Frightening Quotes - page 13
We find sin the perversion of human freedom, and the deep cause of death, because it is separation from God, the source of life...and then, in its turn, the occasion and effect of an intervention in us and in our world of an obscure agent, the Devil. Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening. It is contrary to the teaching of the Bible and the Church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality, or to regard it as a principle in itself which does not draw its origin from God like every other creature; or to explain it as a pseudoreality, a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes.
Pope Paul VI
I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening.
Thomas Merton