Simon Haas > Quotes

“Our attention plays a key role in shaping our reality.”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“Thomas Moore puts it well: “Flight from the dark infantilizes your spirituality, because the dark nights of the soul are supposed to initiate you into spiritual adulthood.”5”
― Simon Haas, Yoga and the Dark Night of the Soul: The Soul's Journey to Sacred Love

“Alexander the Great died a young man having accomplished many feats, having travelled all the way into India, but never having completed the most important journey of all – the inner journey.”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it, we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it.”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“Most people equate discipline with an absence of freedom. In fact, the opposite is true. Only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions. Can you play the piano? I can’t. I don’t have the freedom to play the piano. I never disciplined myself. ... What about the freedom to forgive, to ask forgiveness? What about the freedom to love unconditionally, to be a light, not a judge – a model, not a critic? Think of the discipline involved in these. Discipline comes from being “discipled” to a person or a cause.144”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“The ability to observe the mind dispassionately and to still it, is known in India as yoga.145”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“It’s easy to notice violence from an external source. It’s much more difficult to perceive the internal habits of violence we inflict upon ourselves. We are violent to ourselves every time we think negative thoughts, speak negative words, or otherwise act against ourselves. Thus, the principle of Nonviolence begins at home, with ourselves. There is only one way to overcome a harmful habit: to create a counter-habit.119 Therefore, giving up habits of violence requires, ultimately, that we develop the counter-habit of compassion and love. We are each an artist, or author. The best story we can possibly write is one we write with love. This is the most beautiful work of art we are capable of creating.120 Writing our story with love is an art; and like the mastery of any art, it requires practice. Humans can only find fulfilment when they construct their world in this way. A person who lives in such a world finds happiness everywhere, in everything he or she says and does. Love without self-interest is the highest expression of relating. Suppression of the higher self hardens our heart and covers our capacity to love purely. It is the most pervasive kind of self-inflicted violence. Indeed, it is the root of all other forms of aggression. Violence to others is always preceded by violence to oneself. It is like picking up hot coals to throw at someone else. We are always the one who gets burned first. The highest faculty of the human being is not his rationality, but his capacity to emerge from violence and to love purely, without self-interest. Erich Fromm was right: “Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it cannot give us the ultimate answer.”121 What we need is not thinking, but good thinking. Good thinking is thinking in the service of love. Otherwise, we will turn our very powers of thought against ourselves – as we have done for millennia.”
― Simon Haas, The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices

“One’s own path, even if imperfect, is better than another’s path followed perfectly. By carrying out action in accord with one’s own nature, one doesn’t go wrong.”6”
― Simon Haas, Yoga and the Dark Night of the Soul: The Soul's Journey to Sacred Love