Great Throughts Treasury

"Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness."

"Sartre has made a wonderful statement: "The other is hell." But he didn't explain why the other is "the other." The other is "the other" because I am "I". And as long as I am "I," the world around is "the other" - separate and apart. And as long as there is separateness there can be no experience of love."

"See that the whole existence is celebrating."

"So, if this we're indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life, for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring ... Try to feel, in your hearts core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself."

"Sex has become more and more attractive because of its condemnation by priests."

"Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it--and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together."

"Stop the repression!"

"Seeing means that you don't condemn fear as bad from the very beginnings."

"Surdas destroyed his eyes believing that once his sight was gone, desire and passion would never arise in him again. But desire doesn't arise in the eyes, it arises out of the mind. No passion will ever be finished in this way-even if one destroys one's own eyes-"

"Take hold of your own life."

"Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything."

"Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it."

"Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology."

"Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern."

"Tao mystics never talk about God, reincarnation, heaven, hell. No, they don't talk about these things. These are all creations of human mind: explanations for something which can never be explained, explanations for the mystery. In fact, all explanations are against God because explanation de-mystifies existence. Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation. No, explanation is not needed ? only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates."

"That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don't let past move your mind; don't let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life."

"Tantra says that you are already perfect. 1. Do not try to achieve it, you need to realize that there is. 2. Every shade of life is needed to enjoy its taste. Even the loss of the right path full of meaning. 3. If life does not enrich, you simpleton. As you will have no salt. You nutritious but no spices. You will be very simple, nice, but your kindness will not be complex harmony. You - single note, rather than millions of music, turned into a melody, a straight line without bending angles. But it curves and corners give beauty, they make life more mysterious, deep. Without them you'll be shallow in his holiness in you will have no depth. 4. This world is fleeting. Awake or asleep ... you live in a world of their own dreams. Remember, there is no single world. There are as many worlds as there are people, everyone lives in his own world. Sometimes our worlds meet and collide, sometimes merge, but we still enclosed in them. 5. Be free and natural, knowing, watching what was happening. Tantra - the path of love, and love means surrender. Fighting strengthens the ego, it's not that way. You need to relax and be calm. Take your time, the existence of leads you wish. You do not need to deal with the flow, follow it. 6. Existence - is an evolution: the movement is not from the ideal of perfection, but from one of its power to another. 7. Nothing should be practiced, because the practice creates habits. Perfect occurs spontaneously. 8. Live spontaneously. 9. Do not do anything special and do not be alarmed. 10. Be free and natural, be yourself, let it all happen. 11. Learn the rules, then to forget them. Rules to follow ... but the rules - this is not life. ... Do not listen to anyone, stay yourself. If you continue to listen to everybody everyone will somehow force you to something. You'll never reach your inner center. ... Listen to your inner voice, feel it and live with this feeling."

"The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it."

"The longer a person has been dead the greater is the tradition ... If Buddha is alive you can barely tolerate him. ... You cannot believe this man has known the ultimate because he looks just like you ... Hungry he needs food, sleepy he wants a bed, ill, he has to rest ? just like you ... That is why Jesus is worshiped now and yet he was crucified when he was alive. Alive, you crucify him; dead, you worship him."

"The man needs courage, he needs a lot of courage to stand up and look death in the face."

"That we may give our body and our blood over to suffering and pain, like Christ -- not for Self, but to give harvests of peace and justice to our People."

"The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted."

"The Church of the Paschal Mystery."

"The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, cannot be understood by the head; the heart has to be open for it."

"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters."

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other."

"The intelligent person will go inward first. Before going anywhere else, you will go into your own being. That is the first thing, and it should have the first preference. Only when you have known yourself can you go anywhere else. Then wherever you go you will carry a blissfulness around you, a peace, a silence, a celebration."

"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. And so in you the child your mother lives on and through your family continues to live... so at this time look after yourself and your family as you would your mother for through you all she will truly never die."

"The other is actually a door."

"The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things."

"The only way to know something absolutely is to experience it for yourself; anything less is theory, speculation, and belief."

"The more man becomes aware of the mysterious side of life, the less he is political; the less he is a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian; the less is the possibility for his being a fanatic. A man in tune with the mysterious is humble, loving, caring, accepting the uniqueness of everybody. He is rejoicing in the freedom of each individual, because only with freedom can this garden of humanity be a rich place."

