The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious.
When you observe the ego in yourself,
you are beginning to go beyond it.
Don't take the ego too seriously.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Ask not of things to shed their veils.

Unveil yourself and things will be unveiled.


~ Mihkail Naimy

Well I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a
single 'truth' on a plural world. And what really lies behind it
is fear, a profound insecurity that makes you feel when you
meet someone who is not like you, or doesn't agree with you,
that that challenge is a threat against your very being.
Aggression is always a sign of insecurity. And insecurity is
always, at bottom, a lack of faith, not a presence of faith.

~ Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Do not repeat after me words
that you do not understand.
Do not merely put on a mask
of my ideas, for it will be an
illusion and you will thereby
deceive yourself.

~ Krishnamurti

See everything
Overlook a great deal
Improve a little

~ Pope John XXIII

The creative members of an orthodoxy,
any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow
their disciplines.

~ Irvin Yalom

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps, diversely framed
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze
At once the soul of each, and God of all

~ Coleridge

Let us not conjecture at random
about the greatest of things.

~ Heraclitus

People do not know how what is at
variance agrees with itself. It is an
attunement of opposite tensions,
like that of the bow and the lyre.

~ Heraclitus

What we see is not nature itself,
but nature exposed to our
particular method of questioning.

~ Heisenberg

For thousands of years, myths and legends have existed - a
popular wisdom, a camouflaged truth, a reality that kept us in
balance with the cosmos. As a result, our education was more
effective and not like it is nowadays, via books which fill
our brains but only our brains. So it is that the personality is
limited and rebellious, always constituting the real obstacle
to our advancement.

~ Nina Soncco

It is only when you realise that life is
taking you nowhere that it begins to
have meaning.

~ Ouspensky

The important thing is not to stop
questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing.

~ Einstein

I must first of all know my own self, as the
Delphion inscription says; to be curious of
that which is not my concern, while I am
in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.

~ Plato

The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together; and so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God. But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality; it is God alone who teaches it.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

[The presence of evil] in his life provokes him into either overcoming it or yielding to it. If the first, it has led him to work for his own improvement; if the second, it has led him to acknowledge his own weakness. Sooner or later, the unpleasant consequences of such weakness will lead him to grapple with it and develop his power of will. That is part of the mission of evil, to stimulate him into its own destruction and to force him into his own betterment. Immediately and directly, it may either strengthen him or weaken him. Ultimately, it can only strengthen him.

~ Paul Brunton

No sound of clapping comes from only one hand. The thirsty man is moaning, "O delicious water!" The water is calling, "Where is the one who will drink me?" This thirst in our souls is the magnetism of the water: we are its and it is ours.

~ Rumi

Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.

~ Bede Griffiths

Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.

~ Bede Griffiths

As you do not understand the world, and deal with it with this wrong understanding of it, the world will recoil upon you, and this recoiling is what is known as the effect of karma. While your dealings with the world may be called karma, the recoil of the world upon you is the effect of karma. The world will not rebound upon you if you deal with it with an understanding of its real nature. But you deal with it with a prejudiced notion in regard to it, and with a subtle desire to utilise it as an instrument in the satisfactions of your desires. We should not use the world as an instrument for our satisfaction. If we try to use it in this manner, the world will try to use us, also, as an instrument. It will give us tit for tat. As we behave with the world, so the world will behave with us.

~ Swami Krishnananda

So think as if your every thought
were to be etched in fire upon the sky
for all and everything to see.
For so, in truth, it is.

So speak as if the world entire
were but a single ear
intent on hearing what you say.
And so, in truth, it is.

So do as if your every deed
were to recoil upon your heads.
And so, in truth, it does.

So wish as if you were the wish.
And so, in truth, you are.

So live as if your God Himself
had need of you His life to live.
And so, in truth, He does.

~ Mikhail Naimy

Friends I tell you this: there is no Buddha, no spiritual path to follow, no training and no realisation. What are you so feverishly running after ? Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots! Your head is right where it should be. Your trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. Because you don’t believe in yourselves you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations, you have no freedom whatever. You are not masters of yourselves. Stop turning to the outside and don’t be attached to my words either. Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. This will be better than ten years pilgrimage.

~ Lin Chi

The one who asks the question is mistaken
The one who answers it is mistaken.

~ Buddha

One can always regain one’s innocence
if he acknowledges his suffering and his guilt
and suffers to the end
instead of trying to lay blame on others.

~ Herman Hesse

The law is simple.
Every experience is repeated
or suffered
till you experience it
properly and fully
the first time.

~ Ben Okri

Knowledge is chimera,
for beyond it ever lies
other knowledge,
and the incompleteness
of what is known
renders the knowing false.

~ Stephen Donaldson

Men forget where the way leads
and what they meet with every day
seems strange to them.
We should not act and speak
like men asleep.

~ Heraclitus

Trying to understand is like straining
to see through muddy water.
Be still, and allow the mud to settle.

~ Tao Te Ching

Our meddling intellect mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things - we murder to dissect.

~ Wordsworth

Whatever Jesus might have taught the crowds, his call to his own close disciples was always to practice dying - dying to one's life, dying to personal human relationships, dying to the whole world, dying to anything that did not pertain directly to the will of God. This was his baptism of spirit and fire. Not only for the crowds, but even for most of his disciples, his teaching was hard to bear. As has been said earlier, one needs to be prepared not only to understand the truth but also in order to withstand it.

~ Ravi Ravindra

Acceptance of what is immediately frees you
from mind identification and thus reconnects
you with Being. Resistance is the mind.

~ Eckhart Tolle

One day your heart
will take you to your lover.
One day your soul
will carry you to the Beloved.
Don't get lost in your pain,
know that one day
your pain will become your cure.

~ Rumi

I, Lalla, entered the jasmine garden,
where Shiva and Shakti were making love.
I dissolved into them,
and what is this
to me, now?
I seem to be here,
but really I'm walking
in the jasmine garden.

~ Lalla

There are no conditions to fulfil. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents, nor even the knower of the field. It is your idea that you have to do things that entangles you in the results of your efforts - the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense of frustration - all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever happens and know that you are beyond it.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Even during a conversation, become conscious
of the gaps between words, the brief silent
intervals between sentences. As you do that,
the dimension of stillness grows within you.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Beyond this world and life we know
there is Someone watching over us.
To know Him is not in our power.
But once in a glimpse I saw
that we are His shadow
and our shadow is
the world.

~ Rumi

The no-mind state is not the vacancy of idiocy
but the most supremely alert intelligence,
undistracted by extraneous thought.

~ Ramesh Balsekar

When effort is needed, effort will appear.
When effortlessness becomes essential,
it will assert itself. You need not push
life about. Just flow with it and give
yourself completely to the task of the
present moment, which is the dying now
to the now. For living is dying. Without
death life cannot be.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can only be afraid of what you think you know.

~ Krishnamurti

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

~ Krishnamurti

From now onwards let your whole thought in meditation be,
not in the act of seeing nor on what you see,
but immovably on that which sees.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ayidya or ignorance.

~ Swami Sivananda

We must support friends even in their mistakes;
however, it must be the friend and not the mistake
we are supporting.

~ Gandhi

The breeze at dawn
has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.

~ Rumi

What you are looking for is what is looking.

~ St. Francis of Assisi

But there is greater comfort
in the substance of silence
than in the answer to a question.

~Thomas Merton

This alone is to be feared,
the closed mind,
the sleeping imagination,
the death of spirit.

~ Plato

I saw the earth covered by a single great Tree whose multiple roots fed on the Inner Sun of gold, the lumen naturae. It was a tree whose limbs were made of light and the branches were lovingly entangled so that it made of itself a network of beauteous love. And it seemed as if it were lifting itself out of the broken seeds of many, countless egos who had now allowed the One Self to break forth. And when one beheld this, the sun and the moon and the planets turned out to be something quite, quite other than one had thought. From what I could make out, the Lord Himself was the Alchemist, and out of collective swarming and suffering, ignorance and pollution, He was "trying" the gold.

~ Alice Howell

"...this discovery of yours [writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing, they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." [Thamus speaking to Thoth in Phaedrus]

~ Plato

If we can really understand the problem,
the answer will come out of it,
because the answer is not separate from the problem.

~ Krishnamurti

Love is the actual form of God.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

The greatest kings and statesmen try to rule others
when in their heart of hearts they know that they
cannot rule themselves. Yet the greatest power is
at the command of the man who has penetrated
to his inmost depth.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

I find it so tragic and ironical that the age in which we live should regard the word "myth" and "illusion" as synonymous, in view of the fact that the myth is the real history, is the real event of the spirit. It is this immense world of meaning with which the image links us. The myth is the tremendous activity that goes on in humanity all the time, without which no society has hope or direction, and no personal life has a meaning.

~ Laurens van der Post

Forgiveness

In any case, I did not believe then as I do not believe now, that you could punish whole peoples or even solitary individuals into being better persons. This seemed a renegade, discredited and utterly archaic concept. It has been tried throughout history. Far from being an instrument of redemption, which is punishment's only moral justification, it is an increasingly self-defeating weapon in the hands of dangerously one-sided men. I know only that I came out of prison longing passionately -- and I am certain my longing was shared by all the thousands of men who had been with me -- that the past would be recognized as the past and instantly buried before it spread another form of putrefaction in the spirit of our time. I thought that the only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies. Forgiveness, my prison experience had taught me, was not mere religious sentimentality; it was as fundamental a law of the human spirit as the law of gravity. If one broke the law of gravity one broke one's neck; if one broke this law of forgiveness one inflicted a mortal wound on one's spirit and became once again a member of the chain-gang of mere cause and effect from which life has labored so long and painfully to escape.

The conduct of thousands of men in war and in prison with me confirmed with an eloquence which is one of my most precious memories of war, that the spirit of man is naturally a forgiving spirit. I was convinced that if the cancellation of the negative past which is forgiveness could take its place, it would automatically be followed by the recognition that men could no longer change the pattern of life for the better by changing their frontiers, their systems and their laws of compulsion of judgement and justice, but only by changing themselves.

I had learnt to fear the Pharisee more than the sinner; judgement and justice almost more than human error. I know judgement and justice had brought us far but that far was not far enough. Only the exercise of the law of forgiveness, the declaration forever of an unconditional amnesty for all in the warring spirit of men, could carry us on beyond. This alone could be the beginning of real change in life and it could only be by example of patiently living out the change in ourselves that we could hope to change for the better the societies to which we belong. It had become axiomatic for me that we could take nobody and no people further than we had taken ourselves.

