition of my all-too-obvious fallibility can provide the relief of learning that some happiness is possible without his having to reach some state of perfection.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 134)
