Water Tiger School of T'ai Chi Ch'uan Patchogue Long Island New York

Laoshi Laurince D. McElroy

Suffolk County, Long Island

New York USA

Shards of Truth

2014

For the New Year my greatest wish and prayer for you is that you cast aside wrong habits of thinking and doing. Don’t drag your bad habits into the New Year. You don’t have to carry them with you. Leave behind all useless thoughts, past sorrows, and bad habits. See life anew.

- Paramahansa Yoganananda

December 28, 2014

 

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

- Albert Camus

December 21, 2014

 

Paths cannot be taught,

they can only be taken.

- Zen Saying

December 14, 2014

 

The mind of attachment arises from the stopping mind. … Stopping means the mind is being detained by some matter, which may be any matter at all. If there is some thought within the mind, though you listen to the words spoken by another, you will not really be able to hear. This is because your mind has stopped with your own thoughts. When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on any one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit. Similarly the wheels of a cart go around because they are not rigidly in place. If they were to stick tight, they would not go round. The mind is also something that does not function if it becomes attached to a single situation. The mind that stops or is moved by something, this is the affliction of the abiding place. To be called, to respond without interval, is the wisdom of the Buddhas.

- Takuan

December  7, 2014

 

When I was a boy, I fell into a hole in the ground, was broken, and could not climb out. A stranger came along and saved me. He said it was his obligation; that for help he once received, he must help ten others, each of who would the help ten others. In this way, good deeds would spread out like the ripples from a pebble in a pond.

- Caine-ism

November 30, 2014

 

Be grateful for the home you have,

knowing that at this moment,

all you have is all you need.

- Sarah Ban Breathnach

Posted November 23, 2014

 

See your skin as what connects you to the universe, not as what separates you from it.

- Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Posted November 16, 2014

 

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

 - Confucius

Posted November 9, 2014

 

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us.

But within that inch we are free. …

An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having.

We must never lose it or give it away.

We must never let them take it from us.

- V is for Vendetta

Posted November 2, 2014

 

When a fear becomes strong enough,

it is like another being within you who fights to stay alive.

- Caine-ism

Posted October 26, 2014

 

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Posted October 19, 2014

 

What is the mind like if it’s not occupied with plans and schemes, and fears that the plans and schemes will fail? What if your unexamined beliefs were to fall away and you were to live without them, and also to live without the thought that you had given anything up?

- John Tarrant

Posted October 12, 2014

 

The wise … are not tossed with the ups and downs of the waves of happiness and misery.  They dive deep into the Spirit-Ocean of Bliss, avoiding the storms of delusion, the waves of change that rage on the surface of human consciousness.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Posted October 5, 2014

 

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed;

Never throw out anybody.

- Sam Levenson

Posted September 26, 2014

 

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

- Albert Camus

Posted September 21, 2014

 

If you want to follow the doctrine of the One, do not rage against the World of the Senses.

Only by accepting the World of the Senses can you share in the True Perception.

- Seng T’san

Posted September 14, 2014

 

If you want to see the heroic, look at those that can return love in return for hatred.

If you want to see the brave, look for those who can forgive.

- Bhagavad Gita

Posted September 7, 2014

 

A hundred times every day, I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

- Albert Einstein

Posted August 31, 2014

 

The secret is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water;

but to walk on the earth.

– Chinese Proverb

Posted August 24, 2014

 

You are unique as you are here and now. You are never the same. You will never be the same again. You have never before been what you are now. You will never be it again.

- Swami Prajnanpad

Posted August 17, 2014

 

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old,

but on building the new.

- Socrates

Posted August 10, 2014

 

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are... knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

- George Eliot

Posted August 3, 2014

 

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy;

for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;

we must die to one life before we can enter another.

- Anatole France

Posted July 27, 2014

 

If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves,

life would become completely unbearable.

- George Courteline

Posted July 20, 2014

 

Never measure the height of the mountain, until you have reached the top.

Then you will see how low it was.

- Dag Hammerskjold

Posted July 13, 2014

 

People imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful. And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe – but usually no one else notices.

- Brad Warner

Posted July 6, 2014

 

The choice between "having fun" and "settling down" is a false one.

I'm here to tell you you can have both.

- Clayton Cubitt

Posted June 29, 2014

 

On a summer day, do you not feel the warmth of the sun? There is no need to gaze into the sky to see if it is there. If you were to gaze upward, would you not be blinded by the sun’s brightness? The truth of the Tao is much as is the summer sun. It can be felt without looking and to seek is to be blinded.

- Caine-ism

Posted June 22, 2014

 

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

- Johann Schiller

Posted June 15, 2014

 

Nothing in the cry of the cicadas suggests they are about to die.

– Bashō

Posted June 8, 2014

 

There is no fire like greed.

No crime like hatred.

No sorrow like separation.

No sickness like hunger of heart.

And no joy like the joy of freedom.

– The Dhammapada

Posted June 1, 2014

 

The brave die never, though they sleep in dust:

Their courage nerves a thousand living men.

-Minot J. Savage

Posted May 25, 2014

 

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

- The White Queen (Alice in Wonderland)

Posted May 18, 2014

 

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

- William Makepeace Thackeray

Posted May 11, 2014

 

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

- Arthur Rubinstein

Posted May 4, 2014

 

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.

- Anonymous

Posted April 27, 2014

 

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- John Wooden

Posted April 20, 2014

 

Even our misfortunes are part of our belongings.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Posted April 13, 2014

 

A club hurts the flesh,

but evil words hurt the bone.

- Chinese Proverb

Posted April 6, 2014

 

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings awaken to the

light of their true nature.

May all beings be free.

- Metta Prayer

Posted March 30, 2014

 

Spring is the time of birth.

This first moment in our lives has a bearing on what will come later.

Like the instant when a potter throws a lump of clay on a wheel,

that event begins all others.

- Deng Ming-Dao

Posted March 23, 2014

 

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.

That is why it is called the present.

- Master Oogway, Kung-Fu Panda

Posted March 16, 2014

 

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

- Master Oogway, Kung-Fu Panda

Posted March 9, 2014

 

As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it. 

- Lao-tzu

Posted February 26, 2014

 

Honor dies where interest lies.

- Caine-ism

Posted February 23, 2014

 

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent upon the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.

- Thich Nhat Hahn

Posted February 16, 2014

 

The first question to ask when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful?  And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

- John Cage

Posted February 9, 2014

 

A civilization must be judged and assessed, not by the level of power it has reached,

but how it develops and expresses a love of humanity through its laws and institutions.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Posted February 2, 2014

 

We accept the graceful falling

 of mountain cherry blossoms,

but it is much harder for us

to fall away from our own

attachment to the world.

- Rengetsu

Posted January 26, 2014

 

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted January 19, 2014

 

Violence is not merely killing another.

It is violence when we use a sharp word,

when we make a gesture to brush away a person,

when we obey because there is fear.

- Krishnamurti

Posted January 12, 2014

 

Embrace your quirks. No one would care about a Straight Tower of Pisa.

- Clayton Cubitt

Posted January 5, 2014

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