A Quote by Amit Abraham
The two great movers of the human mind are the desire of good and the fear of evil.
Related Quotes
Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.
Consider that we live in a world predicated upon fear. The underlying assumption is that human beings are innately evil and must be groomed and controlled. That is the dichotomy that is set up within the human mind, good and evil.
When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.
There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.
Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.
You have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on your standard of value.
What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure; 3-fear of loss; 4-desire for gain; 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise; 7-fear of disgrace; [and] 8-desire for fame.
Fear is the process of the mind in the struggle of becoming. In becoming good there is the fear of evil; in becoming complete, there is the fear of loneliness.
The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.
When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No - no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad - distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention - and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned.
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
All around the world, people believe that there is a great conflict between good and evil. Well, it's true that there's a conflict, but it only exists in the human mind.
The conflicting missions of the two armies seemed to have no fog, no gray, only black-and-white clarity. I had lived my life in terms of compromise, rule-bending, trade-offs, concessions, bargaining, striking deals, finding middle ground. In these two great armies, there was no such thing. Good was good, and evil was evil, and they shared no common ground.
Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.
Related Authors
Arundhati Roy Quotes
Indian
Writer
Jaggi Vasudev Quotes
Indian
Author
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes
Indian
Philosopher
Mahatma Gandhi Quotes
Indian
Leader
Mata Amritanandamayi Quotes
Indian
Leader
Narendra Modi Quotes
Indian
Politician
Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes
Indian
Leader
Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
Indian
Poet
Rajneesh Quotes
Indian
Priest
Ramana Maharshi Quotes
Indian
Philosopher
Salman Rushdie Quotes
Indian
Novelist
Sathya Sai Baba Quotes
Indian
Saint
Sri Chinmoy Quotes
Indian
Philosopher
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Quotes
Indian
Philosopher
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Quotes
Indian
Leader
Swami Vivekananda Quotes
Indian
Priest