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Narrow Road To The Interior [Book]

    By: Matsuo Bashō

    Book Overview: A masterful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature—part travelogue, part haiku collection, part account of spiritual awakening

    Bashō (1644–1694)—a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan.

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    19 Quotes from Narrow Road To The Interior on Solitude, Travel, and Poetry

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      “The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress.”

      Ramana Maharshi, via Sunbeams (Page 130)

        “Our lives are also fed by kind words and gracious behavior. We are nourished by expressions like ‘excuse me,’ and other such simple courtesies. Our spirits are also richly fed on compliments and praise, nourished by consideration as well as whole wheat bread. Rudeness, the absence of the sacrament of consideration, is but another mark that our time-is-money society is lacking in spirituality, if not also in its enjoyment of life.”

        Ed Hays, via Sunbeams (Page 119)

          “Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family even though you’ve had a long day. People often say to me, ‘I have so many things that take up my day. I don’t have time to take up a spiritual practice.’ And the thing is, being a wise parent or a spiritual parent doesn’t take extra time. It’s enfolded into the act of parenting.”

          Sylvia Boorstein, via Becoming Wise (Page 223)

            “Just as you take a shower or bath in the morning to get yesterday’s dirt off your body, you do your spiritual practice in the morning to get yesterday’s thinking off your mind and heart.”

            Marianne Williamson, The Shadow Effect (Page 175)

              “The purpose is to identify not with the body which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from my myths. Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is the vehicle? If you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go like an old car. There goes the fender, etc. But it’s expected; and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I live with these myths—and they tell me to do this, to identify with the Christ or the Shiva in me. And that doesn’t die, it resurrects. It is an essential experience of any mystical realization that you die to your flesh and are born to your spirit. You identify with the consciousness in life—and that is the god.”

              Joseph Campbell, via Sunbeams (Page 70)

                “People will always find ways to subvert values, morals, and ethics. But when you are naturally joyful, you are naturally pleasant with the world around you. Spirituality does not mean moving away from life; it means becoming alive to the core, in the fullest possible way. With age, physical agility may diminish, but the level of joy and aliveness need not. If your level of joy and aliveness is declining, you are committing suicide in installments.”

                Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 186)

                  “The whole effort of the spiritual process is to break the boundaries you have drawn for yourself and experience the immensity that you are. The aim is to unshackle yourself from the limited identity you have forged, as a result of your own ignorance, and live the way the Creator made you—utterly blissful and infinitely responsible.”

                  Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 67)

                    “If you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything. People think spirituality is about looking for God or truth or the ultimate. The problem is you have already defined what you are looking for. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.”

                    Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 15)

                      “I don’t call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God.”

                      Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 224)

                        “Epicurus was right—if God exists, why would they possibly want you to be afraid of them? And why would they care what clothes you wear or how many times you pay obeisance to them per day? What interest would they have in monuments or in fearful pleas for forgiveness? At the purest level, the only thing that matters to any father or mother—or any creator—is that their children find peace, find meaning, find purpose. They certainly did not put us on this planet so we could judge, control, or kill each other.”

                        Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 140)

                          “Through my own process of stepping back, I embraced the reality that my current spiritual lens may change, but I’m not threatened by that.  Time brought me here—to a place of self-awareness and patience.  I still feel magic and beauty and inspiration.  I still respect that people hold their own personal truths, and I win nothing by debating and trying to be right all the time.  I’m not atheist, agnostic, or theist.  I am a part of life, and as science dictates, my matter cannot be created or destroyed, only redistributed.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 157)

                          Maybe ‘darkness’ isn’t the enemy…

                            Picture Quote Text:

                            “Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness.  But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.”

                              “The purpose of religion is to benefit people, and I think that if we only had one religion, after a while it would cease to benefit many people.  If we had a restaurant, for instance, and it only served one dish – day after day, for every meal – the restaurant wouldn’t have many customers left after a while.  People need and appreciate diversity in their food because there are so many different tastes.  In the same way, religions are meant to nourish the human spirit.  And I think we can learn to celebrate that diversity in religions and develop a deep appreciation of the variety of religions.” ~ Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

                              Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes [Book]

                                Solitude by Robert Kull

                                By: Robert Kull

                                From this Book: 24 Quotes

                                Book Overview:  Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness with equipment and supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind and to find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking all his life. With only a cat and his thoughts as companions, he wrestled with inner storms while the wild forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him even further.

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                                Post(s) Inspired by This Book:

                                1. 19 Quotes on Solitude from A Guy Who Spent A Year Alone in the Wilderness