A Quote by Adi Shankara

Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?

Adi Shankara

Quote Topics

Action Atman Bonds Capable Ignorance Interested Passion Self Self-Interest

Quote Author

Adi Shankara
Indian - Philosopher
788 - 820

Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!

Swami Vivekananda

The word Atman (Soul) means the "breath of life". Atman is the principle of man's life, the Soul that pervades his being, his breath, his intellect and transcends them. Atman is what remains when everything that is not the self is eliminated. It is the unborn and immortal element in man, which is not to be confused with body, mind or intellect.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

In the utopian aim of removing all power and aggression from human behavior, we run the risk of removing self-assertion, self-affirmation, and even the power to be.

Rollo May

Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.

Walpola Rahula

Quelque e tendue d'esprit que l'on ait, l'on n'est capable que d'une grande passion. However vast a man's spirit, he is only capable of one great passion.

Blaise Pascal

That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.

Swami Vivekananda

Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one's true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self.

Ramana Maharshi

The president said that this is not removing a mole. You know, removing a mole, that's an outpatient sort of an operation. This was removing a cancer, removing a cancer takes more time.

Gordon England

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

John Boorman

Jiva (individual soul) is the conscious ruler of this body, in whom the five life principles come into unity, and yet that very Jiva is the Atman, because all is Atman.

Swami Vivekananda

An important aspect of self-compassion is to be able to empathically hold both parts of ourselves-the self that regrets a past action and the self that took the action in the first place.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.

Swami Vivekananda

Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.

Franz Kafka

Even the lowest of the low have the Atman (Soul) inside, which never dies and never is born, immortal, without beginning or end, the all pure, omnipotent and omnipresent Atman!

Swami Vivekananda

Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy.