When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love.
So, while you are young you must begin to find out what is this strange thing called happiness. That is an essential part of education.
Peace can come only when there is love.
To have intelligence there must be freedom, and you cannot be free if you are constantly being urged to become like some hero, for then the hero is important and not you.
When you are young you are curious to know all about everything, why the sun shines, what the stars are, all about the moon and the world around us; but as we grow older, knowledge becomes a mere collection of information without any feeling.
You must be a light unto yourself.
Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquility of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness.
The observer is the observed and therein lies sanity, the whole, and with the holy is love.
Solitude helps the mind to see itself clearly as in a mirror, and to free itself from the vain endeavor of ambition with all its complexities, fears, and frustrations, which are the outcome of self-centered activity.
To compare is the very nature of a mind that is not awake to discover what is true.
Most people are afraid to stand alone; they are afraid to think things out for themselves, afraid to feel deeply, to explore and discover the whole meaning of life.
The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world.
Alone has quite a different meaning; alone has beauty. To be alone means something entirely different. And you must be alone. When man frees himself from the social structure of greed, envy, ambition, arrogance, achievement, status – when he frees himself from those, then he is completely alone. That is quite a different thing. Then there is great beauty, the feeling of great energy.
Happiness comes when you are doing something because you really love to do it, and not because it gives you riches or makes you a prominent person.
It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind – and begin to understand ourselves for the first time.
One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority.
The important thing is first to find out what you are afraid of, to understand it and not run away from it.
To understand the whole operation of one’s own mind requires a great deal of insight, a great deal of inquiry without condemnation.
Through a narrow window we can see only part of the sky, and not the whole vastness, the magnificence of it.
Thought is the origin of fear.