Abhidharma Satyananda's Wisdom OM-Page
The following are sayings attributed to the venerable Abhidharma Satyananda Swami Mahajnana, whose wisdom and piety are exceeded only by his anonymity and obscurity, and who has lived and taught in the American Midwest for many years under an improbable persona and assumed name. These aphorisms are all translated from the Sanskrit, except for those which the good Swami himself had had the courtesy and good sense of rendering in Bengali.
Sri Satyananda's sage utterances are offered here for the edification of the pious and the obfuscation of the impervious. (You know who you are.)
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a word to the wise is sufficient, is one-thousandth of a picture enough for a sage?"
"Things are never quite as much like they are now as they were just a little while ago."
"If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one there to hear it, there not only is no sound, but no woods and no tree as well."
"What is the sound of one cat napping?"
"When the symphony plays, where is the music?"
"Einstein was right: 'God does not play dice with the universe.' But God does sometimes play Roulette, Scrabble, Twister, and Jeopardy with the universe."
"Pay no attention to obesity. A waist is a terrible thing to mind."
"If your karma runs over a dogma, do you then have to bury ahimsa?"
" 'Karma' is an anagram for 'a mark.' 'Dogma' spelled backward is 'am God.' Can anyone imagine these to be coincidences?"
"One's life is full of barbs. Why, I dated two Barbs in college alone!"
"While it is true that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like a single lily of the field, he had it all over them in mobility."
"I took a vow of chastity as a young man, but many said that, given my personality, it was merely a formality."
"OM is where the art is."
"How many Zen Masters does it take to change a light bulb?
The tree in the garden."
"It is better to light one candle than to curse the power company."
"For what is death, but Nature's way of telling us to slow down?"
