A Panda's Journey
The word “panda” originates from the Sanskrit word paṇḍita meaning ‘learned, wise’.
A Panda’s Journey incorporates Spirit & Mind with Quantum Physics to reveal the power within you.
The power within us all.
The power of realizing you are in control of your destiny.
1 — “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
2 — “All experiences are preceded by mind, having mind as their master, created by mind.”
3 — “All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?”
4 — “What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.”
5 — “To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
6 — “He is able who thinks he is able.”
7 — “What you think you create, what you feel you attract, what you imagine you become.”
8 — “Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox.”
9 — “There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind.”
10 — “It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.”
11 — “Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.”
12 — “What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.”
13 — “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
14 — “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
15 — “Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.”
16 — “Delight in heedfulness! Guard well your thoughts!”
17 — “You are a seeker. Delight in the mastery of your hands and your feet, of your words and your thoughts.”
18 — “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”
19 — “The external world is only a manifestation of the activities of the mind itself, and the mind grasps it as an external world simply because of its habit of discrimination and false-reasoning. The disciple must get into the habit of looking at things truthfully.”
20 — “Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.”
21 — “Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.”
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Imagination(Oxford) is defined as:
—“The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.”
—“The ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.”
“Imagination rules the world.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.”
― George Bernard Shaw“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe“If you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.”
― Alice Walker“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
― Stephen R. Covey“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
— Carl Sagan“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
— Einstein
There are thousands more quotes on imagination.
If some of the greatest minds of all time spoke on imagination, might it be important?
Can you use your imagination to change your life?
Yes.
How?
Begin with imagining your ideal life.
What does it look like?
How does it feel?
Take time to imagine it.
By dwelling in your imagination you are planting seeds of those images, which can manifest if you continually “water” it.
When other thoughts creep in, quickly remind yourself of the life you want. Focus on that and it has no choice but to manifest.
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“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
— Einstein
“Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.”
— Da Vinci“It has long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
— Da Vinci
“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”
— Stephen Hawking“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”
— Stephen Hawking
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
— Einstein“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
— Einstein“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
—Einstein
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“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
— Buddha“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.”
— Buddha
*“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”
— Goethe“As you think, so shall you become.”
— Bruce Lee
“The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like the root of a tree. All a tree’s fruit and flowers, branches and leaves depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort.”
― Bodhidharma“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
— John F. Kennedy“Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.”
— William Shakespeare
“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”
— Voltaire“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
— Steve Jobs
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
— Henry Ford“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
— John Locke“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
— Romans 12:2
“17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
— Ephesians 4:17—24“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
― James 5:16
“16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
―2 Corinthians 4:16-18“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
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Ask yourself:
—“What does my ideal life look like?”
—“What does my ideal job look like?”
—“What do my ideal relationships look like?”
Continue this process of questions in each area you want to improve in.
It’s one thing to contemplate your ideal life, but when you write it on paper or a word doc, it enters the physical world and plants seeds into your subconscious.
Your mind is like a garden, what you put into it is what will grow.
I have experienced this first-hand, “coincidentally” brushing shoulders with giants again and again. Affirm it daily. The more you affirm it, the more it will manifest.
“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.”
—Buddha
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
―Thomas Jefferson
“If you have a strong mind and plant in it a firm resolve, you can change your destiny.”
―Paramahansa Yogananda
This process is extremely effective in manifesting a life of your choosing. It’s simple yet requires great responsibility.
Some say “With great power comes great responsibility,” but it’s more like “With great responsibility comes great power.”
Great spiritual teachers spoke of this.
Great psychologists spoke of this.
Great philosophers spoke of this.
&Great scientists speak of this.
Many years ago six blind men lived near each other in a village in India.
The other villagers supported and helped the old men their whole lives. The men would hear stories of the worlds wonders and could only imagine what it looked like.
What piqued the men’s interest most was what an elephant looked like. They were told elephants could trample forests, carry huge burdens, and frighten all people with loud trumpet calls.
The men began arguing all the time about elephants.
“An elephant must be a powerful giant,” said one of the them.
“My brother you are mistaken,” said the second, “An elephant is graceful and gentle if princesses are able to ride on their backs.”
“Both of you are wrong,” the third man said, “I’ve heard elephants can pierce a man’s heart with its horn.”
“How blind you all are!” Proclaimed the fourth man. “An elephant is just like a large cow.”
“An elephant must be a magical being,” said the fifth man. “The Princess is able to travel safely throughout the kingdom on it.”
“You fools!” Declared the sixth man. “Elephants don’t exist at all. We are victims of a cruel joke.”
They quarreled and each had different ideas of what an elephant is. The other villagers grew tired of them arguing so they arranged a time for them to meet the Princesse’s elephant. They put their hands on each others backs and were led by a young village boy.