~ Laurens van der Post

Indian thought did not spurn the accumulated wisdom of its ancients in favour of current fashions and did not experience a violent disruption of its traditional hospitality to multiple standpoints. The so-called astika or orthodox schools found no difficulty in combining their veneration of the Vedic hymns with a wide and diverse range of views, and even the nastika or heterodox schools, which repudiated the canonical 'authority' of the Vedas, retained much of Vedic and Upanishadic metaphysics and almost the whole of their psychology and ethics. Indian philosophical schools could not see themselves as exclusive bearers of the total Truth. They emerged together from a long-standing and continuous effort to enhance our common understanding of God, Man and Nature, and they came to be considered as darshanas or paradigmatic standpoints shedding light from different angles on noumenal and phenomenal realities. They refrained from claiming that any illumination which can be rendered in words -- or even in thoughts -- can be either final or complete.

~ Raghavan Iyer

I stood with the pious
and I didn't find any progress with them.
I stood with the warriors in the cause
and I didn't find a single step of progress with them.
Then I said,
`O Allah, what is the way to You?'
and Allah said,
`Leave yourself and come.'

~ Bayazid Bastami

I never saw any lamp
shining more brilliantly
than the lamp of silence.

~ Bayazid Bastami

If thou would'st hear the Nameless,
and will dive into the Temple-cave
of thine own self, there brooding by
the central altar, thou may'st happily
learn the Nameless hath a voice,
by which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Out of the intensity of the consciousness of the individuality, the

individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into

boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the clearest of

the clear, the surest of the sure; utterly beyond words; where

death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality

(if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach.

~ Krishnamurti

No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

D: Emerson says, "Soul answers soul by itself - not by description or words."

M: Quite so. However much you learn, there will be no bounds to knowledge."

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi [Talks: 238]

D: Research on God has been going on from time immemorial. Has the final word been said?
M: (Keeps silence for some time)
D: (Puzzled) Should I consider Sri Bhagavan's silence as the reply to my question?
M: Yes. Mouna is Isvara svarupa (Silence is the form of God).
D: Buddha is said to have ignored such enquiries about God.
M: And, for this, he was called shunya vadin (nihilist). In fact Buddha concerned himself more with directing the seeker to realise Bliss here and now than with academic discussions about God etc.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge:
those who are not encumbered at all with learning,
that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded
with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who,
after studying all the scriptures and sciences,
have come to realise that they know nothing.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

"Maintain your peace at all costs. When I say `at all costs' I mean that. At all costs maintain your peace. You can renounce anything and everything, but not your peace. When you are peaceful, everything and everyone want to be with you. Everything likes a peaceful person: Money likes the peaceful person, position likes the peaceful person, power likes the peaceful person. They all come to you whether you want it or not because they love to be with you. Seek that kingdom of no want. The Bible says, `Seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will be added unto you. ' Seek that Kingdom of God. That's your first and foremost duty. If you've done that, everything else will be simply added unto you. The Kingdom of God is within you. That Kingdom is in the form of peace. So, may God bless us with that kind of supreme, supreme, supreme peace. God bless you. Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi."

~ Sri Swami Satchidananda

It is a (hidden) law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.

~ H.P. Blavatsky

We have come here to learn about spirituality. I trust the genuine quality of this search but we must question its nature. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to "me," a philosophy which we try to imitate. We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings. So if our teacher speaks of renunciation of ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego. We go through the motions, make the appropriate gestures, but we really do not want to sacrifice any part of our way of life. We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path.

~ Chogyam Trungpa

Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer
wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge.
Logic is a crutch for the cripple,
but a burden for the swift of foot
and a greater burden still for the wise.

~ Mikhail Naimy

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that
honours the servant
and has forgotten the gift.

~ Albert Einstein

Your world is one of barriers and fences,
because the I in you is one of barriers and fences.
Some things it would fence out as alien to itself.
Some things it would fence in as kindred to itself.
Yet that outside the fence is ever breaking in;
and that within the fence is ever breaking out.
For they; being offspring of the same mother
even your I would not be set apart.

~ Mikhail Naimy

You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant Hole.

~ Hafiz

"It was a total reliving of every thought I had ever thought,
every word I had ever spoken, and deed I had ever done;
plus the effect of each thought, word, and deed on everyone
and anyone who had ever come within my environment or
sphere of influence whether I knew them or not...; plus the
effect of each thought, word, and deed on weather, plants,
animals, soil, trees, water, and air."

~ P M H Atwater

Words stand between silence and silence:

between the silence of things and the silence

of our own being, between the silence of the

world and the silence of God. When we have

really met and known the world in silence,

words do not separate us from the world nor

from other men, nor from God, nor from

ourselves because we no longer trust entirely

in language to contain reality.

~Thomas Merton

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion;

it is easy in solitude to live after our own;

but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd

keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

~ Emerson

To expound and propagate concepts is simple,
to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.
~ Nisargadatta

The mark of wisdom
is to discern the truth
from whatever source
it is heard.

~ Thiruvallavar

Cleanse the dark mirror of the mind.
~ Ko Hung

Modern civilisation is complicated and artificial.

Simple folk live in a world of love and peace.

Let no one hate another or harm another.

~ Swami Sivananda

Solitude is a silent storm
that breaks down all our
dead branches;
yet it sends our living roots
deeper into the living heart
of the living earth.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Past webs of needless guilt
and mold of wrong advice
a spark of sunlight penetrates.
The hero laughs
and steps toward the sun.
~ Bill Heidrick

Real victory is that, after which there can never be a reverse. Nobody can call himself a victor for ever merely by crushing an external foe, because such foes can spring up again. A real victory is
achieved by bringing under control the internal foes. A check over the internal enemies is therefore the only way of conquering the external enemies forever, because we should bear in mind that it is our own internal enemies which create the external enemies.

