Look Within
If you cannot find the truth where you are,
Where do you expect to find it?
Truth is not far away; it is ever present.
It is not something to be attained
Since not one of your steps leads away from it.
Dogen
You who want knowledge seek the Oneness within. There you will find the clear mirror already waiting. Hadewijch of Antwerp
Too late have I loved Thee, Beauty so old and yet so new, too late have I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there I sought Thee; and in my deformity rushed amidst those beauteous forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee. My life shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee. St. Augustine
Turn to thy heart, and thy heart will find its Saviour, its God, within itself. William Law
I gazed into my own heart; there I saw Him; He was nowhere else. Rumi
Hakuin's whole life was shining the light onto the place where he stood. Abbot Amakuki
Our being here is our eternal being. Many people imagine here to have creaturely being, and divine being to be yonder. It is a popular delusion. Meister Eckhart
If thine eyes were opened, then in that very place where thou standest, sittest, or liest, thou sholdst see the glorious Countenance of Face of God and the whole heavenly Gate. Boehme
People seek it far away -- what a pity! They are like him who, in the midst of water, cries out in thirst so imploringly. Hakuin
Look within; within is the fountain of all good. Such a fountain, where springing waters can never fail, so thou dig deeper and deeper. Marcus Aurelius
God dwells in the inmost heart of man. We shall find Him within ourselves, if we will only enter in and seek him there. John Nicholas Grou
To mount to God is to enter into oneself. De Adhaerendo Deo
Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Emerson
The true Buddha sits in the interior. Chao-chou T'sung-shen
A man has many skins in himself covering the depths of his heart. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox's or a bear's, so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. Meister Eckhart
If a person looks at the Heavens before he gazes within himself, he is liable to fall into a hunter’s trap. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came - arising I know not from where - the current which I dare to call my life. Teilhard de Chardin.
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