Top 357 Quotes & Sayings by Ram Dass

From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you.

The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love.

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Maharaj-ji, in my first darshan, my first meeting with him, showed me his powers. At that point I was impressed with the power. But subsequently, I realized that it was really his love that pulled me in. His love is unconditional love.

When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

If I go into the place in myself that is love, and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That's the entrance to Oneness. That's the space I entered when I met my guru.

The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others; to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. 'Death is perfectly safe,' I like to say.

I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love every thing in the universe. That's all I do all day.

In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.

In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I'm just there to help them transition, however they need to do it.

I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.

I sit with people who are dying. I'm one of those unusual types that enjoys being with someone when they're dying because I know I am going to be in the presence of Truth.

Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality.

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.

Your problem is you're... too busy holding onto your unworthiness.

When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.

My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.

The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is up here in your head where you are doing, doing, doing.

I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love.

We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others' needs at some level or other.

I can go all over the world with Skype.

In India, there's a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It's called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me.

Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.

My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object.

When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.

Pain is the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind. Then I get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being. Then those particular thoughts that are painful - love them. I love them to death!

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

I feel vulnerable because my mind - because of the stroke, my mind doesn't focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don't understand the world around me.

When I look at my life, I see that I wanted to be free of the physical plane, the psychological plane, and when I got free of those I didn't want to go anywhere near them.

You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.

When I used to perform weddings, the image I always had was the image of a triangle, in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being, that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them.

As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.

Inspiration is God making contact with itself.

Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.

If you want to cure the world, don't emanate fear - emanate love.

All you can do for another person is be an environment in which if they wanted to come up for air, they could.

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.

After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.

Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now. Say it until you can hear it.

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.

The intellect is a beautiful servant but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity.

Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies-it’s all one. It’s one energy.

One of the ego's favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt.

Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you.

Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you're not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.

The spiritual journey is not about acquiring something outside yourself, rather, you are penetrating deep layers and veils to return to the deepest truth of your own being.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. What we go from is being born into our humanity, sleep walking for a long time, until we awaken and start to taste our divinity. And then want to finally get free. We see as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren’t free. If you want to be free, you can’t push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It’s all God.

You've been somebody long enough. You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed - and the natural state of the mind is pure love.

We're all just walking each other home.

The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.

I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are

The ego is frightened by death, because ego is part of the incarnation and ends with it. That is why we learn to identify with our soul, as the soul continues after death. For the soul, death is just another moment.

If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family.

Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.