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Quote by Karlfried Graf Durckheim

“All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy walking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence.”

Quote by Karlfried Graf Durckheim

Author

Karlfried Graf Durckheim
Karlfried Graf Durckheim

Karlfried Graf Durckheim (1896-1988) was a German diplomat, writer, and psychologist of noble origin. During his diplomatic career in Japan, he deeply studied Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture, which profoundly shaped his later work. After World War II, he transitioned to psychoanalysis and founded the Georg Groddeck Institute in Munich. He became a key figure in integrating Eastern philosophy with Western psychology, making significant contributions to humanistic and transpersonal psychology. His works including 'The Way of Transformation' and 'Japan and the Spirit of the West' influenced generations of psychologists and spiritual seekers in the West. more

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“It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I remember - I need not recall - that I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in Itness. I did not call it by that name. I had no need for words. It and I were one.”

“Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen.”

“This moment, this being, is the thing. My life is all life in little. The moon, the planets, pass around my heart. The sun, now hidden by the round bulk of this earth, shines into me, and in me as well. The gods and the angels both good and bad are like the hairs of my own head, seemingly numberless, and growing from within. I people the cosmos from myself, it seems, yet what am I? A puff of dust, or a brief coughing spell, with emptiness and silence to follow.”

“Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.”