The Japanese have a nice way of putting it: “The day you cease to travel, you will have arrived.
Your attitude should be: “I want to be aware, I want to be in touch with whatever is and let whatever happens happen; if I’m awake, fine, and if I’m asleep, fine.
Recall those lovely words of Buddha when he said, “Monks and scholars must not accept my words out of respect, but must analyze them the way a goldsmith analyzes gold – by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting.
George Bernard Shaw. He was at one of those awful cocktail parties, where nothing gets said. Someone asked him if he was enjoying himself. He answered, “It’s the only thing I am enjoying here.
It is a sobering thought that the finest act of love you can perform is not an act of service but an act of contemplation, of seeing.
Do you want to be happy? Uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, “Why are you happy?” and the awakened person replies, “Why not?” Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.
As one man said, “I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it.
Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.” But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore.
That’s why you’ll never catch me saluting a flag. I abhor all national flags because they are idols. What are we saluting? I salute humanity, not a flag with an army around it.
It is enough for you to be watchful and awake. For in this state your eyes will see the Savior.
Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere.
You don’t have to do anything to acquire happiness. The great Meister Eckhart said very beautifully, “God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.” You don’t do anything to be free, you drop something. Then you’re free.
When you’re living for nothing, you’ve got all your skills, you’ve got all your energy, you’re relaxed, and you don’t care. It doesn’t matter to you whether you win or lose. Now there’s human living for you. That’s what life is all about.
The biggest enemy of love is attachments. Desire, in the sense of attachment. You know why? Because if I desire you, I want to possess you. I can’t leave you free. I’ve got to get you. I’ve got to manipulate you so that I can get you, if I desire you in this way. I’m going to manipulate myself, so that I can hoodwink you into allowing me to get you. Are you following what I’m saying? Clear enough? There’s no fear in perfect love. You know why? Because there’s no desire.
The first reaction is one of fear. It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear.
When you see this you will understand how people attempt to gain the world and, in the process, lose their soul.
If there is anything I can do about the future, right now, I shall do it. Then I’m going to just leave it alone and settle down to enjoy the present moment, because all the experience of my life has shown me that I can only cope with things when they are present, not before they occur. And that the present always gives me the resources and the energy I need to deal with them.
Who decides what will finally make its way to your conscious mind from all the material that is pouring in from the world? Three decisive filters: first your attachments, second your beliefs and third your fears.
The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now to where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition, for all you do is see for the first time what you have always been looking at. Who ever heard of a path that brings you to yourself or a method that makes you what you have always been? Spirituality, after all, is only a matter of becoming what you really are.
The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. There is far too much God talk; the world is sick of it. There is too little awareness, too little love, too little happiness, but let’s not use those words either. There’s too little dropping of illusions, dropping of errors, dropping of attachments and cruelty, too little awareness. That’s what the world is suffering from, not from a lack of religion.