Contemplative Monk Quotes & Sayings

If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first
century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides
telescopes are unnatural. — Timothy Leary

By becoming clearly contemplative in a matter of weeks, my prayer had been given a particular and novel cast; and this was matched by the distinctness in the reprecussions my daily sessions of exercises were having on my everyday life, as well as on the many different occupations which a monk is vowed to carry out. The genuine sense of euphoria that followed the exercises persisted in me and transfigured my day. During the early months I had to face up to the sort of difficulties which put one's nerves to the test, and which would certainly have put me on my back before. As it was, everything went off so smoothly and I took it all so well that I trained everyone under my charge to develop the attitude of 'accepting rather than undergoing. — Jean Dechanet

To do more, is not necessarily to do better. — Katy Butler

She had always clung to the hope her world would somehow regain its course and would one day cease its unbearable orbit of a darkened star — Shehanne Moore

Her boarders are so hard and bright that these lumpy things are being blinded just by looking at her; she's opaque, she's impermeable, she's a million densities and dimensions more real than any of them. They break against her and roll off like mist. — Tana French

In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau sets forth a deep and shining vision of spirituality, one that guides the reader into the contemplative life and the very root of our being. Dr. Bruteau is a philosopher of great measure whose work should be required reading for all who seek the deepest truth about themselves. — Sue Monk Kidd

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or "Bible" of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called "mystical experiences" in every religion are true. He should have known better. — Seraphim Rose

This is the path of prayer-contemplative prayer, that is, as distinct from simple prayers of supplication and thanksgiving-which is a specific discipline of thought, desire, and action, one that frees the mind from habitual prejudices and appetites, and allows it to dwell in the gratuity and glory of all things. As an old monk on Mount Athos once told me, contemplative prayer is the art of seeing reality as it truly is; and, if one has not yet acquired the ability to see God in all things, one should not imagine that one will be able to see God in himself. — David Bentley

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way. — Sue Monk Kidd

Nothing goes on forever; if one could only remember that. — Isabel Scott Rorick

Certain vocations, e.g., raising children, offer a perfect setting for living a contemplative life. They provide a desert for reflection, a real monastery. The mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is certainly monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of social life and from the centres of important power. She feels removed. Moreover, her constant contact with young children, the mildest of the mild, gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild and learn empathy and unselfishness. Perhaps more so even than the monk or the minister of the Gospel, she is forced, almost against her will, to mature. For years, while she is raising small children, her time is not her own, her own needs have to be put into second place, and every time she turns around some hand is reaching out demanding something. — Ronald Rolheiser