A Quote by Thomas Merton

And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey. — © Thomas Merton
And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.
When you meet someone you love, then you change for good. That’s why the other person will never know or understand the earlier you, and why you can never change back. And why, when that person starts to go, you’ll feel the tear deep in your heart long before your head has the slightest clue what’s going on.
...When a man first awakens, it sometimes takes several moments before he starts thinking clearly." "And here I thought it took several years, perhaps a lifetime for the average man's intellect to kick in.
A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas.
We clearly see in God's Word that anything He tells us to do, He will give us the ability to do it. But do we really believe it? Do we want to believe it? It's easier to come up with excuses for why we can't do things that are hard or that we really don't want to do.
What happens is when you start to believe it in here your brain starts to believe it out here in our physical world so you have to understand it is a reverse of what we have been taught. "When I see it I will believe it".
If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.
To believe straight away is foolishness, to believe after having seen clearly is good sense. That is the Buddhist policy in belief; not to believe stupidly, or to rely only on people, textbooks, conjecture, reasoning, or whatever the majority believes, but rather to believe what we see clearly for ourselves to be the case. This is how it is in Buddhism.
In India, I personally believe yes, there is a clear fear of unknown; there's a lot of risk aversions in science and technology. They want predictability in everything they do, and it starts from people. It starts from investors. It starts from the regulators. You see that mindset across the society.
Big Data allows us to see patterns we have never seen before. This will clearly show us interdependence and connections that will lead to a new way of looking at everything. It will let us see the ‘real-time’ cause and effect of our actions. What we buy, eat, donate, and throw away will be visual in a real-time map to see the ripple effect of our actions. That could only lead to mores-conscious behavior.
The book Forest Dark wants to provoke questions about what is reality and why are we so given to believe that reality is firm and unbendable. There's a whole host of questions that the book is asking about that. Why do we believe that the world is only one way and as we see it? Why are we not open to the ways in which it might be otherwise.
It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.
The more you believe it, the more it starts to become real for you. This is why it is so very important to believe in positive things, rather than negative things. Whatever you believe, you will find that you are correct. The universe has a way of presenting to you exactly what you believe. If you think life is great, you are correct. If you think life is tough, you will be proved correct too.
All those hours spent alone on the rink is where a skater's strength comes from. That's where a standing ovation starts and if you don't want to be there, it is going to show. Nothing you dreamed about is going to happen if you forget why you started in the first place. You have to skate with you heart. Before anyone can believe in you, you have to believe in yourself.
Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW...so you stop asking.
A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.
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