Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Everything constantly changes.
Day by day, tiny specks of us float away.
Wisdom and knowledge are two different things.
I don't think one can run out and try and chase love.
Knowledge is immensely powerful and immensely useful.
I belong on this earth in the way that an oak tree does.
What's not often in the present moment is the thinking mind.
Practice remembrance of the present moment, again and again.
It is from that region of silence, that wordless knowing comes.
When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in.
I've come to see that the way my life shows up is actually my purpose.
The heart, like the grape, is prone to delivering its harvest in the same moment it appears to be crushed.
We live in an age of knowledge, with the great god Google, that we can refer to at any time on any subject.
People around us change and circumstances change. We can often find ourselves struggling against those things.
The body is the doorway to the timeless, because the body is always where we are and always in the present moment.
Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.
When we are open to ourselves and our own experience, and therefore, open to the world, then the world can respond.
Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.
We have to be on time every day for one thing or another, so how can we be on time and yet not in time at the same time?
Be willing to be where you actually are. In my experience, that is the most inherently meaningful experience you can have.
It's the bringing together of knowledge and wisdom that is a great part - perhaps the greatest part - of our life's journey.
The natural wish and impetus to feel oneself to be an individual, to be special, includes standing out more than anyone else.
Time and the timeless dimension co-exist here, now in this very moment that we're living, this very moment that we're speaking.
When you die, God and the Angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.
To keep faith with life is to experience that everything- everything that comes to us whatever it is- has its place in the puzzle of our existence.
If you allow yourself to fully feel the life you're in - not conceptually, but viscerally in the present moment - then that is inherently meaningful.
The everyday, familiar sense of self who lives in time, and that dimension which we've called presence, that is always here, that is still and quiet.
When we turn our gaze to the inside, it becomes difficult to locate this familiar sense of self. To overcome that fear we need to feel special in some way.
The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.
I certainly spent many years in my early life chasing all over the globe for meaning and purpose. I'd feel like I'd found it, then it would fade away again.
Most of us make an effort to do and be the best we can be, which leads to a distinction we need to make between the notion of struggle and the notion of effort.
The love of someone else is more accessible or more possible if one lives with a sense of loving embrace towards oneself because that extends out into the world.
We have all had serendipitous moments - the most unlikely meetings out of nowhere - that can happen when we have this quality of deep acceptance towards ourselves.
We can acquire as much knowledge as we would like with a few taps on our keyboard. That's extremely valuable, but wisdom comes again from some different dimension.
The capacity to become aware of the givens of our existence - such as change - and to actually welcome those as just part of our human experience releases the struggle.
When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.
Love, like everything else, exists in a spectrum. Love of another, love of the world, love of God, all these loves are really one love in different degrees of light and density.
I had a classic case of what people call "seeker's disease." That was part of my journey, but now, meaning is like a secret that's revealing itself moment by moment, day by day.
A knowing of what needs to be done or what needs to be said or what needs to happen at any given time. That is wisdom and wisdom does not come from the accumulation of knowledge.
The more we enter our own gifts, the more we feel that sense of proportion. In that sense, I think our life lies in the fulfillment of those potentialities, whatever they may be.
When we're fully engaged in the present moment, no matter what we're doing, the question of meaning never seems to arise. It's because we feel fulfilled and that is inherently meaningful.
There is a stillness in all of us that is really the essence of who we are. A stillness and a silence that doesn't move, that doesn't go anywhere and our task is to experience that while being in time.
Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises.
If you want to know your purpose, look at the unfolding of your life, because that is your gift to the world. It may not look spectacular, but nobody else has the precise life that you do. It's a gift no one else can offer.
I live in California, where there's a lot of driving entailed. I'm usually going somewhere to be on time to meet someone so I'm necessarily engaged in time. And yet, how can I in that moment of driving my car, be aware of that which is not going anywhere?
If we're trying to get the perfect house, the perfect relationship or the perfect job, it's likely there's some kind of fear driving us beyond the natural wish to improve. It's really the refusal to acknowledge that life - including ourselves - is simply not perfect.
The ego, as our familiar sense of self, seems predicated on fear. The fear that we might not make it, that we might not get where we want to go. But deep down there is also a grain of fear that we have nothing to give or nothing to offer. I think that's the ego's justifiable anxiety about its substantiality and existence.
In today's world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. Poetry urges us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life.
The great French Impressionist painter Renoir, right at the end of his very long life, said to a friend, "I am just now learning to paint." Renoir carried his gift with a humility which realized how much he still had to learn. Anyone who goes deeply into a field in life and realizes this, gains a sense of proportion that can only make you humble.
Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.