Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day’s battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility.
When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.
Don’t think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, ‘How cozy! I’m going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.’ Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.
It is not action or effort that we must surrender; it is self-will, and this is terribly difficult. You must do your best constantly, yet never allow yourself to become involved in whether things work out the way you want.
Excitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm – which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.
Instead of looking at difficulties as deprivations, we can learn to recognize them as opportunities for deepening and widening our love.
Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either.
We become in part what our senses take in.
Everything beautiful has to be worked for.
When we are at home with ourselves, we are at home everywhere in the world. When we have found peace within ourselves, peace and love follow us wherever we go.
Today, everything I do from morning meditation on – eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation – is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all.
The things we think about, brood on, dwell on, and exult over influence our life in a thousand ways. When we can actually choose the direction of our thoughts instead of just letting them run along the grooves of conditioned thinking, we become the masters of our own lives.
Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.
Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best.
The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought.
Eventually, meditation will make our mind calm, clear, and as concentrated as a laser which we can focus at will. This capacity of one-pointed attention is the essence of genius. When we have this mastery over attention in everything we do, we have a genius for life.
The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.
Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.
By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole.
In the spiritual lore of India there is a story that the Lord whispered only one word in our ears when he sent us into the world: ‘Give.’ Give freely of your time, your talent, your resources; give without asking for anything in return. This is the secret of living in joy and security.