The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.
Prolong not the past Invite not the future Do not alter your innate wakefulness Fear not appearances There in nothing more than this
In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.
The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others; to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. 'Death is perfectly safe,' I like to say.
As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.
When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.
When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.
You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.
You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.
I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love.
When I used to perform weddings, the image I always had was the image of a triangle, in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being, that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them.
If I go into the place in myself that is love, and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That's the entrance to Oneness. That's the space I entered when I met my guru.
When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.
It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.
I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love every thing in the universe. That's all I do all day.
In India, there's a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It's called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me.
From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you.
We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others' needs at some level or other.
Maharaj-ji, in my first darshan, my first meeting with him, showed me his powers. At that point I was impressed with the power. But subsequently, I realized that it was really his love that pulled me in. His love is unconditional love.