"The power of our unconscious mind is enormous; what we cannot do in our conscious state we can do with the help of the unconscious mind more sensible than the conscious."

"The natural desire of the human mind is to become special - to become special in the ways of the world, to have many degrees, to have much political power, to have money, wealth - to be special. The mind is always ready to go on some ego trip. And if you are fed up with the world, then again the ego starts finding new ways and new means to enhance itself - it becomes spiritual. You become a great mahatma, a great sage, a great scholar, a man of knowledge, a man of renunciation; again you are special. Unless the desire to be special disappears, you will never be special. Unless you relax into your ordinariness, you will never relax."

"The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly."

"The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death."

"The stronger a person's "I" is, the smaller his capacity to become one with anybody. The "I" is a wall in between; it proclaims itself. Its proclaimation is : "You are you and I am I. There is a distance between the two." Then no matter how much "I" love you, "I" may embrace you to my bosom, still we are two. No matter how closely we meet, still there is a gap in between - I am me and you are you. That is why even the most intimate experiences fail to bring people close. Bodies sit close to each other but the persons remain far away. As long as there is the "I" inside the sense of "the other" cannot be destroyed."

"The tongue never slips ? remember this always. What goes on within the mind comes invariably on the tongue."

"The tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them."

"The Truth Is That Existence Wants Your Life To Become A Festival Because When You Are Unhappy, You Also Throw Unhappiness All Around."

"The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing."

"The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown."

"The woman gives birth to a child and a man, he cannot do so. There is no doubt he was the lowest. He cannot become either did not give him the important nature of this responsibility because they know that the lowest and responsibility is given to those who outranked did not give him womb of nature and its role in the fact that the birth process is currently only the role of the injection - the use of temporary."

"The world is like a waiting room in a railway station; it is not your house. You are not going to remain in the waiting room forever. Nothing in the waiting room belongs to you ? the furniture, the paintings on the wall... You use them ? you see the painting, you sit on the chair, you rest on the bed ? but nothing belongs to you. You are just here for a few ...minutes, or for a few hours at the most, then you will be gone. Yes, what you have brought in with you, into the waiting room, you will take away with you; that?s yours. What have you brought into the world? And the world certainly is a waiting room. The waiting may not be in seconds, minutes, hours, days, it may be in years; but what does it matter whether you wait seven hours, or seventy years? You may forget, in seventy years, that you are just in a waiting room. You may star t thinking perhaps you are the owner, perhaps this is the house you have built. You may start putting your nameplate on the waiting room."

"The world is not a problem; the problem is your awareness."

"The world's greatest fear - fear of the opinions of others. At the moment when you are not afraid of the crowd, you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. Great roaring sounds in your heart - the roar of freedom."

"There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried."

"There exists no God. What exists is godliness, and that godliness surrounds you. We are all in the same ocean."

"There is a deep desire in everyone to commit suicide for the simple reason, that life seems to be meaningless. People go on living, not because they love life, they go on living just because they are afraid to commit suicide. There is a desire to; and in many ways they do commit suicide. Monks and nuns have committed psychological suicide, they have renounced life. And these suicidal people have dominated humanity for centuries. They have condemned everything that is beautiful. They have praised something imaginary and they have condemned the real; the real is mundane and the imaginary is sacred. My whole effort here is to help you see that the real is sacred, that this very world is sacred, that this very life is divine. But the way to see it is first to enquire within. Unless you start feeling the source of light within yourself, you will not be able to see that light anywhere else. First it has to be experienced within one?s own being, then it is found everywhere. Then the whole existence becomes so full of light, so full of joy, so full of meaning and poetry, that each moment one feels grateful for all that god has given, for all that he goes on giving. Sannyas is simply a decision to turn in, to look in. The most primary thing is to find your own center. Once it is found, once you are centered, once you are bathed in your own light you have a different vision, a different perspective, and the whole of life becomes golden. Then even dust is divine. Then life is so rich, so abundantly rich that one can only feel a tremendous gratitude towards existence. That gratitude becomes prayer. Before that, all prayer is false."

"There is far more opportunity than there is ability."