For thousands of years humans were oppressed— as some of us still are— by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew...

Enlightenment is nothing more than moments of self-awareness. Don’t let cultural spiritual hierarchy intimidate you into the mindset of unworthiness. You are divine already, you just need to realize and accept it

Always try and be a better person than you were yesterday, cause we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow.

To a realized master, death and rebirth is in every breath. Death is that of body consciousness, ego and limits of the mind. Rebirth is that of the cosmic mind of being the Spirit. In this realization is liberation.When awake as liberated, each prayer and each moment of meditation is for humanity as there is...

The bottom line remains the same: you’re either awake or you’re not.One day, there it is. Nothing. No more enemies, no more battles.

For a brief moment I felt I was the older, the more mature.”A gift of life,” I responded, “if not to say, a gift of God, such as music, should not have the mocking charge of paradox leveled at it for things that are merely evidence of the fullness of its nature. One should love...

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.

Saints and bodhisattvas may achieve what Christians call mystical union or Buddhists call satori–a perpetual awareness of the force at the heart of the heart of things. For these enlightened few, the world is always lit. For the rest of us, such clarity comes only fitfully, in sudden glimpses or slow revelations. Quakers refer to...

We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day—who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.

When you deeply love someone from that space that is beyond attachment to certain projections or desires, when you love someone just deeply, totally, completely, without any games that the mind or emotions play, then that love remains eternal in the heavens forever, and that is what pulls you back to remembering that love.

Where ego comes in, loving kindness departs. So wherever there is ego, there is very little space for true bliss and true happiness because true bliss and true happiness isn’t exclusive to the attachments the ego enjoys playing with, but rather a free state of mind that is part of loving kindness and its activities...

The way to Bliss is through Understanding, through Wisdom.

As you embrace Consciousness, you embrace Perfection.

No, not horror. Enlightenment.

What is life to Spirit, is death to the ego.

Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.

Everybody is seeking to reach higher self but hardly anyone reaches.

Just as someone obsessed with becoming a millionaire focuses on gaining riches and can miss out on living a fun, balanced life, so someone obsessed with being enlightened or being totally free of all difficulties can also miss out on life. Far healthier to just live a mindful, balanced life and fully participate in what...

When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the...

I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself.

A person who wants to know everything eventually comes to a stage where his/her curiosity of knowing everything comes to an end and that is the stage of Enlightenment.

Everything makes sense for those who’re capable of making sense of.

Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life.” —Sanskrit poem

An enlightened person doesn’t ask anyone to believe in anything. They simply point the way and leave it to people to realize it for themselves.

There is beauty all around us, and the light finds us when we realize, we are all part of that beauty and worth the cherishing. If we despise any, we journey to despise ourselves. See all as beautiful, even if they choose to see themselves through you, as being less than so. We have the...

Rather than going after these walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them, and smell them and get to know them well. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build these walls: what are the...

The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the bodhichitta teachings, the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in the unconditional openness of the prajna, patiently cutting through all our tendencies...

It is neither cowardice nor betrayal to insist that the Enlightenment’s main lesson is to be mindful of how much it has left its inheritors to figure out.

I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only...

Hatred never ceases with hatred, but with love alone is healed.

It is all, the unfolding. Neither good nor bad, my destiny.

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of ‘you’ is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the ‘you’ is not there. Why are you...

In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn; in the midst of the soundless, he alone hears harmony.

Life is a series of awakenings.

Nobody makes anybody enlightened.Just tell them what you want to say,then let them decide for themselves.

We think a wise person is someone who solves problems. Truth is, a wise person is someone who avoids problems.

As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today’s children of the banalized Enlightenment are likewise meant to burn what they worshipped and worship what they burned.

Enlightenment is not a goal to be attained, it is a state-of-being to be regained.

The light of the sun is the manifestation of the clarity of the sky; and the sky is the basic condition necessary for the manifestation of the sun’s light. So, too, in the sky two, three, four, or any number of suns could arise; but the sky always remains indivisibly one sky. Similarly, every individual’s...

Enlightenment is the unfolding of the divinity within.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature:...

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment...

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

You can capture me with your beauty, only if you are a brilliant photographer.

At the same time, we may not as a culture be fond of old-fashioned supernaturalism, but we certainly like spirituality in whatever form we can get it. I suspect that if anyone other than Jesus (Krishna, say, or Buddha) were suddenly put forward as being due for a second coming, millions in our postsecular society...

I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it’s pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try and call on it, just like a light bulb cracking...

Noi tutti siamo esiliatientro lo cornici di uno strano quadro.Chi sa questo, viva da grande,Gli altri sono insetti.

Enlightenment isn’t when you go there; it’s when there comes here.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.