Can > Can's Quotes

“In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel’s it’s impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human…we really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down…so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay!”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember, you're the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside.”
― Rachel Wolchin

“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

“Our lives have no outcome other than death, just as rivers have no end other than the ocean. At the moment of death, our only recourse is spiritual practice, and our only friends the virtuous actions we have accomplished during our lifetime.”
― Dilgo Khyentse, The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe–the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife

“You have come to a point that reason cannot go beyond, and the beyond remains. Now you know that reason cannot take a single step further and yet the “further” remains. Even if you decide to remain with reason, a boundary is created. You know that existence is beyond the boundary of reason, so even if you do not go beyond this boundary, you become a mystic. Even if you do not take the jump you become a
mystic because you have known something, you have encountered something that was not rational at all.”
― Osho

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.”
― Osho Rajneesh, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

“I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”
― Osho

“Be realistic: Plan for a miracle”
― Osho

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”
― Osho

“Courage Is a Love Affair with the Unknown”
― Osho

“My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently”
― Osho

“The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.”
― Osho

“Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed--
borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.”
― Osho

“A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.”
― Osho, The Book of Secrets

“Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness.”
― Osho Rajneesh

“To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life.”
― Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear

“Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.”
― Osho

“It's a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so hard to give up hope.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The Power that created you has created the world as well. If it can take care of you, it can similarily take care of the world also. If God has created the world, it is His business to look after it, not yours.”
― Ramana Maharshi

“You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj

“a fear-driven spirituality will always diminish rather than enlarge.”
― James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up

“In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles.”
― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

“In your relationships you sacrificed your autonomy to gain security and wound up with neither.”)”
― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life