Ken Wilber Quotes

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one.

Everything contains its antithesis.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

I think there's a yin and a yang to everything.

If you take the yin-yang, it has a piece of the other inside itself. You can't be too much of one thing and be balanced.

Nothing is the shadow of Everything.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other. High and low rest upon each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other. Front and back follow one another.

Here, fire turns into water; Here, the dancing of the rain declares the sun. There's no opposition in existence, no contradiction; Everything supports everything else.

Duality is always secretly unity.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

One's not half two. It's two are halves of one.

What is and what is not create each other.

Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.

The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.

Mind is dual, it always divides things into polar opposites: the conqueror and the conquered, the observer and the observed, the object and the subject, the day and the night. It goes on dividing things which are not divided. Neither is the day divided from the night, nor is birth divided from death. They are one energy. But mind goes on dividing everything into polarities, opposites. Nothing is opposite in existence; every contradiction is only apparent. Deep down all contradictions are meeting together.

Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different, in essence they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us.

The light and the dark are the same. They share. They really do rub up against each other, and they are extraordinarily familiar with each other. They are actually friends.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

Life is made up of marble and mud.