Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.
BENJAMIN HOFFIf people were superior to animals, they’d take good care of them,” said Pooh.
More Benjamin Hoff Quotes
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The Universe knows what it’s doing. So don’t develop a big ego, and don’t be afraid.
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The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford . . . Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines.
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A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care, wisdom does.
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Well, it takes all kinds to make a mess.
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There is more to knowing than just being correct
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In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between superior and inferior to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity.
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Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That’s why I remember things so well.
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The play-it-safe pessimists of the world never accomplish much of anything, because they don’t look clearly and objectively at situations, they don’t recognize or believe in their own abilities to overcome even the smallest amount of risk.
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Practically everything from hairstyles to lifestyles is endorsed as some sort of drug to be taken Now for Instant Relief.
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A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.
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It means that Tao doesn’t force or interfere with things, but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done.
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Pooh is able to accomplish what he does because he is simpleminded.
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Treat gain and loss the same.’ Don’t be Intimidated. Don’t make a Big Deal of anything – just accept things as they come to you.
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Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It’s just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.
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No matter how useful we may be, sometimes it takes us a while to recognize our own value.
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Whether many people realize it yet or not, man, the Inferior Animal, has by now proved himself incapable of keeping his own species – and others – alive for very much longer. So the earth has begun its own plan to set things right.
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When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.
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To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.
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Enjoy the simple, the natural and the plain. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work.
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Without difficulties, life would be like a stream without rocks and curves – about as interesting as concrete. Without problems, there can be no personal growth, no group achievement, no progress of humanity. But what mattes about problems is what one does with them.
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Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.
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Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
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Modern man’s difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.
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Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere over the rainbow ‘burn their toast a lot,’ said Pooh
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Lots of people talk to animals… Not very many listen, though… That’s the problem.
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Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.
BENJAMIN HOFF