When they reached the palace they were greeted by an old village friend who now worked as a gardener at the palace. Their friend led them to the courtyard where an elephant stood. The blind men were led to the elephant, each touching it to find out what it is.
The first blind man to speak had reached out and touched the side of the elephant. “An elephant is smooth like a wall!”
The second put his hand out touching the elephant’s trunk. “An elephant is like a big snake.”
The third touched the elephant’s tusk. “I knew it!” He said. “This beast is sharp and smooth like a spear.”
The fourth reached out and touched the elephant’s legs. “This is simply a giant cow.”
The fifth touched the elephant’s ear. “An elephant is a large fan or a magic carpet that can fly.”
The sixth reached out and touched the elephant’s tail. “You all have lost your senses! Even a blind man can sense that this is nothing more than a piece of rope.”
After they each felt part of the elephant they began to argue again, until they were shouting at each other saying their description of the elephant was the truth.
“Stop shouting!” Yelled the angry Princess approaching them. “How can you all be so certain you’re right?”
The blind men knew the Princess to be very wise, so they said nothing at all.
“The elephant is a large animal,” she said kindly. “You each only touched one part. Maybe if you put the parts together you will see the truth. I must now finish my meditation,” she said before walking away.
“She is right,” one of the blind men said, “We must put all the parts together to truly learn the truth. Let’s discuss this on our way home.”
The boy led the men home, one man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, then each blind man succeeded in putting their hand on the man in front of them, walking home together.
In the far East they have something called The Chinese Bamboo Tree.
The Chinese Bamboo Tree takes five years to grow.
They have to water and fertilize the ground where it is every day,
and it doesn’t break through the ground until the fifth year.
But once it breaks through the ground,
within 5 weeks it grows 90 feet tall.
Now the question is does it grow 90 feet tall in 5 weeks or 5 years?
The answer is obvious.
It grows 90 feet tall in five years.
Because at any time if had that person stopped watering, and nurturing, and fertilizing that tree, that bamboo tree would have died in the ground.
And I can see people coming out talking to a guy out there watering and fertilizing the ground that’s not showing anything,
“Hey, whatcha doing? You’ve been out here a long time, man. And the conversation in the neighborhood is…You growin a Chinese Bamboo Tree, is that right??”
“Yea that’s right”
“Well even Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder can see ain’t nothing showin.”
You know that’s how people are gonna do you:
“So how long have you been working on this? How long have you been working on your dream? And you have nothing to show? This is all you got to show???”
People gonna do that to you.
And some people ladies and gentleman, they stop.
Because they don’t see instant results.
It doesn’t happen quickly.
They stop, oh no, no, no, no…
You’ve got to keep on watering your dreams
And when it begins to happen, they stop laughing.
They say “Look, whoa, look here, it’s, look up, hey man you know I knew you could do it, look, you got a job here?”
See during those hard times you didn’t know how you’re gonna make payroll, during those times when you failed and things didn’t work out, they were nowhere to be found.
You know what I discovered, when you’re working at your dream, somebody said “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.”
Oh it’s sweet to ya. It’s good to ya, why?
See when it’s hard and there’s a struggle, see what you become in the process is more important than the dream.
That’s far more important.
The kind of person you become, the character that you build, the courage that you develop, the faith that you’re manifesting.
Oh it’s something that you get up in the morning, you look yourself in the mirror, you’re a different kind of person, you walk with a different kind of spirit.
People know that you know what life is. That you have embraced life.
You knew it was hard, but you did it hard.
“…He asked, “Where are you today, right now?”
Eagerly, I started talking about myself. However, I noticed that I was still being sidetracked from getting answers to my questions. Still, I told him about my distant and recent past and about my inexplicable depressions. He listened patiently and intently, as if he had all the time in the world, until I finished several hours later.
“Very well,” he said. “But you still have not answered my question about where you are.”
“Yes I did, remember? I told you how I got to where I am today: by hard work.”
“Where are you?”
“What do you mean, where am I?”
“Where Are you?” he repeated softly.
“I’m here.”
“Where is here?”
“In this office, in this gas station!” I was getting impatient with this game.
“Where is this gas station?”
“In Berkeley?”
“Where is Berkeley?”
“In California?”
“Where is California?”
“In the United States?”
“On a landmass, one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. Socrates, I…”
“Where are the continents?
I sighed. “On the earth. Are we done yet?”
“Where is the earth?”
“In the solar system, third planet from the sun. The sun is a small star in the Milky Way galaxy, all right?”
“Where is the Milky Way?”
“Oh, brother,” I sighed impatiently, rolling my eyes. “In the universe.” I sat back and crossed my arms with finality.
“And where,” Socrates smiled, “is the universe?”
“The universe is well, there are theories about how it’s shaped…”
“That’s not what I asked. Where is it?”
“I don’t know – how can I answer that?”