~ Swami Brahmananda Saraswati

http://innerhexagon.blogspot.com

'We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a
pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end
and the thing was to get to that end. Success or
whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing and you were supposed to
sing or to dance while the music was being played'.
~ Alan Watts

All will come as you go on. Take the first step first.
All blessings come from within. Turn within.
`I am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare,
until you revert to itspontaneously. There is no
simpler and easier way.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you want to perceive and understand objectively,
just don't allow yourself to be confused by people.
Detach from whatever you find inside or outside
yourself and only then will you attain liberation.
When you are not entangled in things, you pass
through freely to autonomy.

~ Zen Master Lin-chi

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers.
But you learn, my God do you learn."
~ C. S. Lewis

'I call that man awake who,
with conscious knowledge
and understanding,
can perceive the deep
unreasoning powers in his soul,
his whole innermost strength,
desire and weakness,
and knows how to reckon
with himself.'
~ Hermann Hesse

"if there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person
if there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house
if there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation
if there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world"
~ Chinese Proverb

It's very simple. Keep your body as clean as possible,
your mind as clear as possible. That's all you need.
And do it in anyway you can, in your own way.
It doesn't matter. That's why I say 'peaceful body,
peaceful mind'. And then you'll be useful.
You don't have to 'become' a useful person.
You will be useful.

~ Swami Satchidananda

"Ever since I can remember anything at all, the smell, the sound,and motion of the sea have been pure magic. Even the mere intimation of its presence - gulls flying a little inland, the quality of light in the sky beyond hills which screen it from view, the lowing of the foghorns in the night. If ever I have to get away from it all, and in the words of the Chinese poet "wash all the wrongs of life from my pores," there is simply nothing better than to climb out onto a rock, and sit for hours with nothing in sight but sea and sky. Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology, inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves."
~ Alan Watts

"The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One
cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates
the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous
structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely
to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity."
~ Einstein

"Tao just is, and everything gets done.
If leaders could be this way,
People would change by themselves.
If people were compelled by desire,
Their leaders would lead them back
To their original simplicity.
Eventually there would be no desire,
And without desire there is peace.
In this way the world rights itself.
~ Tao Te Ching

"Do not grieve.
Anything you lose
comes round in
another form."
~ Rumi

"As the bee takes the essence of a flower
and flies away without destroying
its beauty and perfume,
so let the sage wander in this life."
~ Buddha

Q: Will the discrimination between the 'Real' and the 'Unreal' itself be
enough to liberate? Or is there any other spirtual practise for it?
A: Self-abidance alone can release one from all bondage. However, the
discrimination between the 'Real' and the 'Unreal' leads to distaste for
the transient.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

As soon as you trust yourself,
you will know how to live.

~ Goethe

If you tell the truth,
you don't have to
remember anything.

~ Mark Twain

"I wanted only to try to live in accord
with the promptings which came from
my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
- Hermann Hesse

"Doubt grows with knowledge."
- Goethe

"Of all the communities available to us
there is not one I would want to devote
myself to, except for the society of the
true searchers, which has very few
living members at any time."
- Albert Einstein

"The phrases that men hear or repeat continually,
end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs
of intelligence."
- Johann von Goethe

"When the superficial wearies me,
it wearies me so much that I need
an abyss in order to rest."
- Antonio Porchia

"The Tao cannot be sought from others;
it is attained in oneself.
If you abandon yourself
to seek from others,
you are far from the Tao."
- Huainan-tzi

He did not say:
You will not be assailed,
you will not be belabored,
you will not be disquieted,
but he did say:
You will not be overcome.

~ Julian of Norwich

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.

~ William Butler Yeats

"In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion,
and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the
universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all."
- Alan Watts

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

~ Rudyard Kipling

"Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted,
despite your changing moods."
- C.S. Lewis

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone,
unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end
up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.

~ Vance Havner

You don't have to be a "person of influence" to be influential.
In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably
not even aware of the things they've taught me.

~ Scott Adams

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.

~ Francis Bacon

Why is the sea king of a hundred streams?
Because it lies below them. Therefore it is
the king of a hundred streams.
If the sage would guide the people, he must
serve with humility. If he would lead them, he
must follow behind. In this way when the sage
rules, the people will not feel oppressed. When
he stands before them, they will not be harmed.
The whole world will support him and will not
tire of him.
Because he does not compete, he does not
meet competition.
- Lao-tzu

The three years of his ministry were like one compressed, concentrated age, which it has taken nineteen hundred years to unfold, and who knows how much longer it will yet take! Little men like you and me are simply the recipients of just a little energy. A few minutes, a few hours, a few years at best, are enough to spend it all, to stretch it out, as it were, to its fullest strength, and then we are gone for ever. But mark this giant that came; centuries and ages pass, yet the energy that he left upon the world is not yet stretched, nor yet expended to its full. It goes on adding new vigour as the ages roll on.
- Vivekananda
http://www.vedanta.com/christ.php

The voice of Jesus is verily the voice of the Eternal Being. Through him is expressed the call of the infinite to the finite, of the Cosmic Being to the individual, the call of God to man. His divine voice is the same, therefore, as the voice of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the voice of the Koran and the Dhammapada, and all such sacred scriptures of the great religions of the world. His words have been misunderstood, wrongly annotated, mutilated, deformed and transformed, and yet, they have survived two thousand years as they were very powerful and came from the heart of a realised Yogi.

