Outwardly go with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true nature. Then your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, and your thoughts will not be confused, while the secret within you will expand greatly to roam in the realms of absolute parity.

~ Huainan-tzi

Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.

~ Meister Eckhart

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.

~ Thomas Merton

It is all the mind can do – discover the unreal
as unreal. The problem is only mental. Abandon
false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true
ideas. There aren't any.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The excessive joy and throbbing ecstasy of which the annals of mysticism so often speak belong mostly to the novice and intermediate. The truly advanced man experiences quite the contrary, which is a deep sadness, although it never shakes his unalterable serenity. This is because the first two are primarily preoccupied with their personal feelings whereas the third has also brought compassion for all mankind within the orbit of his outlook.

~ Paul Brunton

The eventual trend of evolution is through and away from personality, as we now know it. We shall find ourselves afresh in a higher individuality, the soul. To achieve this, the lower characteristics have slowly to be shed. In this sense, we do die to the earthly self and are born again in the higher self. That is the only real death awaiting us.

~ Paul Brunton

Ram Tzu knows this...

No one
In the whole history of argument
Has ever been right.

~ Ram Tzu

Life is no place
For idle speculation.
No one has ever learned
From the mistakes of others.

A lie cloaked in truth
Is still a lie.
If it makes sense to you
You're in real trouble.

You always look for God
In high places…
Guess again.

~ Ram Tzu

There is a desert
I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness,
peace beyond any
understanding of it.

~ Rumi

The surest sign of spiritual progress is a total lack of concern about progress. There is an utter absence of anxiety about anything like liberation and a sort of hollowness in one's being, a kind of looseness and involuntary surrender to whatever might happen.

~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

The mind can have dealings only with kindred objects formed from its own
substance, that is, with thoughts, ideas. Therefore when it knows material
objects they must really be ideas.

~ Paul Brunton

When the intellect, bewildered by the multiplicity of holy scripts, stands unperturbed in blissful contemplation of the Infinite, then hast thou attained Spirituality.

~ Bhagavad Gita

[Trans. Purohit Swami Ch2, V2]

Since cleverness is your pride
and fills you with wind,
become a simpleton so that
your heart may remain healthy.
Not a simpleton warped by buffoonery,
but one distraught and bewildered in God.

~ Rumi

The great scholars of the age split hairs
in all the sciences.
They have gained total knowledge and
complete mastery of things
that have nothing to do with them.
But that which is important and
closer to him than anything else,
namely his own self,
this your great scholar does not know.

~ Rumi

Never try to be a guide, stay a mere disciple.
To guide others is only an obstacle on the way.

~ Rumi

You are my face: no wonder I don't see You:
such closeness is a mystifying veil.
You are my reason: it's no wonder I don't see You,
because of all this perplexity of thought.
You are nearer to me than my jugular vein.

~ Rumi

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

~ Gandhi

There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul. Those things which speed us up and harden us are going to get in the way of the soul.

~ Rowan Williams

There is an essential clash somewhere. It is to do with the functional view of human beings. What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God's light may be reflected and God's love diffused. It is never just about how we fit into the cogs of society, or about economic production. The more our education system is dominated by functionalism, skills, productivity, and the more our whole society is determined by that kind of mythology, the harder it is for the religious voice to be heard. There is a real abrasion between lots of the forms of modernity and religion.

~ Rowan Williams

This world is a bridge, pass over quickly and build no house upon it.

~ Shaykh Isa (Jesus)


[Inscription on a bridge in Lahore dating back to Mogul times]

So, Ananda, you must be lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves, and do not rely on external help. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for refuge to anything besides yourselves. A brother becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods, and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men and is always strenuous, self-possessed, and collected in mind. Whoever among my disciples does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit...

~ Buddha

[Digha Nikaya ii.99-100, Mahaparinibbana Suttanta

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.

~Lao-tzu

One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?"
asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake", Buddha replied.

The Master was always teaching that guilt is an evil emotion to be avoided like the very devil -- all guilt. "But are we not to hate our sins?" a disciple said one day. "When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself."

~ Anthony de Mello

O seeker,
These thoughts have such power over you.
From nothing you become sad.
From nothing you become happy.

You are burning in the flames
but I will not let you out
until you are fully baked,
fully wise and fully yourself.

~ Rumi

If he is not too proud to begin at the point where he finds himself rather than at some point where he once was or would now like to be, if he is willing to advance one step at a time, he may realize his goal far more quickly than the less humble and more pretentious man is likely to realize it.

~ Paul Brunton

Zen ... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

~ Alan Watts

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

~ Alan Watts

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

~ Alan Watts

Yoga is the restraint of the modifications of the mind.
Then there is abiding in the seer's own form.

~ The Yoga Sutras

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

~ Elbert Hubbard

After you have rejected what was to be rejected and accepted what was to be accepted, then only acceptance remains hollow. At the end you'll say, "What's this acceptance for even? I don't need it". Then you'll arrive at "Who am I?".

~ Swami Amar Jyoti

The question "Who am I?" is not really meant to get an answer, the question "Who am I?" is meant to dissolve the questioner.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Water says to the dirty one, "Come here."
The dirty one says, "But I am so ashamed."
Water says, "How will you be made clean without me."

~ Rumi

[Mathnawi II, 1366-7]

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

~ Hermann Hesse

Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

~ Eckhart Tolle

To know is not to demonstrate or explain. It is to enter into the vision.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

~ Hermann Hesse

The truth is lived, not taught.

~ Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

~ Hermann Hesse