"This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty.
Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent! Die and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence."
#Rumi
Here, I always urge people simply to live in the unborn Buddha-mind. I don't try to make anyone do anything else.
We haven't any special rules. But since everyone got together and decided that they wanted to spend six hours each day (for a period of twelve sticks of incense) doing zazen, I let them do as they wish. That amount of time has been set aside for zazen. But the unborn Buddha-mind has no connection with those sticks of incense. It's just being at home in the Buddha-mind, not straying into illusion, and not seeking enlightenment beyond that. Just sit in the Buddha-mind, stand in the Buddha-mind, sleep in the Buddha-mind, awake in the Buddha-mind, do everything in the Buddha-mind-then you'll be functioning as a living Buddha in all that you do in your daily life. There's nothing further.
#BankeiYotaku
"Something mysteriously formed, born before heaven and earth.
In the silence and the void,
standing alone and unchanging, ever present and in motion."
#LaoTzu
"The experience of Being is only love, which consists of seeing only love, hearing only love,
feel only love, taste only love, smell nothing but love that's bliss. "
#SriRamanaMaharshi
Q: In turning the mind inwards, are we not still employing the mind?
A: Of course we are employing the mind. It is well known and admitted that only with the help of the mind can the mind be killed.
But instead of setting about saying there is a mind, and I want to kill it, you begin to seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself the Self.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
Disciple: Is it not funny that the "|" should be searching for the "|"? Does not the enquiry,
"Who am I?" turn out in the end [to bel an empty formula? Or, am I to put the question to myself endlessly, repeating it like [al mantra?
Bhagavan: Self-enquiry is certainly not an empty formula; it is more than repetition of any mantra. If the enquiry, "Who am I?" were a mere mental questioning, it would not be of much value. The very purpose of Self-enquiry is to focus the entire mind at its Source. It is not, therefore, a case of one "I" searching for another "I."
...
Where the "I" merges, another entity emerges as "'" - "I" ( or "| am I") of its own accord. That is the perfect Self.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
"There is no fortune greater than peace; there is no force greater than peace; there is no excellent tapas greater than peace; there is no immortal life greater than [living in] peace."
...What is here called peace is the state of stillness of mind. This can be achieved only by unceasing enquiry.
#SriRamanaMaharshi
When the meditator forgets himself totally in meditation, it is 'vishranti' which means complete relaxation ending in total forgetfulness. This is the blissful state, where there is no need for words, concepts or even the sense of 'I am. The state does not know 'it is' and is beyond happiness and suffering and altogether beyond words; it is called the
'Parabrahman' - a non-experiential state....
Before the emanation of any words, '!' already exist; later I say mentally 'I am. The word-free and thought-free state is the
'atman'.
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
"My intention is to wake you up. My heart wants you awake. I see you suffer in your dream and I know that you must wake up to end your woes.
When you see your dream as dream, then you wake up...you need not bring your dream to a definite conclusion, or make it noble, or happy, or beautiful... all you need is to realize that you are dreaming.
Stop imagining, stop believing. See the contradictions, the inconsistencies...in the dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.
When you are love itself, you are beyond time...In loving one you love all, in loving all, you love each. One and all are not exclusive."
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
I do not even say,
"Be Yourself"!
Since You do not Know Yourself!
Just Be!
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet.
If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it.
you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known.
And yet you recognize it at once as your own nature.
Once you have passed through this experience,
you will never be the same man again, the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision,
but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained,
until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end, and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!
#SriNisargadattaMaharaj
"Realization of God is not a mere matter of reading scriptures or performing rituals; it is a direct experience that transcends the intellect.
Just as one cannot describe
the taste of honey without tasting it, one cannot understand the nature of God without experiencing His presence in one's heart."
#SriRamakrishnaParamhansa