Quote

In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same -- Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.

Stephen Levine

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Clear
Word
Heart
Mind
Substance
Chinese
Essence
Open

More quotes by Stephen Levine

Image
Your distance from your partner is the distance from your heart. The things that make relationships difficult are some of the most precious aspects to us.
Stephen Levine
Image
You can call it wisdom, or sanity, or health, or enlightenment. I use the word God as a short-cut. I am comfortable with the word God because I don't have the foggiest idea of what it means.
Stephen Levine
Image
Much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeing elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.
Stephen Levine
Image
The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
Image
Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.
Stephen Levine
Image
[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
Stephen Levine
Image
Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25)
Stephen Levine
Image
Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
Stephen Levine
Image
Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our sympathetic joy, our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.
Stephen Levine
Image
When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.
Stephen Levine
Image
Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness.
Stephen Levine
Image
If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.
Stephen Levine
Image
Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been.
Stephen Levine
Image
Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
Stephen Levine
Image
Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. Safety keeps you numb and dead. People are caught by surprise when it is time to die. They have allowed themselves to live so little.
Stephen Levine
Image
Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.
Stephen Levine
Image
Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
Image
When we see all women as the divine mother and all men as the divine father, everyone you meet is sacred.
Stephen Levine
Image
Death is perfectly safe. (55)
Stephen Levine
Image
Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
Stephen Levine