Damaru Bhatta > Damaru's Quotes

“When our false perception is corrected, misery ends also.”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination: Viveka-Chudamani

“Once we become conscious, even dimly, of the Atman, the Reality within us, the world takes on a very different aspect. It is no longer a court of justice but a kind of gymnasium. Good and evil, pain and pleasure, still exist, but they seem more like the ropes and vaulting-horses and parallel bars which can be used to make our bodies strong. Maya is no longer an endlessly revolving wheel of pain and pleasure but a ladder which can be climbed to consciousness of the Reality.”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination: Viveka-Chudamani

“You never identify yourself with the shadow cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. Therefore you should not identify yourself with this living body, either.”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination: Viveka-Chudamani

“Where renunciation and longing for liberation are weak, tranquillity and the other virtues are a mere appearance, like the mirage in the desert.”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination: Viveka-Chudamani

“Yeilding to the power of rajas, he identifies himself with the many motions and changes of the mind. Therefore he is swept hither and thither, now rising, now sinking, in the boundless ocean of birth and death, whose waters are full of the poison of sense-objects. This is indeed a miserable fate.”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination: Viveka-Chudamani

“Bhikkus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?

The eye is burning, visible forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning; also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact as its condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of greed, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion, with birth, ageing and death, with sorrow, with lamentation, with pain, grief and despair it is burning.”
― The Buddha's Fire Sermon

“He who desires the soul, who plays with the soul, who makes love with the soul, who attains ecstasy in the soul, becomes his own master and wanders at will through the worlds." - Chandogya Upanishad”
― Chandogya Upanishad

“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.”
― Chandogya Upanishad

“As long as man is overpowered by the darkness of ignorance, he is the slave of Nature and must accept whatever comes as the fruit of his thoughts and deeds. When he strays into the path of unreality, the Sages declare that he destroys himself; because he who clings to the perishable body and regards it as his true Self must experience death many times.”
― Paramananda, The Upanishads

“He who is rich in the knowledge of the Self does not covet external power or possession.”
― Paramananda, The Upanishads

“The general teaching of the Upanishads is that works alone, even the highest, can bring only temporary happiness and must inevitably bind a man unless through them he gains knowledge of his real Self.”
― Paramananda, The Upanishads

“Who is better able to know God than I myself, since He resides in my heart and is the very essence of my being? Such should be the attitude of one who is seeking.”
― Paramananda, The Upanishads

“That which is not comprehended by the mind but by which the mind comprehends—know that...”
― Swami Prabhavananda, The Upanishads

“The fifth-century Greek writer we know as Dionysius the Areopagite once said that as he grew older and wiser his books got shorter and shorter.”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“Place this salt in water and bring it here tomorrow morning".

The boy did.

"Where is that salt?" his father asked?

"I do not see it."

"Sip here. How does it taste?"

"Salty, father."

"And here? And there?"

"I taste salt everywhere."

"It is everywhere, though we see it not. Just so, dear one, the Self is everywhere, within all things, although we see it not. There is nothing that does not come from it. It is the truth; it is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu.

You Are That.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Upanishads

“There is no joy in the finite; there is joy only in the Infinite.”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“Human beings cannot live without challenge. We cannot live without meaning. Everything ever achieved we owe to this inexplicable urge to reach beyond our grasp, do the impossible, know the unknown. The Upanishads would say this urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for the ultimate adventure: to discover for certain who we are, what the universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama of life and death we play out against the backdrop of eternity.”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, he never suffers; because when he sees all creatures within his true Self, then jealousy, grief and hatred vanish.”
― Paramananda, The Upanishads

“Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness.”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“Fire is His head, the sun and moon His eyes, space His ears, the Vedas His speech, the wind His breath, the universe His heart. From His feet the Earth has originated. Verily, He is the inner self of all beings.”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. [ Brihadaranyaka IV.4.5 ]”
― Anonymous, The Upanishads

“The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe.
The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, The Upanishads: Breath from the Eternal

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
― Max Planck

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
― Max Planck

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

“[I do not believe] in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.”
― Max Planck, Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
― Max Planck, The New Science

“We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.”
― Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

“Each day a raid on the inarticulate--T.S. Eliot”
― T.S. Eliot