Only when the mind is tranquil-through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline-only then, in that tranquillity, in that silence, can reality come into being. It is only then that there can be bliss, that there can be creative action.
We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.
To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.
I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
This is what I am, and I am going to understand this.
Take a journey into the things which you are carrying, the known- not into the unknown-into what you already know: your pleasures, your delights, your despairs, your sorrows. Take a journey into that, that is all you have.
If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part.
Human beings, each one, right through the world, go through great agonies, the more sensitive, the more alert, the more observant, the greater the suffering, the anxiety, the extraordinary sense of insoluble problems.
If there is no order in your relationship with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your neighbour – whether that neighbour is near or very far away – forget about meditation...
In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony and fear. Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me.
And the point is, is it possible for the mind to be totally free from suffering and yet not become indifferent, callous, irresponsible, but to have that passion, the intensity, the energy that freedom brings, freedom from suffering.
Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.
Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we are. All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other.
Charity is unconscious of itself, there is no accumulation first and then distribution. It is like the flower – natural, open, spontaneous.
You may be reborn a thousand times, but you can never know the real, for only that which dies, that which comes to an end, can renew itself.
Freedom is always at the beginning and not at the end.
It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.
As long as the mind clings to belief, it is held in a prison.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud – you are all that, and that is love.
There is no tranquility in ideas.