“That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of what anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery. My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass.”
Born — October 22, 1920, Springfield, MA
Growing Up
—Only child in Irish Catholic home.
—Tim’s Father, also named Timothy, was a dentist, and left the family when Tim was 14.
—Graduated from a high school in Massachusetts.
—1938-1940 Became a cadet in U.S. Military at West Point, but was a trouble maker. He was shunned and silenced from fellow cadets. This led to court appearances where Timothy then resigned and honorably discharged from the Army.
—He had gone to numerous jails throughout his whole life(first time in 1965), with the above case he said the military trial was “the only fair trial I’ve had in a court of law.”
—1950 received doctorate in psychology from University of California Berkeley, becoming an assistant professor until 1955. During this time he developed a psychotherapy model (egalitarian model) for psychotherapist and patients.
—1959 Lecturer at Harvard University.
—1960 Leary tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, commenting afterwards:
“I learned more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research in psychology.”
—In the following years he linked up with Richert Alpert – commonly known as Ram Dass, who was also a Harvard lecturer, studying and analyzing psilocybin’s effect on the brain. He concluded that psychedelics, under the guidance of psychologists/guides, in the right dose and good setting, could benefit people in ways that normal therapy couldn’t.
—1970 received a 10-year prison sentence. He had designed a psychological test for prisoners in the previous years, and he was given the test. That same year he answered all the right questions to put him in the most low-security prison possible, where he ended up escaping.
—He joined the Black Panther Party in Algeria after his escape – before one of the leaders of the Party attempted to hold him and his wife hostage. Tim and his wife left to Switzerland.
—Richard Nixon labeled Leary as “The most dangerous man in America”
—1973 After more traveling to escape getting caught, he was arrested and faced 95 years in prison, but ended up with a 15 year sentence, in Folson Prison, California, where his cell was beside Charles Manson’s cell. They couldn’t see each other but they conversed.
—Leary became an FBI informant to shorten his prison sentence, where he was released in 1976.
—Leary continued lecturing, debating, and writing the rest of his life.
Leary had an adventurous life to say the least, this is just a short outline of some of it.
—Multiple songs have been written about or for Leary, including John Lennon writing “Come Together” for Leary during Leary’s political pursuit.
—The Moody Blues wrote the song “Legend of a Mind” with the main lyrics being “Timothy Leary’s dead..No he’s on the outside looking in.” …Leary was still alive at this time.
Written Books
—The Psychedelic Experience
—Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
—High Priest
—Your Brain Is God
He wrote many others that can be found online.
Here’s a documentary from BBC on YouTube about Timothy Leary’s life, titled “The Man Who Turned On America”
Died — May 31, 1996, Beverly, CA
“Think for yourself and question authority.”
“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.”
“Grow with the flow.”
“Any reality is an opinion-we make up our own reality.”
“I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.”
“If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.”
Here is a related post about questioning your assumptions.
What’s your favorite Leary moment?
Born—January 6, 1915, England.
Growing Up
—His grandpa on his mother’s side of the family was a missionary.
—Alan had interest in storybook fables, mysterious tales, and the idea of “ultimate things” – likely influenced by his mother’s religious family.
—At an early age he was interested in Buddhism.
—Alan became an Episcopal priest in the United States in 1938, before moving to Millbrook, New York.
—He wrote a number of books.
—Moved to San Francisco in 1951, teaching Buddhist studies.
—He became a worldwide spiritual speaker, with the help of his radio show “Way Beyond the West” giving lectures, writing books, living zen, throughout his days.
Written Books
—The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for the Age of Anxiety
—The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
—The Way of Zen
—Become What You Are
—The Meaning of Happiness
—Out Of Your Mind
—This Is It
—What Is Tao?
—In My Own Way: An Autobiography
—The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
—Nature, Man and Woman
These are only a small amount of all his publications, which you can find here at the Alan Watts Organization.
Alan Watts is known for multiple things, some of them are for bringing Zen and Buddhist teachings to the West.
He not only spoke of his beliefs, he manifested them, because he knew who he was at a deep universal level.
He knows how difficult those ideas are to be comprehended, but he explained it well so that if you listen enough, you might get it, but also that there’s nothing to get 🙂
One of the many ways he has influenced my life is getting me to wonder what I would do if I didn’t have to worry about money.
Here is Watt’s 3 minute speech on the above idea that changed my life.
He has so many other works that you can find on YouTube, bookstores, anywhere online.
Died — November 16, 1973, California.
“I had a discussion with a great master in Japan…and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, ‘That’s a waste of time. If you really understand Zen…you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because…the sound of the rain needs no translation’.”
“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words… As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.”
“If you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water…You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”
“So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.”
Here are 69 of Watt’s best quotes. I wrote down many of his quotes before numbering them and it just happened to be 69. Enjoy.
With Ken Thompson 