Quotes
River of Life
Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Restless
Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Searching for the Marvelous
Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. – Anaïs Nin
Coded
We all have the extraordinary coded within us… waiting to be released. – Jean Houston
Great Door
As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. – Stephen Graham
Radiant Emptiness
When you’re really resting, you can actually feel the radiant, empty mind – not as a thought, but as the radiant emptiness of yourself, the nothingness of yourself and of all selves. – Adyashanti
Source & Heart
You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Become Still
How do I become still? By flowing with the stream. – Lao Tzu
Tenacity
What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Whole
Man will be delivered from sin, sickness and trouble in exact proportion to his discovery of himself and his relationship to the Whole. – Ernest Holmes
Perfect Idea
The Divine Ideas are perfect, but man has the ability to cause them to appear imperfect. Through right thinking he is able to uncover the appearance of imperfection and reveal the Perfect Idea. – Ernest Holmes
Good Music
When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have. – Edgar Watson Howe
The Key
The mind must be opened like a door. The key is silence. – The Law of One
Living Truth
To me there is a reality, an immense living truth; and to comprehend that, there must be utter simplicity of thought. – Krishnamurti
Awakeness/Awareness
Student: I’ve made up all of it? Adyashanti: The whole thing. But the awakeness in you is not dreaming. Only the mind is dreaming. It tells itself stories and wants to know if you’re progressing. When you shift into wakefulness, you realize, “Wait, it’s a dream. The mind is creating an altered state of reality, a virtual reality, but it’s not true – it’s just thought.” Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it’s not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that’s going to change is the way the body feels. If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels all puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Restless Pursuit
Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization. – Rabindranath Tagore
Harmony
To think creatively is to bring about harmony between mind, emotion, and action. -Krishnamurti
Wonder
What is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? – Devi to Shiva
The Calling
The calling is not to Go beyond the mind. The calling is to be, which is Prior to the mind. – Wu Hsin
Transcendent Destiny
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. – Emerson
Pursuit
There can be no creative thinking if mind is hindered by the search for a reward, by the pursuit of a goal. -Krishnamurti
Dissolution
Incidentally practice of meditation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we over-come it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Love is a State of Mind
When a mood against someone or for something arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. Remember that you are the source, so do not move to the other, move to the source. And do not think in terms of relationship, think in terms of state of mind. If you are in love, this is a state of mind. This state of mind may be focused on one person or it may be unfocused – on the whole. When it is focused on one person, it is known as love. When it becomes unfocused, it becomes prayer. Then you are just in love – not with someone, but just in love, as you are breathing. So take love as a breathing of the soul. Once you know how to enter a single moment with love, you have entered eternity: time is no more. The sea and the sand and the stars, they are one with you. You are not an island, you are organically one with this universe. The whole universe is within you and the whole of you is in this universe. Unless you come to know it and feel it and realize it,…
Waking State
Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to attain jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are all parts of the dream. – Ramana Maharshi
Healer
Rest then in that peace and love and do as you will, as you wish, as you feel. Let there be an end to worry when this is accomplished. The great healer of distortions is love. – Ra
Sunset Music
There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature. – Claude Debussy
Everywhere Music
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. – Thomas Carlyle