Topic: Don Juan's quotes

[erismoksha]

"Once the apprentice has been hooked, the instruction begins," he continued. "The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world. Every effort of a teacher is geared to prove this point to his apprentice.

"But accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do. We are complacently caught in our particular view of the world, which compels us to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world. A teacher, from the very first act he performs, aims at stopping that view. Sorcerers call it stopping the internal dialogue, and they are convinced that it is the single most important technique that an apprentice can learn." ~ToP

[erik]

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.

[erik]

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.

[erismoksha]

"Look at me," he said. "I have no doubts or remorse. Everything I do is my decision and my responsibility. The simplest thing I do, to take you for a walk in the desert, for instance, may very well mean my death. Death is stalking me. Therefore, I have no room for doubts or remorse. If I have to die as a result of taking you for a walk, then I must die.

"You, on the other hand, feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be cancelled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions." ~J2X

[erismoksha]

"Death is not like a person. It is rather a presence. But one may also choose to say that it is nothing, and yet it is everything. One will be right on every count. Death is whatever one wishes.

"I am at ease with people, so death is a person for me. I am also given to mysteries, so death has hollow eyes for me. I can look through them. They are like two windows, and yet they move like eyes move. And so I can say that death with its hollow eyes looks at a warrior while he dances for the last time on earth."

"But is that so only for you, don Juan, or is it the same for other warriors?"

"It is the same for every warrior that has a dance of power, and yet it is not. Death witnesses a warrior's last dance, but the manner in which a warrior sees his death is a personal matter. It could be anything: a bird, a light, a person, a bush, a pebble, a piece of fog, or an unknown presence." ~J2X

[erismoksha]

He said, "You think there are two worlds for you- two paths. But there is only one. The protector showed you this with unbelievable clarity. The only world available to you is the world of men, and that world you cannot choose to leave. You are a man!

"The protector showed you the world of happiness where there is no difference between things because there is no one there to ask about the difference. But that is not the world of men.

"The protector shook you out of it and showed you how a man thinks and fights. That is the world of man! And to be a man is to be condemned to that world. You have the vanity to believe you live in two worlds, but that is only your vanity.

"There is but one single world for us. We are men, and must follow the world of men contentedly. I believe that was the lesson."

~Teachings of DJ

[erismoksha]

"It's funny the way you sometimes remind me of myself," he went on. "I too did not want to take the path of a warrior. I believed that all that work, was for nothing; and since we are all going to die what difference would it make to be a warrior?

"I was wrong. But I had to find that out for myself.

"Whenever you do realize that you are wrong, and that it certainly makes a world of difference, you can say that you are convinced. Then you can proceed by yourself; and by yourself you may even become a man of knowledge."

I asked him to explain what he meant by a man of knowledge.

"A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning," he said. "A man who has, without rushing or faltering, gone as far as he can in unravelling the secrets of personal power."

He discussed the concept in brief terms and then discarded it as a topic of conversation, saying that I should only be concerned with the idea of storing personal power.

"That's incomprehensible," I protested. "I can't really figure out what you are driving at."

"Hunting power is a peculiar event," he said. "It first has to be an idea, then it has to be set up, step by step, and then, bingo! It happens."

~J2X

[erik]

When one has nothing left to lose one becomes courageous. We are timid only when we have something left to cling to.

[erik]

What is wrong with us human beings, and has been wrong since time immemorial, is that without ever stating it in so many words, we believe that we have entered the realm of immortality. We behave as if we are never going to die - an infantile arrogance. But even more injurious than this sense of immortality is what comes with it: the sense that we can engulf this inconcievable universe with our minds.

[Zamurito]

I have spent thirty-five years of my life seeking the maturity of a warrior.  I have gone to places that defy description, seeking that sensation of being seasoned by the onslaughts of the unknown.  I went unobtrusively, unannounced, and I came back in the same fashion.  The works of warriors are silent and solitary, and when warriors go, or come back, they do it so inconspicuously that nobody is the wiser.  To seek a warrior's maturity in any other fashion would be ostentatious, and therefore, inadmissible. 

[Zamurito]

"It's not the people around you who are at fault," he said.  "They cannot help themselves.  The fault is with you, because you can help yourself, but you are bent on judging them, at a deep level of silence.  Any idiot can judge.  If you judge them, you will only get the worst out of them.  All of us human beings are prisoners, and it is that prison that makes us act in such a miserable way.  Your challenge is to take people as they are!  Leave people alone."

 

[daphne]

"It's not the people around you who are at fault," he said.  "They cannot help themselves.  The fault is with you, because you can help yourself, but you are bent on judging them, at a deep level of silence.  Any idiot can judge.  If you judge them, you will only get the worst out of them.  All of us human beings are prisoners, and it is that prison that makes us act in such a miserable way.  Your challenge is to take people as they are!  Leave people alone."

 

I always rather liked this one..

[Zamurito]

 

[Michael]

seasoned by the onslaughts of the unknown.

i like that

[Michael]

"It's not the people around you who are at fault," he said.  "They cannot help themselves.  The fault is with you, because you can help yourself, but you are bent on judging them, at a deep level of silence.  Any idiot can judge.  If you judge them, you will only get the worst out of them.  All of us human beings are prisoners, and it is that prison that makes us act in such a miserable way.  Your challenge is to take people as they are!  Leave people alone."

yes, good quote, however, unfortunately, this is one of those that we all like to use on one side of the coin. I mean we like to think he is talking to those who judge us, instead of to us who judge others.

Personally I have no problem with 'judging', except that it is used to block - it is not judgements but poor judgements that are the problem. Wise and insightful assessments of the world around us is called discernment. But instead of that, we slap a quick attitude upon another because we don't like something, which is often petty, or worse, they in some way prod our self-importance.

But all this is once again, always interpreted by our so clever minds as I who is the enlightened one, looking at you who has the problem. Not I who has the problem. It's just human nature. In the end, such mental insights get sabotaged by our little inner emperors.

Much better to become seasoned over the grill!