“If we were to design an AI program to read all the texts and scriptures of all the great religious and spiritual traditions over the last 3000 years or so and were to ask it to distill the essence of all these texts into a single sentence, one of its versions would read something like this: peace and happiness are the very nature of our being and we share our being with everyone and everything.“
— Rupert Spira on World Religion Day, 3rd Sunday of January
“The wonderful irony about the spiritual journey is that we find it only leads us to become just as we are. That the exalted state of enlightenment is nothing more than fully knowing ourselves and our world just as we are. In other words the ultimate fruition of this path is simply to be fully human and the ultimate benefit we can bring to others is to welcome them to also realize their full humanity, just as they are.“
— Pema Chödrön, Welcoming the Unwelcome
“I wonder what we mean by a new year.
Is it a fresh year, a year that is totally afresh, something that has never happened before?…
This is rather an important question, if you will follow it – to turn all the days of our life into something which you have never seen before. That means a brain that has freed itself from its conditioning, from its characteristics, from its idiosyncrasies and the opinions, and the judgements, and the convictions.
Can we put all that aside and really start a new year? It would be marvelous if we could do that…
Can we change the whole direction of our lives? Is that possible?…
Can we drop all that and start anew with a clean slate and see what comes out of that, with our hearts and minds?“
— Jiddu Krishnamurti on the New Year, Madras, 1st January, 1985
“Let me give you a wonderful Zen practice. Wake up in the morning…look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.”
— Bernie Glassman
“This vast literature…Upanishads and their commentaries and sub commentaries and sub sub commentaries and multiple magnificent structures of philosophies built upon it…they all reduce to OM and especially the SILENCE AT THE END OF OM.”
— Swami Sarvapriyananda
“If our mind is headed in a direction that we know is leading to suffering and is already causing suffering, we need some emergency measures. And mantra is just such an emergency measure. It qualifies as distraction and it qualifies as substitution. So we take words that are wholesome… leading to our happiness… ultimately to our enlightenment. And we use those wholesome words to substitute for words that are causing us distress.”
— Roshi Jan Chozen Bays
“The best contribution you can make to humanity…is to recognize your true nature and its inherent peace.“
— Rupert Spira
“The most important thing about the teaching of rebirth is that life continues. That there is more to our lives than the little span of time between birth and death. The teaching of rebirth tells us that our life and death are significant beyond their appearance, more important than we know.“
— Zoketusu Norman Fischer
“In silence, there is a total disappearance of the ego.“
— Jean Klein
“Just sitting, with no deliberate thought, is the important aspect of serene reflection meditation.“
— Dogen