I've seen a rich man beg
I've seen a good man sin
I've seen a tough man cry

I've seen a loser win
And a sad man grin
I heard an honest man lie

I've seen the good side of bad
And the down side of up
And everything between

I licked the silver spoon
Drank from the golden cup
Smoked the finest green

I stroked the baddest dimes
At least a couple of times
Before I broke their heart

You know where it ends
Yo, it usually depends
On where you start
(Everlast)

The mind sent outside…is the origination of suffering.

The result of the mind sent outside…is suffering.

The mind seeing the mind…is the path.

The result of the mind seeing the mind…is the cessation of suffering.
(Ajahn Dune)

"It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever."
(Jack Kerouac)

To be interested just in study can’t bring release from suffering. You have to be interested in the practice of training the mind as well. All 84,000 sections of the Dhamma came out of the Buddha’s mind. Everything comes out of the mind. Whatever you want to know, you can look for it in the mind.
(Ajahn Dune)

"There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"You have to be your own refuge. If you're the sort that has to take refuge in other people, then you'll have to see things the same way they do, which means you have to be stupid the same way they are. So pull yourself out of all that, and take a good look at yourself until things are clear within you."

(Ajahn Fuang)

"Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips." (Jack Kerouac)

"Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it." (Gary Snyder)

"The truth lies within you. If you're true in what you do, you'll meet with the truth. If you're not, you'll meet only with things that are fake and imitation."
(Ajahn Fuang)

"It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"We're going to focus on the breath. The breath doesn't belong to Buddhism or Christianity or anyone else. It's common property all over the world, and everyone has the right to look at it. So try looking at the breath until you can see your own mind and know your own mind. Then the question of what religion you belong to won't be an issue, because we can talk about the mind instead of discussing religions. This way we can understand each other." (Ajahn Fuang)

"Fluting spring was racing through the corridors and ritual alleys of my sacred brain in holy life and making me wake and resurge to the business of being and becoming a man." (Jack Kerouac)

"He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"People for the most part don't like the truth. They prefer make-believe instead."
(Ajahn Fuang)

MORGAINE SPEAKS...
In my time I have been called many things: sister, lover, priestess, wise-woman, queen. Now in truth I have come to be wise-woman, and a time may come when these things may need to be known. But in sober truth, I think it is the Christians who will tell the last tale. For ever the world of Fairy drifts further from the world in which the Christ holds sway. I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world. At best, they say that her power was of Satan. Or else they clothe her in the blue robe of the Lady of Nazareth – who indeed had power in her way, too – and say that she was ever virgin. But what can a virgin know of the sorrows and travail of mankind?
And now, when the world has changed, and Arthur – my brother, my lover, king who was and king who shall be – lies dead (the common folk say sleeping) in the Holy Isle of Avalon, the tale should be told as it was before the priests of the White Christ came to cover it all with their saints and legends.
('The Mists of Avalon' by Marion Zimmer Bradley)

"If I have to explain everything, you'll get used to having things handed to you on a platter. And then what will you do when problems come up in your meditation and you don't have any experience in figuring things out on your own?"
(Ajahn Fuang)

“The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced, though we hate to admit it, in death. But who wants to die?” (Jack Kerouac)

"The beauty of things must be that they end."
(Jack Kerouac)

"Don't judge your taco by its price."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

Buddhism in the east today is like a big tree which may look majestic, but can only give small and tasteless fruit. Buddhism in the west is like a sapling, not yet able to bear fruit, but having the potential to give large, sweet ones. (Ajahn Chah)

"Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away."
(Frida Kahlo)

The Book by Albert Camus

A journalist hounded the French writer, Albert Camus, asking him to explain his work in detail. The author of The Plague refused: “I write, and others can make of it what they will.”

But the journalist refused to give in. One afternoon, he managed to find him in a café in Paris.

“Critics say you never take on truly profound themes,” said the journalist. “I ask you now: if you had to write a book about society, would you accept the challenge?”

“Of course,” replied Camus. “The book would be one hundred pages long. Ninety-nine would be blank, since there is nothing to be said. At the bottom of the hundredth page, I’d write: “Man’s only duty is to love “.

