This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we would like to dream about. The off-center, in between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught, and in which we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, ‘May I have permission to go into battle with you?’ Fear said, ‘Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.’ Then the young warrior said, ‘How can I defeat you?’ Fear replied, ‘My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.’ In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
Battle | Day | Defeat | Fear | Respect | Weapons | Respect | Teacher |
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own… Everyone when they are young knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible… Everything depends on which path you take… Everything in life has its price… Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow… Everything has changed; it's just that we can't see it… Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive... and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us.... we continue to change as change is the nature of man. No one is just this way. That is who they are today - it will not be who they are tomorrow.
Change | Destiny | Earth | Life | Life | Mother | Nature | Need | People | Tradition | Will | Teacher |
A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires… A teacher isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows… A disciple... can never imitate his guide's steps. You have your own way of living your life, of dealing with problems, and of winning. Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.
We all need love. To love is part of human nature, as they eat, drink and sleep. Sometimes when we remain absolutely alone, watching the beautiful sunset, I think, this beauty is not important because I have someone to share it. In these moments we must ask ourselves: how often they ask us to loving, and we turn to the other side? How many times we're afraid to get closer to someone cast doubts as to say that we love this person? Beware of loneliness. It resembles the dependence of the most dangerous drug. If the sun is no longer meaningful to you, become more humble and go to look for love. Know that and other spiritual blessings, the more you give, the more you get back.
Beauty | Dependence | Important | Love | Need | Beauty | Afraid |
Sometimes I go days or weeks without hearing a single kind word from anyone. These are difficult times, then it seems that human goodness is gone and life seems just existence. The teacher said: We need to explore their own fireplace. We need to add more fuel to try to illuminate the dark room that has become our lives. When we hear that our fire and burning wood boom throws sparks when read stories passionately told, us back hope. If we are able to love us and we can love. This is only a matter of time… Sometimes the best of God’s gifts arrive by the shattering of all the window panes.
People with AIDS Coalition NULL
The People With AIDS (PWA) Self-Empowerment Movement is a social movement by those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS which grew out of San Francisco in the early 1980s. The PWA Self-Empowerment Movement believes that those diagnosed as having AIDS should "take charge of their own life, illness, and care, and to minimize dependence on others". The attitude that exists throughout the movement is that one should not assume that their life is over and will end soon solely because they have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Although most of the earliest organizers have died, and organizations dissolved or reconfigured into AIDS service organizations (ASOs) the self-empowerment and self-determination aspects of the movement continue. Possibly the best known example of a continuing PWA group is AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT-UP), which has chapters around the world and has had great success bringing attention to and change regarding issues concerning PWAs. PWA is also used simply to mean "person with HIV/AIDS", regardless of whether that person is associated with the PWA Self-Empowerment Movement. [from wikipedia]
Attention | Change | Dependence | Example | Life | Life | People | Power | Self-determination | Service | Success | Will | World |
The variety of life in nature can be compared to a vast library of unread books, and the plundering of nature is comparable to the random discarding of whole volumes without having opened them, and learned from them. Our critical dependence on the great variety of nature for the progress we have already made has been amply documented. Indifference to the loss of species is, in effect, indifference to the future, and therefore a shameful carelessness about our children.
Dependence | Indifference | Life | Life | Nature | Progress | Loss |
Philip Wylie, fully Philip Gordon Wylie
One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen
Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him.
Care | Conduct | Dependence | God | Reason | Sense | Will | God |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua used to say: “Let the honor of your student be as precious to you as your own; and the honor of your colleague as the respect due your teacher; and the respect towards your teacher as your reverence for G-d.”
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Hillel taught: “A person who is [too] shy [to ask questions] will never learn, and a teacher who is too strict cannot teach . . . and in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
There is no greater teacher of morals than love itself, for the first lessonthat one learns from love is: I am not, you are….When the thought of self is removed then every action, every deed that one performs in life,becomes a virtue.
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabban Gamaliel said: “Provide yourself with a teacher and remove yourself from doubt, and do not accustom yourself to give tithes by estimation.”
Teacher |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Joshua ben Perachyah said: “Provide for yourself a teacher and get yourself a friend; and judge every man towards merit.”
I contemplate the sort of friend, the sort of man I am now without. He completed his sixty-seventh year, a reasonable age for the sturdiest of us; I acknowledge that. He escaped from an interminable illness; I acknowledge that. He died with his dear ones surviving him, and at a time of prosperity for the state, which was dearer to him than all else; that too I acknowledge. Yet I lament his death as though he were young and in glowing health. I lament it—you can consider me a weakling in this—on my own account, for I have lost the witness, guardian and teacher of my life.
When in any undertaking we put our main dependence and trust in an individual or individuals and not in the Supreme Power, we are off the main track of the most perfect success.
Dependence | Individual | Trust |
The standards and accountability movement has grown dramatically over the last decade. The No Child Left Behind Act became law, and it has laid bare the problems in many of our poorest, worst-performing schools. We can no longer say that we didn't know that these schools were failing some of our most vulnerable kids. To improve the quality of education, we need to improve instruction in the classroom. Nationwide, two million teachers will leave teaching over the next decade. NYC already loses 30% more math teachers and 22% more science teachers than it certifies every year. IN 2001, I proposed the National Teacher Corps, which brings teachers into the classroom, and a new initiative that would provide more schools with strong principals. Both became law.
Initiative | Need | Problems | Science | Will | Instruction | Child | Teacher |
Deborah Tannen, fully Deborah Frances Tannen
The seeds of the Argument Culture can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea... up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate.