Great Throughts Treasury

"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself - and there isn't one."

"A man who is seeking for realization is not only going round searching for his spectacles without realizing that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!"

"A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream. ‘What are you?’ I cried to them as they drifted by. ‘I am a bubble, of course’ nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they passed. But, here and there, a lonely bubble answered, ‘We are this stream’, and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude."

"A relevant, famous quote from the Tao is "Ruling a country is like frying a small fish". A good chef will tell you that, when frying a fish (especially a small one), if you keep moving the frying pan and flipping the fish, it will fall apart and become tasteless."

"Affective fixation on the personality of a master, teacher, guru, is a serious obstacle to 'liberation': the person of the liberator becomes the gaoler... The Chinese Masters told their monks to kill the Buddha if by chance they met him."

""The action of non-action," is the central paradox of Taoism and as a concept is second in importance only to the Tao itself, which incorporates it; Lao Tzu describes the action/non-action of someone who has realized the Tao as wu-wei: Thus, the wise man deals with things through wu-wei and teaches through no-words. The ten thousand things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them."

"All the evil in the world, and all the unhappiness, comes from the I-concept."

"Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane – while the other half of the window is wide open?"

"Are you still thinking, looking, living, as from an imaginary phenomenal centre? As long as you do that you can never recognize your freedom."

"As long as there is a 'you' doing or not-doing, thinking or not-thinking, 'meditating' or 'not-meditating' you are no closer to home than the day you were born."

"Destroy 'the ego', hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where it gets off?"

"Briefly, it means to follow the flow of nature, without trying. Rather than constantly trying to fight situations and control them, which is unnatural and self-defeating, it is better to understand the true nature of the Tao, behaving completely naturally and in tune with the natural order of things."

"As long as we feel ourselves to be an object, or think we are such (and a 'self' is an object): that is bondage."

"Detachment is a state, it is not a totalization of achieved indifferences."

"Disciples and devotees…what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea!"

"Doctrines, scriptures, sutras, essays, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more… Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they are a hindrance."

"Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality... Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a 'simple' mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary."

"Everything cognized is just what is called 'mind', and what is called 'mind' is just the cognizing of everything."

"Fear, desire, affectivity are manifestations of the pseudo-entity which constitutes pseudo-bondage. It is the entity, rather than the manifestations thereof, which has to be eliminated."

"Do you realise that when you give a schilling to a beggar you are giving it to yourself? Do you realise that when you help a dog over a stile you yourself are being helped? Do you realize when you kick a man when he is down, you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick, you deserve it!"

"For that will be found to be the key which unlocks the doors of incomprehension."

"Having found no self that is not other, the seeker must find that there is no other that is not self, so that in the absence of both other and self, there may be known the perfect peace, of the presence of absolute absence."

"Go to the Awakened Masters - and leave all your baggage behind."

"How many of the ways (disciplines, exercises, practices) recommended as helpful, or even necessary, for the attainment of Satori are not in fact consequences of that state erroneously suggested as means?"

"I have only one object in writing books: to demonstrate that there could not be anyone to do it."

"If we clearly apperceive the difference between direct apprehension in Whole-mind and relative comprehension by reasoning in mind divided into subject-and-object, all the apparent mysteries will disappear. For that will be found to be the key which unlocks the doors of incomprehension."

"Humility, metaphysically, implies the absence of any entity to be either 'proud' or 'humble'."

"Isn't there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it?"

"In the West reintegration was sporadic, but in recent years it has become a widespread preoccupation. Unfortunately its technical dependence on oriental literature - sometimes translated by scholars whose knowledge of the language was greater than their understanding of the subject - has proved a barrier which rendered full comprehension laborious and exceedingly long. Therefore it appears to be essential that such teaching as may be transmissible shall be given in a modern idiom and in accordance with our own processes of thought. But this presentation can never be given by the discursive method to which we are used for the acquisition of conceptual knowledge, for the understanding required is not conceptual and therefore is not knowledge."

"It is less what one is that should matter, than what one is not."

"It is necessary to understand that I Am, In order that I may know that I Am Not, So that, at last, I may realize that, I Am Not, therefore I Am."

"In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt."

"It is not for us to search but to remain still, to achieve Immobility not Action."

"It is only the artificial ego that suffers. The man who has transcended his false ‘me’ no longer identifies with his suffering."

"It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind that we can know what indeed we are."

"It is: because it is not, therefore it is. I (apparently) am: because I am not, therefore I am. Because Reality is Non-Reality, therefore it is Reality. Since Being is Non-Being, therefore it is Being… It seems apparent that there are three stages on this path. The pilgrim learns to understand that he is, after having understood that as an I-concept he is not. Then, only then, he comes to know that nevertheless he is not, for nothing is, not even he. And finally he realizes that in consequence of that and in a sense inconceivable before, he is. Hence the formula: I am: I am not, therefore I am."

"Living should be perpetual and universal benediction."

"Never forget, what you’re looking for is what is looking."

"Of the many earnest, and how earnest, people we may observe reading, attending lectures, studying and practicing disciplines, devoting their energies to the attainment of a liberation which is by definition unattainable, how many are not striving via the ego-concept which is itself the only barrier between what they think they are and that which they wish to become but always have been and always will be?"

"It may be doubted, however, whether an entirely modern presentation of oriental or perennial metaphysics would be followed or accepted as trustworthy at present. Probably an intermediate stage is necessary, during which the method should be a presentation in modern idiom supported by the authority of the great Masters, with whose thoughts and technical terms most interested people are at least generally familiar. Moreover the question is bedevilled by the use, which has become a convention, of terms, mostly of Sanskrit origin, the colloquial sense of which, accepted by the early translators, is still employed. Often this sense is considerably different from the technical meaning given these terms in the Chinese texts, and it occasionally implies almost exactly the opposite. These misleading terms are still used, which is a matter of no importance to those few who understand to what they refer, and for whom any word whatsoever would suffice, but are a serious hindrance to the pilgrim struggling to understand."

"On the phenomenal plane we seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the noumenal plane we know the absence of both - which is Bliss."

"Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. "Living free" is being "as one is." Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a "doing": It is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are."

"Non-volitional living is glad living."

"Pack your bags, go to the station without them, catch the train, and leave your self behind."

"Past and Future are a duality of which Present is the reality. The now-moment alone is eternal and real."

"One must know that one is not in order to be able to understand that we are."

"People often try to control countries or companies with rules, regulations and policing. This feels like it should work since we can control our car or build structures with principles, checking etc."

"Please be so good as to believe that there is nothing whatever mysterious about this matter. If it were easy, should we not all be Buddhas? No doubt, but the apparent difficulty is due to our conditioning. The apparent mystery, on the other hand, is just obnubilation, an inability to perceive the obvious owing to a conditioned reflex which causes us persistently to look in the wrong direction!"

"Play your part in the comedy, but don’t identify yourself with your role!"

"Reality alone exists - and that we are. All the rest is only a dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the 'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate and to live?"