Ram Dass

Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize in our own being, we are enough.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession.

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.

No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.