Martin Buber

This is what it means, ‘be not bad with yourself’; what is meant is that you spend your time sitting alone with yourself and do not go out among the people; be not bad through loneliness.”

factual existence of a human being can itself be a symbol or a sacrament.

But no symbol, in no timeless height, can in any other way become and become again reality than by becoming incarnate in such a living and dying human existence.

everything desires to become a sacrament.

impossible, says Hasidism, to have truly essential intercourse with God when there is no essential intercourse with men.

horse drinking from a brook? It kicks with its hoofs, does it not? Why? Well, it sees its reflection and takes it for another horse trying to drink away its water. But you ought to know that it is you all the time: you are standing in your own way.”

How can I fulfil the commandment of love, if I do not love myself and cannot even bear to look at myself? What can I do? I practise repentance until I can bear to look at myself again. Even so I must do to my neighbours.

us love each other more, and then there will be plenty of room for both of us.’” The feeling of being cramped in the human world is derived from inadequate love.

There it is told how a monk from another Buddhist sect, following the advice of a Zen monk, absorbs himself in inner contemplation. In the grey morning light he hears a flute playing, falls into an ecstasy, runs to the cell of his friend, and knocks on the door. To the question “Who is it?” he replies, “I.”

This conforms utterly with the saying of Lao-tse, “The Tao, that can be told, is not the eternal Tao.” In