~Swami Sivananda

Just be Quiet and you will receive a precious gift
from the Light hiding inside you.
Don’t worry about what has happened before.
Always starting from this instant of time
is the Awakening to your responsibilities.
- Papaji

Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to
the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from
desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long
as you worry about sin and virtue you will have
no peace.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting yourself is sin. It all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit and matter. We may call the link psyche (antahkarana). When the psyche is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to matter and expression to spirit.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Vain, boastful talk repels acts of
kindness and tears the branch of
mercy from the trunk of the tree.
Speak honestly or else be silent,
and then behold grace and delight
in it.
- Rumi

The further one goes, the more difficulties there are; one finds greater faults in oneself as one
advances along the spiritual path. It is not because the number of faults has increased, but the sense has become so keen that one regards differently faults which formerly one would not have noticed. It is like a musician: the more he advances and the better he plays, the more faults he notices. He who does not notice his faults is in reality becoming worse. There is no end to one's faults. To think of them makes one humble.

~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Do your work in the world, but inwardly keep quiet. Then all will come to you. Do not rely on your work for realization. It may profit others, but not you. Your hope lies in keeping silent in your mind and quiet in your heart. Realized people are very quiet.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Behave as best you know, do what you think you should. Don't be afraid of mistakes; you can always correct them, only intentions matter. The shape things take is not within your power; the motives of your actions are.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

The greatest help or service you can do to the world is the imparting of knowledge of the Self. Spiritual help is the highest help you can render to mankind. The root cause of human sufferings is ignorance. If you can remove this ignorance in man, then only can he be eternally happy. That sage who tries to remove the ignorance is the highest benefactor in the world.

~ Swami Sivananda

While the mind is centered in the body and consciousness is centered in the mind, awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is lucid, silent, peaceful, alert and unafraid, without desire and fear. Meditate on it as your true being and try to be it in your daily life, and you shall realize it in its fullness.

Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together; and so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God. But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality; it is God alone who
teaches it.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Your purpose is to be at peace,
to love all beings, and to know who you are.
This is the purpose of life.
Slowly you will know this and get through.

- Papaji

Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike;
the fires of hell by what we desire.

- Rumi

The world with all its wonders is nothing.
When you know this, desire melts away.
For you are awareness itself. When you
know in your heart that there is nothing,
you are still.

- Ashtavakra Gita

The Self alone is real. All others are unreal.
The mind and intellect do not remain apart from
you.

The Bible says, 'Be still and know that I am
God.' Stillness is the sole requisite for the
realisation of the Self as God.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

Devotion without understanding is only
emotion and later becomes a passion -
fanaticism.

- Swami Krishnananda

True happiness is uncaused and this cannot
disappear for lack of stimulation. It is not
the opposite of sorrow, it includes all sorrow
and suffering.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are some demons dangerous

to your soul: lust, anger.

But there's a way to kill them.

Feed them meditation only,

and clear awareness, and you'll see

the illusion of what they control.

~ Lalla

Truth is very simple, don't complicate it.
You must be in the Light to know the darkness:
Just be aware of yourself, the Light.
Jump into the fire of Knowledge
and don't be concerned with what will happen
to your clothing of concepts and vasanas.
This fire will burn all.

- Papaji

As you go about your life, don't give 100 percent of
your attention to the external world and to your mind.
Keep some within. Feel the inner body even when
engaged in everyday activities, especially when engaged
in relationships or when you are relating with nature.
Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the portal open.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Commonsense too will tell you that to
fulfill a desire you must keep your mind
on it. If you want to know your true
nature, you must have yourself in mind
all the time, until the secret of your
being stands revealed.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is not the worship of a person that is
crucial, but the steadiness and depth of
your devotion to the task. Life itself is
the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its
lessons and obedient to its commands.
When you personalize their source, you
have an outer Guru; when you take them
from life directly, the Guru is within.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Knowledge of God is not a future event but an
eternal fact of being. There is no past, present
and future for it. It is eternity itself. It is here and
now.
- Swami Krishnananda

Guru is not the physical form. So the
contact will remain even after the
physical form of the Guru vanishes.
One can go to another Guru after one's
Guru passes away, but all Gurus are
one and none of them is the form you
see. Always mental contact is the best.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

Be aware of being conscious and seek the
source of consciousness. That is all. Very
little can be conveyed in words. It is the
doing as I tell you that will bring light, not
my telling you. The means do not matter much;
it is the desire, the urge, the earnestness that
counts.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes
and cry that it is dark. Know that there is no darkness around us. Take the hands away and there is the light, which was from the beginning. Darkness never existed, weakness never existed. We who are fools cry that we are weak; we who are fools cry that we are impure. Thus Vedanta not only insists that the ideal is practical, but that it has been so all the time, and this ideal, this Reality is our own nature.

~ Swami Vivekananda

My Master, Ramana Maharishi, said to me,
"God is not an object to be seen, He is the subject.
He cannot be seen, He is the Seer, find this Seer."
My Heart was opened.
"Find the Seer." This is the Teaching.
- Papaji

This world is very crooked. It is like the tail of a dog. As soon as you take away your hands it
will again become crooked. So many yogis, teachers, saints and prophets came into this world and preached. Still it is crooked; it is in the same state. Therefore, do not bother much about
reforming this crooked world. This can never be done. Reform yourself first, then the whole world can be reformed. How can you help the world when you yourself are weak and ignorant. It will be like a blind man leading another blind man. Both must fall into a deep abyss.

~ Swami Sivananda

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
- John Morley

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

~ Plato

"As soon as you make a sect, you protest against universal brotherhood."
- Swami Vivekananda

He who causes strife and envy among different schools
and philosophies is but an outcome of not seeing
his Adored One omnipresent.

