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possessed of faith in the Truth—believing the truth to have been proclaimed by the Blessed One, of advantage in this world, passing not away, welcoming all, leading to salvation, and to be attained to by the wise, each one for himself

Mahāparinibbāna Sutta II.9, tr. T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, Sacred Books of the East XI, 1881, p. 27

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Now this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning suffering. Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant; and any craving that is unsatisfied, that too is painful.

Dhamma-kakka-ppavattana Sutta 5, tr. T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, Sacred Books of the East XI, 1881, p. 148

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You yourself must make an effort. The Tathâgatas (Buddhas) are only preachers.

Dhammapada 276, tr. F. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East X, 1881

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By oneself the evil is done, by oneself one suffers; by oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself, no one can purify another.

Dhammapada 165, tr. F. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East X, 1881

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Self is the lord of self, who else could be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a lord such as few can find.

Dhammapada 160, tr. F. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East X, 1881

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'All created things perish,' he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way to purity.

Dhammapada 277, tr. F. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East X, 1881

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The body (Rûpa), O Bhikkhus, is not the self. If the body, O Bhikkhus, were the self, the body would not be subject to disease

Mahāvagga I.6.38, the discourse on not-self, tr. T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts I, Sacred Books of the East XIII, 1881, p. 100

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Opanayika (adj.) [fr. upaneti, upa + nī] leading to (Nibbāna)

The Pali Text Society's Pali–English Dictionary, T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede, 1921–25, p. 168

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Visuddhimagga VII.83 (Pali Text Society edition p. 217), tr. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli, The Path of Purification, Buddhist Publication Society, 2011 edition

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Chanting Book: Morning and Evening Chanting (Pūjā) and Reflections, Amaravati Publications, 1994; Abhayagiri Monastic Foundation, 2004

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There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.

Epictetus, Enchiridion 1, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Liberal Arts Press edition, 1948

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Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.

Epictetus, Enchiridion 5, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Liberal Arts Press edition, 1948

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Never say of anything, 'I have lost it,' but, 'I have restored it.' Has your child died? It is restored. Has your wife died? She is restored. Has your estate been taken away? That likewise is restored.

Epictetus, Enchiridion 11, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Liberal Arts Press edition, 1948

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While he permits you to possess it, hold it as something not your own, as do travelers at an inn.

Epictetus, Enchiridion 11, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Liberal Arts Press edition, 1948

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Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

Epictetus, Enchiridion 8, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Liberal Arts Press edition, 1948

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Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II.1, tr. George Long, 1862

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Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.7, tr. George Long, 1862

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Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.17, tr. George Long, 1862

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Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.35, tr. George Long, 1862

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Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.43, tr. George Long, 1862

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Look within. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI.3, tr. George Long, 1862

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Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings which move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI.28, tr. George Long, 1862

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Wipe out the imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine thyself to the present.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII.29, tr. George Long, 1862

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How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything which happens in life.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XII.13, tr. George Long, 1862

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There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 13.4, tr. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917

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hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 1.2–3, tr. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917

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we do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 24.19–20, tr. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917

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Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 63.1, tr. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917

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It is with life as it is with a play,—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 77.20, tr. Richard Mott Gummere, 1920

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For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739, Book I, Part IV, Section VI

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nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739, Book I, Part IV, Section VI

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Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers X.124, tr. R. D. Hicks, 1925

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Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers X.125, tr. R. D. Hicks, 1925

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Therefore death to us / Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least, / Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.

Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things III, tr. William Ellery Leonard, 1916

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