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I have a bit of a struggle with some aspects of or forms of Buddhism, but Zen I find to be mainly congenial.

Quentin S. Crisp

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Quentin S. Crisp
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: January 1
Writer
Devonshire
Find
Mainly
Aspects
Buddhism
Forms
Aspect
Struggle
Bits
Form
Congenial

More quotes by Quentin S. Crisp

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I suppose what I can say is that I do feel I have a natural spiritual sensibility.
Quentin S. Crisp
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[Antinatalism ] seems to oppose the idea of writing anything at all. To reproduce is to pass on genes. To write is to pass on memes. In that sense, it really is a kind of reproduction, which antinatalism should, theoretically, oppose, or at least which I feel that it opposes emotionally in my own experience.
Quentin S. Crisp
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[Someone] said that what I described as the Buddhist voice - the life-denying voice of censure and guilt - sounded to him very much like a Catholic voice. This is, indeed, a mystery, and it intrigues me, too.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, My Zen cuts down mountains. My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains that is precisely how it felt to me.
Quentin S. Crisp
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More or less the first thing that comes into my head is that some people are always looking for what they want to do in life and never finding it. I'm not one of those people. It has been very obvious to me from an early age who I am, and this has been tied up with creativity, and, specifically, with writing.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I grew up with tarot cards and the reading of tea leaves.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I associate my childhood with two things, mainly: the North Devon countryside and a sense of connection to another world.
Quentin S. Crisp
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The urban, on the other hand, is often seen as more real and mundane, even though it is obviously far more recent in terms of planetary development. I think this might be because nature corresponds to the unconscious and the artificial world of the city and human culture to the conscious mind.
Quentin S. Crisp
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Apart from the underlying mystery of all things, there is also another possible specific mystery in this situation: Why did I become so interested in Buddhism, Zen and so on? I seem to have a Buddhist voice in my head, and someone asked me about this recently, saying he was intrigued.
Quentin S. Crisp
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[My muse] is, in fact, a woman of the world, and precisely because of this, hopes that a diversity of cultures will endure, and that one bland monoculture does not swamp everything.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I've drifted in and out of vegetarianism for years.
Quentin S. Crisp
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There's a possible qualification I can make here about a non-pantheist god that is in some way tenable, and that is the idea of a god that has in some way discharged the universe from its own substance (I associate this with the word 'tzimtzum'), possibly even by a form of suicide - a suicide that might have been the Big Bang.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I really think [William] Burroughs was onto something here, when he said, Dreams are a biologic necessity and your lifeline into space.
Quentin S. Crisp
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Some Buddhists, however, never seem to get past the void, and I suppose I view this as a kind of Buddhist 'Old Testament' that I don't especially like.
Quentin S. Crisp
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There's a strong aspect of Buddhism which is geared towards ending all fertility.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I'm not an expert here. I'm talking about an experience I had rather than something I intellectually worked out. From what I can gather, the original mystery religions are still, largely, as the name suggests, mysterious. But they are associated with intoxication, fertility and resurrection.
Quentin S. Crisp
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The weird thing is, I'm not entirely sure that I am meant to think that such a gift is who I am according to the philosophy underlying Vedanta. But I have long been stubborn like that, for some reason. It's a gift, as I say.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I'm more a dog person than a cat person.
Quentin S. Crisp
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This is the strange thing about existing in time. As [Philip] Larkin puts it, truly, though our element is time, we are not used to the strange perspectives open at each moment of our lives - something like that.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I think [imagination] very austere element of Buddhism is also linked with a strong antinatalist strain in the philosophy. The Buddha was enlightened when he destroyed the house of body and soul into which he would otherwise have been forever reborn. This is clearly antinatalism.
Quentin S. Crisp