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The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.

Kent Nerburn

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Kent Nerburn
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Kent Michael Nerburn
Men
Feeling
Elephants
Story
Describe
Hope
Buddhist
Feelings
Touched
Stories
According
Part
Parts
Buddhists
Trying
Various
Describes
Way
Blind
Elephant

More quotes by Kent Nerburn

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Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.
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Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.
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The power of this experience [fatherhood] can never be explained. It is one of those joyful codings that rumbles in the species far below understanding. When it is experienced it makes you one with all men in a way that fills you with warmth and harmony.
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Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist.
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We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways.
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We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
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Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.
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Our actions in this world, and our ability to rise above the limits of our own self-interest, live on far beyond us and play their humble part in shaping a world of spirituality and peace.
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Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.
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It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
Kent Nerburn
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We must find a way to replace yearning for what life has withheld from us with gratitude for what we have been given.
Kent Nerburn
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You want to know how to be like indians? Live close to the earth. Get rid of some of your things. Help each other. Talk to the creator. Be quiet more. Listen to the earth instead of building things on it all the time.
Kent Nerburn
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Great joys make us love the world. Great sadnesses make us understand the world.
Kent Nerburn
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This is not to say that becoming a father automatically makes you a good father. Fatherhood, like marriage, is a constant struggle against your limitations and self-interests. But the urge to be a perfect father is there, because your child is a perfect gift.
Kent Nerburn
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You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn't even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother - you can't own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?
Kent Nerburn
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My fatherhood made me understand my parents and to honor them more for the love they gave. My sonhood was revealed to me in its own perfection and I understood the reason the Chinese so value filiality, the responsibility of the son to honor the parents.
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Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons from coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.
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In times past there were rituals of passage that conducted a boy into manhood, where other men passed along the wisdom and responsibilities that needed to be shared. But today we have no rituals. We are not conducted into manhood we simply find ourselves there.
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Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life.
Kent Nerburn
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We are born male. We must learn to be men.
Kent Nerburn