Reb Zalman Quotes

Ultimately, our questions must emerge not from mental categories, but from deep within the heart. They must rise to the surface of our beings as we sit in silence, so that they are not just the old questions which we raise whenever we have nothing else to talk about or just for the sake of argument. They need to be the questions which make a difference in our lives. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Taking refuge means that you align and orient your life toward Buddha's example and toward enlightenment. ~ Reb Anderson

Rebecca tilted her face up to Jake and she felt his lips brushing lightly against hers. Then his lips were beside her ear, whispering, A lifetime of happiness, Reb, I promise. ~ Lorraine Heath

States and Provinces and curricula around the world track students by age. This practice is so common that we do not think of it as tracking. With few exceptions, a six year old must go into first grade even if that six year old is not ready or was ready for the grade one year earlier. ~ Zalman Usiskin

This is your house, Reb. You are in the rafters, the floorboards, the walls, the lights. You are in every echo through every hallway. We hear you now. I hear you still. How can I - how can any of us - let you go? You are woven through us, from birth to death. ~ Mitch Albom

The fundamental delusion of human beings is the belief that we exist separately and independently from the rest of the universe. ~ Reb Anderson

By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang ... everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are you feeling, and you'd answer, The old gray rabbi, ain't what he used to be ... ~ Mitch Albom

thunder should have rumbled in a Robert Mitchum sky that promised far worse before long. I should have seen tree branches whipping. Heard the plash of drops on stone, sprung shutters whapbapbapping. But the gods had decided to turn on the sun and set it in a Spielberg sky with a thumbs-up sign from Disney. Hello to San Francisco, where the party never stops. ~ Reb MacRath

You don't have to work at what you are. Part of what you are is what you think you are, but what you think you are is not all of what you are. It is just an aspect of what you are. Being buddha means being unattached to your thoughts about what you are. If you think you are a worthy person or an unworthy person, not grasping those thoughts is buddha. ~ Reb Anderson

Do not exalt any path above god. There are many paths that lead to god. So people are capable of finding and following the ways that suit them, provided they do not stand still. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

I think the best way I can put it," Tom summarized, "was what I was once told that a Confederate prisoner said to his Union captor. The Yank said: 'Why do you fight us so hard, Reb?', and his prisoner replied: 'Because you are here, Yank'. ~ C.G. Faulkner

When God saw that people, instead of turning to God, were turning to the medicine cabinet, God made himself available in the medicine cabinet. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

The next morning, shortly after sunrise, the Reb was awakened for a sponge bath. It was quiet and early. The nurse bathed him gently, and he was singing and humming to her, alive with the day. Then his head slumped and his music stopped forever. ~ Mitch Albom

Don't regard yourselves as the final recipients of [...] music [...]. Instead, offer your ears and heart to heaven. Let your experience of [...] music go up to God. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Johnny Reb' laughed. 'What's it to a soldier the right and the wrong of it all? He's there for the fighting, that's what he likes. Doesn't matter who you're fighting, long as he gives you a good fight. ~ Alexandra Ripley

As we watch the process in which the soul becomes thought or speech, we notice that many a time we ease ourselves into convenient clichés that have little of the new insight in them. Once more we are trapped by habits that are the dunghills upon which the creeds feed. It takes vigilance and humble courage to make acts of faith. After all, where faith is weak, there is an abundance of beliefs. With this in mind we may be more humble about our tradition and our sureness, yet also a bit more proud of the holy process in our inner being that keeps teaching and guiding us. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

We will gather images and images of images up till the last, which is blank. This one we will agree on. (Reb Carasso) ~ Edmond Jabes

You have to sit with your life and feel how you hold it, and be willing for the release to happen. It will happen spontaneously, because it's already so. ~ Reb Anderson

But this attitude could not persist. Under the supervision of "oldtimers" like Joseph Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas Jackson, complaisant officers were gradually weeded out and West Point ideas of discipline were adopted in the Southern armies. Before the campaigns of 1862 Johnny Reb was for the most part a changed man. He had shed most of his surplus equipment, and, of much greater importance, he had abandoned the idea that military life was "all fun and frolic." In short, the volunteer had become a soldier. ~ Bell Irvin Wiley

elders serve as conduits between the divine realm and the mundane world, making the abstract truths of spirituality accessible to the community by embodying them in their everyday behavior. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

If we turn away from our sexual passion, then we freeze and beings are harmed. If we grab it, then we are burned and beings are harmed. But if we just stay close to it, walk around it, always in touch with the fact that we are sexual beings, neither identifying with nor distancing ourselves from our sexuality, then we gradually become intimate with it. ~ Reb Anderson

The awareness that we stand in the presence of the Living God is one of the most important realizations we can install in our operative consciousness. God is always present. The question is, how present are we? We want to stand in that Presence without opacity. Our work is to penetrate, in meditation and in action, to the very heart of being nokhach penei ha-Shem (Lamentations 2:19), of being truly present before God. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

God is always present. The question is, how present are we? ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

The mind is like tofu. By itself, it has no taste. Everything depends on the flavor of the marinade it steeps in. ~ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi