Keep life in balance, avoid the extremes

Always remember: life is never unjust. If it looks unjust then you must have done something wrong. Somewhere you must have gone beyond the balance; then life seems to be unjust. And whenever you feel the unjustice it is better to look at yourself; you have done something wrong and you have been punished.

Accomplish but claim no credit

"You cannot defeat me because I don't want to be victorious at all".
Lao Tzu

Accomplish, but claim no credit or fame.

Playing

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” - George Bernard Shaw

Harmony

The whole universe is an interdependence. You depend on the whole, and not only that, the whole depends on you.

Never pass by a being (person, tree, bird, anything) without saying hello in your heart. It costs nothing. But it means a lot.

Walls are not meaningful

You live in a house, and your concept of the house is the walls. But walls are not the house, how can you live in the walls? You live in the emptiness, not in the walls. The hollowness - that is the real house. If you look at the real house, then there is no difference between a hut and a palace, since all hollownesses are the same; but there are rich walls and poor walls.

When you look at a person do you look at the body? Then you are looking at the walls. That is not the real person - the real person is the inner hollowness. Look at the inner, don’t look at the outer. All ego is just on the surface. The inner is pure.

All achievements are of the ego

Once it happened: a saint knocked at the doors of Heaven, and at the same time, just by his side, a sinner knocked too. And the saint knew the sinner very well. He had lived in his neighborhood, in the same town, and they had died on the same day.

The doors opened. The gatekeeper, St. Peter, didn’t give even a look to the saint. He welcomed the sinner. The saint was offended. This was not expected, that a sinner should be welcomed. He asked St. Peter, ”What is the matter? You offend me. You insult me. Why am I not received when the sinner has been received with such welcome?”

Said St. Peter, ”That’s why. You expect. He does not expect. He simply feels grateful that he has come to Heaven. You feel that you have earned it. He feels the grace of God; you think it is because of your efforts that you have achieved it. It is an achievement to you, and all achievements are of the ego. He is humble. He cannot believe that he has come to heaven.”

The Closest Distance

“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”
Victor Borge (1909 - 2000)

Laughter drops your ego

Laughter brings you to the earth, brings you down from your stupid ideas of being holier-than-thou.

Meaning of life

 Life is not a chaos, it is a meaningful cosmos.

Choiceless

You always choose: you choose to be beautiful and ugliness becomes your shadow; you choose to be a saint and sin becomes your shadow. Choose – and you will be in difficulty, because the very choice has divided life. Don’t choose, be choiceless, create a harmony, let life flow in its own beauty.

Be simple, don't create opposites

When the people of the earth all know beauty as beauty, there arises ugliness.
When the people of the earth all know the good as good, there arises evil.

The moment you create a God, immediately you create a devil.

The world will be beautiful when people have forgotten about beauty, because then there will be no ugliness. The world will be moral when people have completely forgotten the word ”moral,” because then there will be no immorality. The world will be in order when there is nobody to enforce it, nobody who is trying to create order. All those who try to create order are the mischief-makers – they create disorder.

You are the same wherever

No matter where you go, there you are.

Love's misery

The phenomenon of love - you come closer and closer and closer, but even in closeness there is a distance. That is the misery of all lovers.

Lotus Flower

A lotus flower grows from mud, but yet, it is of pure white; the mud or the water never touches its petals.

 Living in the world, but remaining untouched by it, unaffected.

Perfect Evening

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain -

A perfect evening!

Grace

Grace is an effortless beauty.

Natural

Those who understand always act naturally.

Happy

When you’re happy, don’t ask why - there is no why.

Enjoy the mystery of life

Don’t be serious, take life as fun, as joy. Enjoy it, love it, live it, but don’t make a problem out of it. It is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived.

Constant change

Permanence should not rule your mind, it should not be a value; otherwise, you will never be able to move towards existence. Enjoy a thing while it is there. When it is no longer there, forgive and forget and move on. That's how one grows.

In The Name of Thy Lord

Can you feel that the whole existence says to you: "Recite in the name of Thy Lord"?!

Betrayal

Tradition is a betrayal of life. Life is always new, always changing. "Tradition" is keeping you into the past, an outsider of "now".

Beautiful

When you have no complaint, suddenly everything is beautiful.

Tea

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. - Japanese Proverb

Peaceful

A brilliant full moon!
On the matting of my floor
Shadows of pines fall.

Personality

Personality is nothing but an envelope. It comes from a beautiful word, persona; persona means a mask. In Greek dramas the actors used masks. Sona means sound, per means through. They used to speak through the mask; you could not see their real faces, you could only hear their voices. Hence the mask was called a persona because the sound was heard through it, and out of persona comes the word ’personality’.

invisible

For the man of the world, visibility means that you look like something or someone he expects you to resemble. If you look different, your true nature becomes invisible to him.

Silence

Words are figures, silence is the background. Words come and go, silence remains. Words are disturbances in the immense ocean of silence that life is filling us with every moment. Words flow out from the turmoil of our mind - in silence, existence flows into our heart.

who?

- be a light onto yourself

If somebody creates anger in you

If somebody creates anger in you, tell the person that you will come after 24 hours to answer him/her. And for 24 hours wait.

ambition

In this ambitious world, friendship cannot bloom, love is almost impossible, compassion cannot exist. We have created such an ugly mess, and the root is that we think that there is something to achieve.

The two types of two

Two ordinary lovers who are both lonely always face each other; two real lovers, on a full moon night, will not be facing each other. They may be holding hands, but they will be facing the full moon high in the sky. They will not be facing each other, they will be together facing something else. Sometimes they will be listening to a symphony of Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner together. Sometimes they will be sitting by the side of a tree and enjoying the tremendous being of the tree enveloping them. Sometimes they may be sitting by a waterfall and listening to the wild music that is continuously being created there. Sometimes, by the ocean, they will both be looking to the farthest possibility that the eyes can see. 

Whenever two lonely persons meet, they look at each other, because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other: how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two persons who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travellers; they move on a pilgrimage. The goal is high, the goal is far away. Their common interest joins them together.

It's simple

A little foolishness, enough to enjoy life, and a little wisdom to avoid the errors, that will do.

Unprepared

The beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous. Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow and freshness. Then life has so many surprises. And when life has so many surprises boredom never settles in you.

Body and soul

All divisions are false.

Reality is One.

It is all One.

The body is the soul visible,
the soul is the body invisible.

Not lost

I don't know
But I'm not lost

The word is false

The word always belongs to the past
And it cannot carry the experience to you
You may hear it, but you won't understand it
Seek the authentic experience
Once you experience yourself, the word is no longer needed

Leave the books behind

The first thing to remember is: your question must be yours. Then the second thing to remember is: the answer must be yours.

Come out of the jungle of words and feel what you want, what your desire is, and follow it wheresoever it leads. Sooner or later you will come to the divine. It may take a little longer, but the search will be real.

Pain and suffering

Pain is simply pain, a simple fact; there is no suffering in it. Suffering comes from your desire that the pain should not be there, that there is something wrong in pain.

Pleasure and pain defining life

I've seen it so many times: "I'm not going to get involved because I'm afraid of getting hurt". Life will be missed, because the music of life comes from the tension between pleasure and pain. Destroy or negate the polarity and life will be dull, stale.

Love and pain

If it's painful, it means you also loved. Love and pain come together. You can accept pain, transform its pure energy. Take this opportunity to reflect and understand.

Pride

I sit where I can't be pushed back any further.

Start with you

Instead of finding a beautiful woman, start creating a beautiful man within you

Truth

Man is born with a question mark in his heart.

Real love

If love is really love... Just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just being together you feel ecstatic, just the very presence of the other fulfills something deep in your heart... something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you to be together; you become more individual, more centered, more grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not possessiveness.

Be alert, and when you start feeling with someone that just the presence, the pure presence -- nothing else, nothing else is needed; you don't ask anything -- just the presence, just that the other is, is enough to make you happy... something starts flowering within you, a thousand and one lotuses bloom... then you are in love, and then you can pass through all the difficulties that reality creates. Many anguishes, many anxieties -- you will be able to pass all of them, and your love will be flowering more and more, because all those situations will become challenges. And your love, by overcoming them, will become more and more strong.

Love is eternity. If it is there, then it goes on growing and growing. Love knows the beginning but does not know the end.

I don't know anything

"I know only one thing: that I don't know anything at all" - Socrates

Innocence and Wonder

Jesus said: "Unless you are like small children, you will not enter in the kingdom of God."

A lover

A girl came back home from the school and asked her grandmother, "Granny, what is a lover ?"
"A lover!!" the grandmother said. "Let me think. Lov... Lover... Oh, my God!"
She rushed to the wall, pulled aside the hanging rug, revealing a hidden closet door. She unlocked the door, and a skeleton of a young man fell out from the closet.

Bad luck

With a pile of 300 resumes on his desk and a need to pick someone quickly, the boss told his assistant to make calls on the bottom 50 and toss the rest.
"Throw away 250 resumes?"asked the assistant, shocked, "What if the best candidates are in there?"
"You have a point," he said. "But then again, I don't need people with bad luck here."