The Big Bang has made Idealists out of almost anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises.
To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding.
Be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow.
Change of state is not the point; recognizing the Changeless is the point, recognizing primordial Emptiness is the point, and if you are breathing and vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine.
Few of us have lost our minds, but most of us have long ago lost our bodies.
On my tombstone, I really hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial...
Start as a human being in this culture, toss in madness, toss in mystical states, toss in being gay, toss in being HIV-positive, toss in religion that assures you God hates you for all of that – and then look me in the eye and tell me you can feel ok about yourself. I dare you. I just dare you.
And resting in the ocean, dipped into the sea, I find glimmers of One Taste everywhere.
I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this.
Was it someone else? Was it not you yourself?
The Yoga of the Dream State has always held to be one of the fastest, most efficient ways of reaching a plateau experience of subtle and causal realms, thus quickly opening the door to stable adaptation at – and transcendence of – those realms.
Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.
It is not quite right to describe One Taste as a “consciousness” or an “awareness,” because that’s a little too heady, too cognitive. It’s more like the simple Feeling of Being. You already feel this simple Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence.
Being completely and totally present and at every single point of space and time, It is fully and completely present here and now, thus we can no more attain immanent Spirit then we could, say, attain our feet.
God does not lie in our collective past, God lies in our collective future; the Garden of Eden is tomorrow, not yetsterday; the Golden Age lies down the road, not up it.
For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding infinity on the other side of death. The self is not made content; the self is made toast.
The adventure of awakening is among the most universal of human dramas.
This present moment, since it knows neither past nor future, is itself timeless, and that which is timeless is Eternal. Thus “the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Buddhist discipline is designed to transmute trishna, or egoic narcissism, into Karuna, Divine Narcissism; that is, to transmute self-love, which excludes love of others, into Self-love, which is love of others.
I was slowly learning that love did not mean holding on, which I had always thought, but rather letting go.