~ Swami Brahmananda Saraswati (Guru Dev)

"The enlightened ones have no boundaries,
but respect those of others."
- Anonymous

Boredom is the desire for desires.

~ Leo Tolstoy

"Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old;
seek instead what they sought."
- Chinese Proverb

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body;
but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

~ Plato

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him
that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves
doesn't disturb us."
- Hermann Hesse

"Even If I am a minority of one,
truth is still the truth"
- Mahatma Gandhi

"The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"Speak only if it improves upon the silence."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"And the attitude of faith is the very opposite
of clinging to belief, of holding on."
- Alan Watts

We make our world significant by the courage
of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

~ Carl Sagan

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet.
We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive
is owed not just to ourselves but also to that
Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

~ Carl Sagan

It is error only, and not truth,

that shrinks from enquiry.

~ Thomas Paine

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
- Naguib Mahfouz

God made the senses turn outwards;
man therefore looks outwards,
not into himself.
Now and again a daring soul,
desiring immortality,
has looked back and found himself.

~ Katha Upanishad

Desires are just waves in the mind.
You know a wave when you see one.
A desire is just a thing among many.
I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action
needs to be taken on it. Freedom from
desire means this: the compulsion to
satisfy is absent
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to
the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at every-
thing one comes up against. If one were able
to manage this one would not need to cultivate
great power; even one's presence would be
healing. Such a person is more precious than
the branch of the rose, for that has many thorns
but only a few flowers.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

The pawn
Always sits stunned,
Chained, unable to move
Beneath God's magnificent power.
It is essential for the heart's coronation
For the pawn to realize
There is nothing but divine movement
In this
World.

~ Hafiz

Thinking is only a small aspect of
consciousness. Thought cannot exist
without consciousness, but consciousness
does not need thought.

~ Eckhart Tolle

When you eat too much,
you forget your truth,
and fasting makes you conceited,
so eat with some discipline,
and consciously. Be
an ordinary human being.
Then the door will open,
and you'll recognize the way.
Lalla, be moderate!
- Lalla

What does it mean to learn the knowledge of
God's Unity? To consume yourself in the
presence of the One. If you wish to shine like
day, burn up the night of self-existence.
Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
You grabbed hold of "I" and "we,"
and this dualism is your ruin.
- Rumi

Fighting the ego, the mind, is precisely
what the ego wants. You cannot fight the
mind. You cannot suppress the ego.
Fighting, resisting, controlling it is an im-
possible action. What is really needed is a
negative or feminine action. That is to yield,
to allow things to be as they are.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

The Guru is the butcher of the sheep ego.
His function is to tell you, "I am Within You,"
and to give you the conviction that you are
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Every true
Teacher tells you: "Look within, there is no
difference between yourself, Self, and Guru."
The Guru shows the Treasure which is already
always there.
- Papaji

This world is a dream — don't be deluded; if in a dream a hand is lost, it's no harm. In dreams, no real damage is done if the body is maimed or torn in two hundred pieces. The Prophet said of this apparently substantial world that it is but the sleeper's dream. You've accepted this as an idea, but the spiritual traveler has beheld this truth with an open eye. You are asleep in the daytime; don't say this is not sleep.

~ Rumi

The greatest Guru is helpless as long as the disciple is not eager to learn. Eagerness and
earnestness are all-important. Confidence will come with experience. Be devoted to your goal - and devotion to him who can guide you will follow. If your desire and confidence are strong, they will operate and take you to your goal, for you will not cause delay by hesitation and compromise.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is a force within
Which gives you life –
seek That.
In your body
Lies a priceless gem –
seek That.
O wandering Sufi,
if you want to find
the greatest treasure
Don't look outside,
Look inside, and seek That.
-- Rumi

"Conservatism makes no poetry,
breathes no prayer,
has no invention;
it is all memory.
- Emerson

The difficulty in the spiritual path is always what comes from ourselves. A person does not like to be a pupil, he likes to be a teacher. If one only knew that the greatness and perfection of the great ones who have come from time to time to this world was in their being pupils and not in teaching! The greater the teacher, the better pupil he was. He learned from everyone, the great and the lowly, the wise and the foolish, the old and the young. He learned from their lives, and studied human nature in all its aspects.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

In one spark of fire
there is the whole fire
it can ignite
whole cities and nations
one spark!
That's how the Truth
of one Person
from age to age
can shake the whole earth.
- Swami Amar Jyoti

Standing on the bare ground, a mean egoism
vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I
am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal
Being circulate through me; I am part or particle
of God.
- Emerson

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen
rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on
rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness
affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and
steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and
work miracles without any effort on your part.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is a spell that blinds the eye:
it appears wide when in reality it's narrow.
It's laughter is weeping; its glory is but a shame.
- Rumi

Everything happens altogether by itself.
The shadow of causation can never be
caught because all things and events are
merely interconnected differentiations in
the form of a single, unified field.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

But why worry so much about causation?
What do causes matter, when things
themselves are transient? Let come what
comes and let go what goes - why catch
hold of things and enquire about their causes?
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Forget the known, but remember that you are
the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in
your experiences. Remember that you are beyond
the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In
remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge
will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

The thought of God is like a fire which will burn
all desires. The highest knowledge is nothing
but the deep feeling of the presence of God
everywhere. That is the highest wisdom and that
will give a death-blow to other desires of the world.
The desire for God is a desire to destroy all desires.
- Swami Krishnananda