The body is an important object of craving; and the resulting attachment is a tenacious defilement. Suffering is the consequence. To overcome it, focus your attention on the decay and disintegration of the human body so that the mind becomes clearly disgusted with the human condition, thoroughly weary of the true nature of human embodiment. As repulsion to the physical grows stronger, lightness and brightness of mind become more prominent. The human body is a heap of flesh and blood two feet wide and six feet long that is changing every moment. Seeing the suffering caused by our attachment to the body, is the initial insight that focuses our minds on Dhamma. Those who see the body clearly tend to understand Dhamma quickly. (Mae Chee Kaew)

Fingers walk the darkness down
Mind is on the midnight
Gather up the gold you've found
You fool, it's only moonlight.
If you try to take it home
Your hands will turn to butter
You better leave this dream alone
Try to find another.
(Townes Van Zandt)

"What does the money machine eat? It eats 

youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above 

all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits     out quantity." (William S. Burroughs)

"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
(Charles Bukowski)

Having been born into the world, we attach importance to the days and the months and the years as they pass. We believe in the importance of our lives and the lives of others. For this reason, our minds are constantly concerned with pain and suffering. No sooner do we take birth than we cling on tightly to our precarious state and start to worry. We are afraid of this and fear that. Our minds are immediately consumed by worldly influences and deluded tendencies driven by greed, hatred and fear. We are born with this condition, and if we don’t do something about it now, we will die still carrying those tendencies with us. What a shame!!!!
(Mae Chee Kaew)

"The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is."
(Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

Don’t doubt the value of meditation practice. Don’t underestimate your abilities. Be content with whatever progress you make because it represents part of the truth of who you are. As such, it is something you can rely on. Consider who you really are: Who is it that is born, gets sick, grows old and dies? Your body, your mind, your life — these don’t belong to you. Don’t soil your true nature with the sufferings of the world.
(Mae Chee Kaew)

"Trouble with you is you don't do plenty night zazen especially when it's cold out, that's best, besides you should get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, homespun blankets and mother's milk on your happy ragged mat floor like this one. Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in awhile, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don't give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white shit in the kitchen."
(Jack Kerouac)

https://www.supportful.com/a5525fba-fb68-4da0-b253-dce7bb61a701

Practice meditation the same way farmers grow rice. They're in no hurry. They scatter the seed, plow, harrow, plant the seedlings, step by step, without skipping any of the steps. Then they wait for the plants to grow. Even when they don't yet see the rice appearing, they're confident that the rice is sure to appear some day in the future. Once the rice appears, they're convinced that they're sure to reap results. They don't pull on the rice plants to make them come out with rice when they want it. Anyone who did that would end up with no results at all.
(Ajahn Thate)

"With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn’t felt since my first months in Europe—a mixture of ignorance and a loose, “what the hell” kind of confidence that comes on a man when the wind picks up and he begins to move in a hard straight line toward an unknown horizon." (Hunter S. Thompson)

There are three sorts of Dhamma: the Dhamma of theory, the Dhamma of practice, and the Dhamma of attainment.

The Dhamma of theory refers to the teachings of the Buddha: the discourses, the discipline, the Abhidhamma, all 84,000 sections of the Pali canon. This sort of Dhamma is everyone's common property.

As for practice and attainment, they're the individual property of those who do them. For example, Ven. Moggallana's practice was his own practice. His attainment of the paths and fruitions leading to nibbana was his own attainment. The same holds true for Ven. Sariputta and each of the noble disciples, all the way down to all of us practicing here. The practice and attainments of each person are that person's very own. It's like your own land and fields. They belong to you; they're not common property. (Ajahn Khamdee)

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." (Charles Bukowski)

Every religion or sect teaches its adherents to abandon evil and do good, to receive the virtuous qualities of its deity into their heart, or to give their heart to the deity. The way to reach the deity is the same for each religion. However, when a particular religion's devotees don't understand the truth, mistaken assumptions can arise. They may think that because another religion practices in a different way it is wrong and that only their way is correct. They propagandize and criticize and stir things up so that they can become pre-eminent with an increasing number of adherents. This is not what a Good Teacher with Dhamma would have taught, and sages would view such ideas with a dubious eye.
(Ajahn Thate)