Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The word "Guru", as it is used in the contemporary American scene, is someone who takes all your money and tells you what to do with your life. You assume no responsibility. A lot of people want that free ride.
Life exists in countless forms in countless dimensions, in places that we simply cannot see. The essence of life - while it might not appear so when we watch television or watch our loved ones suffer - is good.
As Buddhist monks, our task is to bring ourselves resolutely more and more into light, to forgive and forget, to forget those who create problems for us because to remember them is only to keep problems is mind.
Buddhism has always been a religion for people who've worked their way through a cycle of materialism and still feel discontented and want more, or have questions that their state of prosperity is not answering.
What will really release the kundalini is creating a stillness in your life. This stillness will come about through deep caring and introspection. It will come about slowly and then quickly - it builds momentum.
If you can be agreeable to each and every person or situation with which you come into contact - no matter how "difficult" it is or how much you think you are in the "right" - then you are demonstrating control.
The only reason you feel pain is because you're so busy looking at yourself instead of looking at the wonderful patterns of light. If you become absorbed in the wonderful patterns of light, then there's no pain.
One function of the intellect is to catalog. But cataloging doesn't change anything. If we call it a rose, or by any other name, it still smells as sweet. The name doesn't really matter. It is convenient for us.
If you do well within this life, that awareness will be held within the causal structure, the part of us that lives from one lifetime to another. It will be available to you in your next life and in future lives.
There is much appeal for me in Eastern religion, the little I know of it. And something thorny in me finds American adaptations of Buddhism terribly self-indulgent, silly, gooey in the way the English call "wet."
Even after only several weeks of practicing meditation, you will begin to have more energy and be a little bit happier. Eventually, you will experience ecstasy and knowledge beyond the power of words to describe!
I don't feel any great need to subscribe to a certain notion of Buddhism that says "You have to do this" or "You have to do that." Buddhism does not prescribe rituals or prohibitions in the way many religions do.
Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions.
You are sitting on this little planet, spaceship earth. The universe is very accessible to you. You don't need a spaceship to travel there. Most of the worlds are non-physical. And it's all God; it's all eternity
Become conscious of what you think during the day. A negative thought will enter you. At first it will be vague, innocuous, but then it will root in your consciousness and soon it will be impossible to eradicate.
Two of the most powerful of these power places are located in the Boston and Los Angeles areas. Highly evolved souls tend to be drawn to these areas because it's easier for them to increase their awareness there.
There is a power in the land in Concord, in Lincoln, in the western Boston suburbs. There's an inter-dimensional vortex that opens in a variety of places in this area, which leads one to a transcendental reality.
We remember a few people who've been enlightened. We build churches and edifices in their name. But few people, if any, feel that they could ever be like that; and if that's how they feel - that's how it will be.
Spiritual people are often persecuted because of their beliefs. Christians were fed to the lions. Jews were slaughtered in concentration camps. Various forms of persecution still exist today throughout the world.
Take a yoga class, study different forms of self-discovery. Some people are crazy and fanatical, avoid them. People who are balanced and calm and introspective, associating with them will raise your energy level.
Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation.
It is acceptance of the will of God - waiting, if necessary, forever, happily rising above your desires and above your frustrations to always do what is right. Always do what is right. This is the spiritual study.
How can you possibly be happy if you think you're a person? Because we all know, just by definition, that people are definitely not happy because they take everything too seriously. They take themselves seriously.
What I like about Tibetan Buddhism is it was taken to Tibet in the 7th century and then again in the 11th. It has everything that had been collected in India up until that time. And so on all levels, it's so vast.
Some people travel to other dimensions in their astral bodies when they meditate. But astral traveling doesn't bring a person lasting happiness. If astral traveling is not done properly, it can be quite dangerous.
Etiquette is an intelligent way to live. There are certain ways of living you will learn being around advanced students and mostly your teacher. These are methods that have been handed down for thousands of years.
Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.
They get you when you're young. When you are a kid, you are conditioned. You are taught language, customs, and right and wrong. You are filled with fears. This conditioning interferes with your psychic perception.
Some people harbor the idea or belief that all teachers should teach for free. Obviously these people have never been teachers, particularly in the twentieth century. Teaching meditation is a very expensive hobby.
Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living.
Human beings go to church. The guy in the front dressed in black is the guy you defer to. He is in charge of the mysteries of universe, which ordinary human beings don't seem to have the inclination to understand.
The tantras can be very confusing for a person who is new to Buddhism, and for several thousand years the rule was not to expose a person or a new monk to the tantras until they had practiced for many, many years.
I am very interested in the enlightenment of women. Very few teachers of advanced self discovery work with women, and if they do it's usually in a very second handed way. They treat women as second class citizens.
Another part of the rejection I mention was the realisation that Buddhism quite simply ignores or dismisses a whole hemisphere of human experience that finds expression in and is enshrined by the mystery religions.
You work many hours. It is the major activity of your life. You can lose a lot of energy or gain a lot of energy from it. Put your full attention into it and do a good job, because it is part of your impeccability.
One of the greatest mistakes that people make who pursue self-discovery is they neglect to develop their careers. There is a popular notion that those who seek enlightenment should abandon the things of this world.
The mantra is a very preliminary exercise for the student to begin to grasp a sense of focus. When they are used by persons who have reached very high levels of attention, they can open up doorways to other worlds.
A child is imprinted not by simply teaching. But their attention is like soft clay. The attention field of adults is stratified. They are like hard clay and we push them on each side of the child's attention field.
Inside you is eternity. A human being is not so simple. We're told that we're Ted or Sally or Willie or whatever and that we grow up and have experiences. That has nothing to do with what life is. You are eternity.
Reality does appear to exist, there does appear to be birth, youth, people appear to have children. But all of it's a dream. These are isolated moments that are only connected by perception. There is no separation.
Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of power. Without wisdom, a powerful person does not become more powerful. Their power will turn back on them and eventually destroy them. So those who are truly wise become most powerful.
Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it's going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.
The quality of time actually changes throughout the day and night. Some dimensions are more time-specific, in that they only interact with the physical dimension they touch during specific times of the night or day.
I'd love to find some people to teach advanced meditation to. I've been looking for many years. There are a few around. Once in a while I run into another one. It's a very limited league at this time, in this world.
Power doesn't make you happy. Actually, power without knowledge and balance is problematic. Power is something that will automatically follow when you have knowledge. The two are really the same, in a certain sense.
Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband, Michael Aris, was a good friend of mine at St Antony's, Oxford. The gentlest of gentle academics, he helped establish a centre in Tibetan studies at Oxford and converted to Buddhism.
The abuse of power that seems to create the most unhappiness is when a person uses personal power to get ahead without regards to the welfare of others, or when power is used to go into the lower dimensional planes.
It is necessary to be occupied almost all the time, to have your mind focused; otherwise, you get very spaced out. There are many variant psychic forces and powers that roam through the worlds. You can pick them up.
The immortal silence is there always waiting for you and that spirit is deathless and courageous. Remember, many have trod the path that you are walking on and they succeeded. They were no better than you, no wiser.
Linus Pauling would have us believe and perhaps correctly, that enough vitamin C will have us live another 20 or 30 years, I think the strongest power in the world is not vitamin C but the power of our own thoughts.