Version 2006.05.20

## "The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts about Life, Death and the Universe" - ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda

### Quotations from "The Teachings of Don Juan"

Power rests on the kind of knowledge that we hold.

What is the sense of knowing useless things that will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown?

Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever has to be learned must be learned the hard way.

A person wisely goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.

Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake. Whoever makes that mistake- if he or she lives through it- will regret the error.

When we have fulfilled all four of these requisites- to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance- there are no mistakes for which we will have to account; under such conditions our actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool.

If we fail or suffers a defeat, we will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.

Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue. A person in that position is deaf and blind to everything else, and the fatigue itself makes us cease to see the marvels all around us.

Every time we set ourselves to learn, we have to labor as hard as anyone can. The limits of our learning will be determined by our nature.

Fear of knowledge is natural. All of us experience it. There is nothing we can do to avoid it. Yet no matter how frightening learning is, it is more terrible to think of us without knowledge.

To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important. It is imperative to cease to feel that way. The acts of others cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative before our unavoidable encounter with infinity.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, as warriors we must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. If we feel that we should not follow it, we must not stay with it under any conditions.

Our decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. We must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatory: Does this path have a heart?

All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. A path without a heart is never enjoyable.

On the other hand, a path with heart is easy: It does not make a warrior work at liking it. As long as a man follows a path with heart, he is one with it.

I had the vanity to believe that I live in two worlds of men, but that was only my vanity. There is but one single world for us as men. We are men, and we must follow the world of men contentedly.

Yet there is a world of happiness where there is no difference between things because there is no one there to ask about the difference. I have seen that world, but that is not the world of men.

A man has four natural enemies: fear. clarity, power, and old age. Fear, clarity, and power can be overcome, but not old age. Its effect can be postponed, but it can never be overcome.