We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.
Here is my secret: I don’t mind what happens.
Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.
It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
Contentment is never the outcome of fulfillment, of achievement, or of the possession of things; it is not born of action or inaction. It comes with the fullness of what is, not in the alteration of it.
Meditation, then, is a state of mind in which the ‘me’ is absent. And therefore that very absence brings order.
Don’t we introduce time as a means of becoming more evolved? The brain has evolved but is there evolution inwardly? Can the brain dominated by time not be subservient to it?
Is the ground a philosophical concept? Has mind a relationship to the ground? Is it an idea to be investigated? Is the ground put together by thought?
It is intelligence that brings order, not discipline.
It is only in alert silence that truth can be.
Can another help bring about a transformation in you? If he can, you are not transformed; you are merely dominated, influenced.
Though we are all human beings, we have built walls between ourselves and our neighbors through nationalism, through race, caste, and class – which again breeds isolation, loneliness.
Constantly to seek the purpose of life is one of the odd escapes of man. If he finds what he seeks it will not be worth that pebble on the path.
Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion you don’t know where it will take you.
There is not first understanding and then action. When you understand, that very understanding is action.
Learning is not the accumulation of knowledge. Learning is movement from moment to moment.
To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
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.