I sit in my own radiance,
And I have no fear.
Walking,
Dreaming,
Sleeping,
What are they to me?
What is far or near,
Outside or inside,
Gross or subtle?
I sit in my own splendor.
- Ashtavakra Gita

Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment
takes you nearer. Anything you do without
remembering enlightenment puts you off. But
why complicate? Just know that you are above
and beyond all things and thoughts. What you
want to be, you are it already. Just keep it in mind.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind.
There is nothing you can do to get it.
Any effort you make can only be an
obstruction to it.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

Fearful, always-moving mind,
the One who has no beginning
is thinking of how hunger
may fall away from you.
No ritual,
no religion,
is needed.
Just cry out one
unobstructed cry.
- Lalla

Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realization is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is no scripture in which contradiction
does not exist. It is the contradiction which
makes the music of the message.
- Hazrat Inayat Khan

If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and
expectations, you would be able to discern the
beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness
that causes chaos.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are the reality, you cannot talk of reality.
The moment you talk or think of something,
it is in phenomenality and therefore conceptual.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

To the extent your ego is reduced, you open
from within and receive the Light.
- Swami Amar Jyoti

Wisest are those who intuitively understand
you cannot do more even if you try and start
with giving up. They take the short-cut to God.
- Swami Amar Jyoti

God is more eager to appear and play with you than
you are serious to have Him. But you only receive
what you are ready for, not what you ask for.
Understand this dutifulness—the real nature of
vigilance, the commitment of devotion and faith
—and you will not have to ask for Light. It will
come to you.
- Swami Amar Jyoti

"We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.... This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy."

- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Watchfulness is the path of immortality:
Unwatchfulness is the path of death.
Those who are watchful never die:
Those who do not watch are already as dead.

Those who with a clear mind have seen this truth,
Those who are wise and ever watchful,
They feel the joy of watchfulness,
The joy of the path of the great.

And those who in high thought and in deep contemplation
With ever living power advance on the path,
They in the end reach NIRVANA,
The peace supreme and infinite joy.

- The Dhammapada (trans. Mascaro)

"The procession of eternity passes by. All the petty irritations and egoistic twists, the deep-scarred bitterness and rebellious cynicisms and trivial cares, fall for a time out of my character as dead brown leaves falling from sapless darkening trees in autumn. How can they continue to exist in such a grand rarefied atmosphere as now overwhelms me with such well-defined strength? How can these futile pain-bringing elements continue to afflict me when another self, the Overself, now arises in all its sublimity and makes me its temporary victim, seizing mind, heart and body in its grip as a cat seizes a mouse with its white teeth?

...Helpless, and yet what joyful freedom! The bonds of the personal ego are flung aside by the unseen hand, and with their going goes all care, all anxiety, all concern for the past errors and future uncertainties. The Overself, in announcing its presence, announces also that It comes as liberator. It commands - and everything mean, petty and cramping shrinks back and disappears. It glances - and flowing sea of love, adoration, humility surges up to Its feet.

How soothing is the sense of Its benign unfolding presence! All inner conflict is stilled. The blood no longer wars with the brain; nor passion with thought. When our minds have been totally subdued by logic, we are lost. The divine transcends logic.

Himalaya has opened the golden windows of heaven for me and I must bless the day that I entered its quiet realm."
- Paul Brunton

The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart.

~ Paul Brunton

You have Ram Tzu's love
And you've done nothing
To deserve it.

Now you want
Ram Tzu's approval.

You've run out of luck.
- Ram Tzu

Ram Tzu know this…

You are willing
To take limitless blame,
So long as you
Can keep getting
A little credit.
- Ram Tzu

"To expound and propogate concepts is simple,
to drop all concepts is difficult and rare"
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

"There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be
yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let
your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking"
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

When you think of the long and gloomy history
of man, you will find more hideous crimes have
been committed in the name of obedience than
have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow

It is so simple that the complex structure that is
involved doesn't want to leave it alone. That is
really the problem.
- Krishnamurti

The difference between what the most and the
least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial
in relation to that which is unknown.
- Einstein

We still do not know one thousandth of one
percent of what nature has revealed to us.
- Einstein

When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: ‘I am this, I am that’, continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the
whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment
of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are
unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

~ Alan Watts

Use your mind. Remember. Observe. You are not different from others. Most of their xperiences are valid for you too. Think clearly and deeply, go into the entire structure of your desires and their ramifications. They are a most important part of your mental and emotional make-up and powerfully affect your actions. Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know. To go
beyond yourself, you must know yourself.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

If we talk of knowing the Self, there must be two selves, one a knowing self, another the self which is known, and the process of knowing. The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realised, one is that which alone is and which alone has always been. One cannot describe that state. One can only be that. Of course, we loosely talk of Self-realisation, for want of a better term. How to 'real-ise' or make real that which alone is real?

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

"You have no idea how unimportant is all
that the teacher says or does not say on the
surface, and how important what he himself
is as teacher."
- Rudolf Steiner

Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,
in the end it pitches a tent for you in heaven.
It is God's kindness to terrify you
in order to lead you to safety.
- Rumi

The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper
experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind
which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the
mind can visualize and want is of much value.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself. This is the only way to peace.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

As water is serene when free of ripples, so
is the mind serene when free of thought,
when it is passive and fully receptive.
When quiet, the mind reflects Reality.
When absolutely motionless, it dissolves
and only Reality remains.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

When mind is quiet, all is Self.
When mind moves the world arises,
so be still, throw away everything, and be free.
Then, when mind is pure, you will see Self
in all beings.
Give up seeing with the outer eye
and the Divine eye will open.
- Papaji

If your knowledge of fire has been turned
to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don't abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
- Rumi

Q: " Why is life so full of contradictions?"

` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
It serves to break down mental pride.
We must realize how poor and powerless
we are. As long as we delude ourselves
by what we imagine ourselves to be, to
know, to have, to do, we are in a sad
plight indeed. Only in complete self-
negation there is a chance to discover
our real being.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

It's good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
- Rumi

You are the reality, you cannot talk of reality.
The moment you talk or think of something,
it is in phenomenality and therefore conceptual.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

Become at ease with the state of "not knowing."
This takes you beyond mind because the mind
is always trying to conclude and interpret. It
is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be
at ease with not knowing, you have already
gone beyond the mind. A deeper knowing that
is non-conceptual then arises out of that state.

~ Eckhart Tolle

The intelligent desire self-control;
children want candy.
- Rumi

You didn't come into this world.
You came out of it,
like a wave from the ocean.
You are not a stranger here.
- Alan Watts

The sage helps the world merely by being the real Self. The best way for one to serve the world is to win the egoless state. If you are anxious to help the world, but think that you cannot do so by attaining the egoless state, then surrender to God all the world's problems, along with your own.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Sunlight fell upon the wall;
the wall received a borrowed splendor.
Why set your heart on a piece of earth,
O simple one? Seek out the source
which shines forever.
- Rumi

To want nothing and do nothing - that
is true creation! To watch the universe
emerging and subsiding in one's heart
is a wonder.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Pain and suffering are only the body and mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy; to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. The mess will bog you up. 'Pick up your rubbish' seems to to the universal law. And a just law, too.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

We think that there is something hiding our
reality and that it must be destroyed before the
reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn
when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts.
That which will be on the day you laugh is also
here and now.
- Sri Ramana Maharshi

As long as you do not see that it is mere habit, built on memory, prompted by desire, you will think yourself to be a person - living, feeling, thinking, active, passive, pleased or pained. Question yourself, ask yourself. 'Is it so?' 'Who am I'? 'What is behind and beyond all things?' And soon you will see your mistake. And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Presence removes time.
Without time, no suffering,
no negativity, can survive.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Any action taken to suppress desire can
only strengthen it. Desire can only fall
away gradually by itself.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

It is the nature of Reason to see the End;
it is the nature of desire not to.
- Rumi

That one is blessed and at peace
who doesn't hope, to whom
desire makes no more loans.
Nothing coming, nothing owed.
- Lalla

First, lay down your head
then one by one
let go of all distractions.
Embrace the light and let it guide you
beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and
nourished by its sweet waters
like a tree you will bear fruit forever.
- Rumi

Change is the basis of life. Opposites are
interconnected polarities, not irreconcil-
ables over which we have to make a
choice.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. It all boils down to the mental or psychological link between the spirit and matter. We may call the link psyche (antahkarana).
When the psyche is raw, undeveloped, quite primitive, it is subject to gross illusions. As it grows in breadth and sensitivity, it becomes a perfect link between pure matter and pure spirit and gives meaning to matter and expression to spirit.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Surrender is to surrender your concept of separateness, your ego. Surrender is to submit your stupidness, your wickedness, to the will of Existence. That's all. You must surrender like a river discharging into the Ocean. Surrender is to discharge your river of separateness into the Ocean
of Being, losing your limitations, and allowing to happen what happens.

~ Papaji

Sensations as such, however strong, do not
cause suffering. It is the mind, bewildered by
wrong ideas, addicted to thinking: 'I am this'.
'I am that', that fears loss and craves gain
and suffers when frustrated.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Whatever may be the desire or fear, don't dwell upon it. Try and see for yourself. Here and there you may forget, it does not matter. Go back to your attempts till the brushing away of every desire and fear, of every reaction becomes automatic.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Each soul runs from poverty and destruction.
How sad! It is running away from happiness
and joy. No one can triumph before being
destroyed. O Beloved! Reconcile me with
destruction.
- Rumi

You want out
You want escape
You want relief.
You meditate
To block out life.
You chant
To put the world on hold.
You pray
To get what you want.
You take drugs
To get there faster.
Ram Tzu knows this - -
Your noble search for God
Is but a sly dodge.
- Ram Tzu

Silence is the true upadesa (teaching). It is the perfect upadesa. It is suited only for the most advanced seeker. The others are unable to draw full inspiration from it. Therefore they require words to explain the truth. But truth is beyond words. It does not admit of explanation. All that is possible to do is to indicate it.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Leave all worries behind and make your heart totally pure, like the face of a mirror with no image or design. Once your heart is cleansed of all images, it will contain them all.

~ Rumi

One will always find that the most evolved sages can be amused; that is why they are pleasant to meet and to speak to. Worrying comes from self-pity and fear, and fear is made of the clouds of
ignorance; the light will dissolve it. Humor is the sign of light: when the light from above touches
the mind it tickles the mind, and it is the tickling of mind which produces humor.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Only contentment can make you happy - desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state - a precondition
to the state of fulness. Don't distrust its apparent sterility and emptiness. Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the final step. But the real giving up is in
realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep - you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep - you just forget it.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The moment that judgment stops through
acceptance of what is, you are free of the
mind.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers.
For I, Solitude, am thine own Self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen.

~ Thomas Merton

Nothing matters so much that we should throw
ourselves into a state of panic about it. No
happening is so important that we should let
ourselves be exiled from inner peace and mental
calm for its sake.

~ Paul Brunton