Srinivasan Narayana Moorthy
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"Realizations are of two kinds. One is just pep talk, great outbursts of emotion
and nothing more. The other is the product of a shift awareness; it is not coupled
with an emotional outburst but with action. "
"A leader never lets anyone know that he is in charge. A leader comes and goes
without leaving a trace. That freedom is what makes him a leader."
"I cannot lie to you, because a lie doesn't exist, I can tell you only about what
exists. In my world, only intent exists; a lie has no intent behind it; therefore,
it has no existence."
"Be impeccable. To be impeccable means to put your life on the line in order to back
up your decisions, and then to do quite a lot more than your best to realize those
decisions. When you are not deciding anything, you are merely playing roulette with
your life in a helter-skelter way."
"Impeccability, is not morality. It only resembles morality. Impeccability is
simply the best use of our energy level. Naturally, it calls for frugality,
thoughtfulness, simplicity, innocence; and above all, it calls for lack of
self-reflection. All this makes it sound like a manual for monastic life,
but it isn't."
"Warriors live with death at their side, and from the knowledge that death is
with them they draw the courage to face anything. The worst that could happen
to us is that we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate,
we are free; those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear."
"Death is painful only when it happens in one's bed, in sickness. In a fight for
your life, you feel no pain. If you feel anything, it's exultation."
"Death is the only worthy opponent we have, Death is our challenger. We are born
to take that challenge. Life is the process by means of which death challenges
us. Death is the active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are
only two contenders at any time: oneself and death.If and when we move, it's
only when we feel the pressure of death. Death sets the pace for our actions
and feelings and pushes us relentlessly until it breaks us and wins the bout,
or else we rise above all possibilities and defeat death."
"Without a clear view of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty.
Warriors struggle to gain this crucial insight in order to help them realize at
the deepest possible level that they have no assurance whatsoever their lives will
continue beyond the moment. That realization gives warriors the courage to be
patient and yet take action, courage to be acquiescent without being stupid.
It gives warriors the courage to be cunning without being conceited, and above
all it gives them courage to be ruthless without being self-important."
"Ruthlessness is not cruelty. Ruthlessness is the opposite of self-pity or self
importance. Ruthlessness is sobriety."
"Most of us are unwilling to accept that we need so little to get on with. We are
geared to expect instruction, teaching, guides, masters. And when we are told that
we need no one, we don't believe it. We become nervous, then distrustful, and
finally angry and disappointed. If we need help, it is not in methods, but in
emphasis. If someone makes us aware that we need to curtail our self-importance,
that help is real."
"To have compassion meant that you wished the other person to be like you, to be
in your shoes. The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.
The impeccability of a warrior is to let them be and to support them in what they
are. That means, of course, that you trust them to be impeccable warriors themselves.
If they are not, then it's your duty to be impeccable yourself and not say a word."
"A warrior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that one has personal
possessions that could be blockaded. A warrior has nothing in the world except his
impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened. Nonetheless, in a battle for
one's life, a warrior should strategically use every means available.
"The soundness of the world is not the mirage, the mirage is the fixation of one's
awareness. When seers shift their awareness, they are not confronted with an illusion,
they are confronted with another world; that new world is as real as the one we
are watching now, but the new fixation of their awareness, which produces that new
world, is as much of a mirage as the old fixation."
"We share a metaphorical dagger: the concerns of our self-reflection. With this
dagger, we cut ourselves and bleed; and the job of our chains of self-reflection
is to give us the feeling that we are bleeding together, that we are sharing something
wonderful: our humanity."
- Don Juan Matus in Carlos Castaneda's book
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