Eric Butterworth Quotes

The whole point is, we can forget. It’s important that we forget some things. Otherwise we’d go round the world carrying a hodload of stuff we just don’t need.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

Learn it all, then forget it all.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose. DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.

Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.

This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative - or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody.

If you can't remember the small things, how are you going to remember the big things? The mind is a real dangerous neighborhood to travel by ourselves.

The Work is four questions and a turnaround. The Work is a way to identify and question the thoughts that cause all the suffering and violence in the world. The Work is a very, very simple process. It's for anyone who can answer a question that is willing to. It takes a bit of willingness and an open mind.

The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I’m left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can’t quite remember.

Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it?

But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won't be focused. You're likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn't doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.

And one of the powers of mindfulness is the ability to get to that frame of mind on demand.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

out of sight,out of mind

Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.

There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.

A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.

Perhaps it is even more important to know what one should not think about than what one should think about.

Do not store in your brain useless information. Learn to unmind the mind. Unlearn whatever has been of no use to you. Then only can you fill your mind with divine thoughts.

What is called zazen is sitting on a zafu [pillow] in a quiet room, absolutely still, in the exact and proper position and without uttering a word, the mind empty of any thought, good or wicked. It is continuing to sit peacefully, facing a wall, and nothing more. Every day.

As long as we hold unforgivable thoughts in our mind, we will not be able to experience total inner peace.

Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state - which we have lost.

The more you say, the less people remember.