Great Throughts Treasury

"There is no blissfulness more precious than freedom, than being a master of your own destiny"

"There is great difference between trust and belief. Trust is personal, Belief is social."

"There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man."

"These tenses--past, present and future--are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past...."

"There is no one lonelier than God!"

"There is no need of any competition with anybody. U R yourself, and as U R, U R perfectly good. Accept yourself."

"There is only a difference of proportion of madness between an average man and a mad man; the quality of madness is the same."

"There is no sorrow except in captivity."

"These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious."

"They [cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate in name of love] are all against love, because love is unable to be controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no nations, and there is no question of any fight."

"They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!"

"They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control. You are possessed by it. You? are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control. The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love, because if you are possessed by love you can go even against the whole world."

"Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being; it is not your totality."

"This inner flame, this inner light is there, potentially there? like a seed. Once you start using it, it sprouts. Soon you will see ? the spring has come and it is blossoming and you are full of the fragrance of the unknown and the unknowable. God has descended in you."

"To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life."

"Those who are courageous, go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks. But remember one thing: never forget the art of risking? never, never. Always remain capable of risking. Wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive."

"This is the secret, THE secret ... De-automatize."

"This is the nature of a mind in search of security: kills the present moment as a function of tomorrow."

"To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it."

"This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. we cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are the workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs."

"To be humble is to be on the first leg of the journey to purity. The humble has yet to be on the first leg of the journey to purity. The humble has yet to be pure. He is on the way to it. One cannot be pure without being humble, because there is no greater impurity than ego."

"To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama; you can participate in it, but then you don?t take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don?t take it seriously; it has nothing of the ultimate in it."

"To be an individual in this world, we need huge courage."

"To covet beatitude is also avarice."

"Tomorrow never comes, it is always today."

"Truth happens in a state of not knowing, truth happens in innocence. Truth happens where there are no clouds of thoughts moving in your consciousness, when sky is absolutely clear, when there is no abstraction, when you have no idea and God is or God is not. When you don't believe in no-God, when you are simply in a state of not knowing. You don't claim any knowledge, that non-claiming consciousness begins to open up. All knowledge burdens and closes you."

"Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized."

"Truth is an experience, not a belief. Truth never comes by studying about it; truth has to be encountered, truth has to be faced. The person who studies about love is like the person who studies about the Himalayas by looking at the map of the mountains. The map is not the mountain! And if you start believing in the map, you will go on missing the mountain. If you become too much obsessed with the map, the mountain may be there dust in front of you, but still you will not be able to see it. And that's how it is. The mountain is in front of you, but your eyes are full of maps-maps of the mountain, maps about the same mountain, made by different explorers. Somebody has climbed the mountain from the north side, somebody from the east. They have made different maps: Koran, Bible, Gita different maps of the same truth. But you are too full of the maps, too burdened by their weight; you cannot move even an inch. You cannot see the mountain just standing in front of you, virgin snow peaks shining like gold in the morning sun. You don't have the eyes to see it. The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead. Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull. Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so-called intelligentsia are not really intelligent, they are just intellectual. Intellect is a corpse. You can decorate it-you can decorate it with great pearls, diamonds, emeralds, but still a corpse is a corpse. To be alive is a totally different matter."

"Trees with land and land with trees, birds, trees and trees with birds in the sky and the earth loves the sky. entire life, love, endless sea wave hits., let love be your worship, Let love be your prayer."

"Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpracticed -- when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding."

"Truth is simple. Very simple-so simple that a child can understand it. In fact, so simple that only a child can understand it. Unless you become a child again you will not be able to understand it. It is an experience, not speculation.'"

"We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything."

"Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself."

"Watch existence."

"We are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer, different dances of one dancer, different paintings ? but the painter is one."

"We are formed by what we do. It is our actions that ultimately make us. What we do slowly, slowly becomes the creator of our lives and our souls. What we are doing in life decides how we are creating ourselves. What our behavior is in life decides the directions our soul will travel, the paths it will move on, the new worlds it will explore."

"We are teenage girls. When we go home...Our straightened hair goes up into messy buns. Our makeup has faded or smudged so we take it off. The fake smile vanishes into how we really feel....Our brand new shirt changes into our favorite old sweater. Our skinny jeans are traded for sweat pants or pajamas. And our Uggs are taken off to reveal our fuzzy socks. When we go home...You wouldn't recognize us."

"We believe that from the transcendence of the Gospel, we can assess what the life of the poor consists of and we also believe that placing ourselves on the side of the poor and attempting to give them life we will know what the eternal truth of the Gospel consists of."

"We are never ashamed of saying, 'The Church of the Poor'."

"We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves, to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work."

"We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs. Liberation that raises a cry against others is no true liberation. Liberation that means revolutions of hate and violence and takes away lives of others or abases the dignity of others cannot be true liberty. True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others."

"We have to look at Krishna in two different ways, and then we can look at ourselves the same way. We exist at two levels - one at the level of waves and another at the level of the ocean. As waves we are individual human beings and as the ocean we are the Supreme Being."

"We suffer with those who have disappeared, those who have had to flee their homes, and those who have been tortured."

"What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love."

"We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence- it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be."

"What is a prayer? Prayer is sending blessing to all. Prayer is sending your compassion to all. Prayer is creating an antidote of negative thoughts - it is positively."

"What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos."

"Whatever you feel, you become. It is your responsibility."

"Whatsoever you are doing?be double-arrowed."

"Whatever is of consequence in life is always hidden from view. What is manifest is the outer cover; what remains un-manifest is the soul within."