This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
When I give up all that is familiar, when I let go, when I stop trying to understand, to figure everything out, I don’t know what will happen. No one can know beforehand; it is impossible even to know what is going to happen the next minute or even the next second. To reach the truth, we must go through our fear. Fear is guarding the doorway to reality, fear of stepping off the hundred-foot pole, of letting go of who we think we are, of what we cherish, our identity.
Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
Ability | Fear | Life | Life | Perfection | Right | Success | Will | Wrong | Learn |
The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness; aggressiveness engenders hostility; hostility engenders fear - a disastrous circle.
David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün
Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not be feared.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
Without concepts we find ourselves unbounded, undefined; and our greatest fear is to live without boundaries, without definitions. Of course, when we have no boundaries, we are vulnerable. Everyone, everything can come in. there are no separations, no barriers to protect us. That is why we put up personal boundaries, to protect ourselves from people, from things, from disease, from accidents, and ultimately from death. First we define ourselves: me versus you, me against not-me. Then we fortify the boundary, making the wall bigger and stronger. Pretty soon we have a really thick wall around ourselves. We are completely protected from the not-me.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it, that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
Fear |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
If you want to develop courage, do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it until you get a record of successful experiences behind you. That is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the 'someday I'll’ philosophy.
Fear | People | Philosophy | Procrastination | Responsibility | Success | Will | Afraid |
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
In the absence of discriminating thoughts, the mind as we know it ceases to exist. Our suffering - our feeling of discomfort, alienation, loneliness - arises because we create a dualistic way of perceiving everything that separates us from the external. When we view the so-called external phenomenal world as distinct from ourselves, then fear arises, fear that we will lose our lives, that we may not continue to exist. Out of that fear come anger, jealousy, greed, hatred, aversion, attachment - all kinds of clinging. All our problems arise out of seeing ourselves as separate entities. We cling to what we perceive as me; my physical body and my ideas, my mind, my thoughts, my understanding, my beliefs, my concepts, my opinions.
Absence | Alienation | Anger | Body | Fear | Greed | Ideas | Jealousy | Loneliness | Mind | Problems | Suffering | Understanding | Will | World |
Hope and fear are inseparable; there is no fear without hope, no hope without fear.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of consequences.
Consequences | Fear | Remorse | Repentance |
If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear and hope will forward it; and they who persist in opposing this mighty current will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be so much resolute and firm as perverse and obstinate.
Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of what may happen to us because of it.
Evil | Fear | Regret | Repentance |
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |
No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.
If a man should transfer caution to those things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he will immediately, by willing to be cautious, have also the power of avoiding what he chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.
Caution | Death | Fear | Man | Necessity | Pain | Power | Will |