Top 357 Quotes & Sayings by Ram Dass - Page 2

I don't think too much about the future. Not because I'm hiding my head in the sand but because I figured out that whatever the future was going to be, the thing I had to do was to quiet my mind and open my heart and do what I could to end suffering.

Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You've got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you're afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You're too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You'd rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don't.

Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul.

Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.

Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?

Faith is what is left after all your beliefs have been blown to hell.

The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your attachment, your clinging, to pleasure, to pain, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there is a place where you’re vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it.

Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is.

The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours.

So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your Karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself.

The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.

Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.

The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.

If I'm going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I'm going to live, the best way to prepare for it is to quiet my mind and open my heart.

The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

The sooner one develops compassion in this journey, the better. Compassion lets us appreciate that each individual is doing what he or she must do, and that there is no reason to judge another person or oneself. You merely do what you can to further your own awakening.

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun.

When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn't.

This is the pathless path - returning to where you were initially before you got lost. The deepest truth in you is where the journey leads - shedding, like taking off layers of an onion, until you come to your essence. The key to the spiritual journey is not acquiring something outside of yourself. Rather it is shedding the veils to come back to the deepest truth of your being.

A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.

So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.

It's very hard to grow, because it's difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we've invested so heavily.

Don't take yourself so personally.

We're sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we're not getting any sunshine!

Without remaining open to change , we can not remain open to life

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.

If you feel a sense of social responsibility, first of all keep working on yourself. Being peaceful yourself is the first step if you want to live in a peaceful universe.

Turn your melodrama into a mellow drama.

When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.

What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body.

Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain - to just be with it all.

Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God.

Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.

The interesting question is, how do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be. The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind. Because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions.

All that you seek is already within you. In Hinduism it is called the Atman, in Buddhism the pure Buddha-Mind. Christ said, 'the kingdom of heaven is within you.' Quakers call it the ‘still small voice within.’ This is the space of full awareness that is in harmony with all the universe, and thus is wisdom itself.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.

Suffering lets us see where are attachments are - and that helps us get free.

All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don't feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind. By letting go of even the thought 'I,' and 'me' what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there. No separation anywhere. Pure awareness. Neither this, nor that. Just clarity and being.

Within the spiritual journey you understand that suffering becomes something that has been given to you to show you where your mind is still stuck. It’s a vehicle to help you go to work. That’s why it’s called grace.

Consciousness equals energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It's all the same trip.

Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment.

Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.

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.

In India when we meet and part we often say, "Namaste," which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us?.. "Namaste."

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are.