“Is not everything a trap? A way to get stuck and stagnant and never move on…To be enlightened is to live with life as it is, without resisting it.”
Hello! My Left Hand Valley Courier review won’t be out until next week, so as a teaser, I’ve got a list of my favorite quotes from 49 Buddhas by Jim Ringel!
- pg 95: Abril, a mysterious Denverite nicknamed “Miss Desire” tells Lama Rinzen, who has just reincarnated as a detective in Denver says, “Your Buddha says life is empty. Do you know what he means by that? He means just because you go looking for something, it doesn’t mean it’s there.”
- pg 131: Lesson 14 Like a dream. Like an illusion./That is how birth, that is how living, and that is how dying are taught to be.”
- pg 153: Lesson 16 Perception changes who we are into a reflection of what we perceive.
- pg 169 Lama Rinzen is on the hunt for the mystical dorje that is said to bring all beings to enlightenment when he finds an ad for it. He ponders, But is not everything a trap? A way to get stuck and stagnant and never move on.
- pg 171 Lesson 18 We lose the things we cling to, as surely as first touch fades into oblivion.
- pg 182 Lama Rinzen has a conversation with his teacher Daidyal (or does he??) when Daidyal questions, “How does one search for what does not exist? Is this not what the Buddha talks about when he talks about emptiness? Seeking what isn’t yet anticipating it is. Anticipating is far more engaging than actually finding a thing.”
- pg 255 Lama Rinzen is observing Abril laughing with other Tibetan emigres in a bar. He thinks, “Perhaps that is what the Buddha talks about when he talks about emptiness. Moments unshared.”
- pg 264 Abril is trying (yet again) to explain her view on why Lama Rinzen is there, while also philosophizing, “In my story, when the Buddha talks about emptiness, he’s talking about what we create moment to moment, passing one to another, and then gone.”
- pg 297 Lama Rinzen is arguing his purpose to Madame Sun who, in a past life, prevented him from finding the dorje…and enlightenment. She tells him, “To be enlightened is not to move on, lama. To be enlightened is to live with life as it is, without resisting it.”
- pg 310 Lama Rinzen reflects on what he’s learned in this lifetime, and on stories–always one of my favorite things to see in a book! We are many different people living many different lives, each with our own story to tell. But our stories do not tell everything. Not who we are moment to moment. Not the part we play in another’s story. Someone we may know or not know.
Those are the quotes that hit me the hardest, that stuck out to me most, and that I loved and needed to share with you!
Thanks for sticking with me and look out for the actual review next week!
A Little Bit of Happiness 