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It’s only when you’re sick of your sickness that you’ll get out of it. Most people go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist to get relief. I repeat: to get relief. Not to get out of it.
We’re crazy to the point, I’ve come to believe, that if everybody agrees on something, you can be sure it’s wrong!
Anytime you’re practicing renunciation, you’re deluded. How about that! You’re deluded. What are you renouncing? Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce.
Truth is never expressed in words. Truth is sighted suddenly, as a result of a certain attitude. So you could be disagreeing with me and still sight the truth. But there has to be an attitude of openness, of willingness to discover something new.
And, mind you, being open does not mean being gullible, it doesn’t mean swallowing whatever the speaker is saying. Oh no. You’ve got to challenge everything I’m saying. But challenge it from an attitude of openness, not from an attitude of stubbornness.
“A saint is one until he or she knows it.”
The first test of whether you’ve been brainwashed and have introjected convictions and beliefs occurs the moment they’re attacked.
The most difficult thing in the world is to listen, to see. We don’t want to see. Do you think a capitalist wants to see what is good in the communist system?
Do you think a communist wants to see what is good and healthy in the capitalist system? Do you think a rich man wants to look at poor people?
The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new.
The first reaction is one of fear. It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear.
With no interference or judgment on your part.
Because what you judge you cannot understand.
Isn’t that a paradox? And you’re willing to let this cloud come in, because the more you fight it, the more power you give it. You’re willing to observe it as it passes by. You can be happy in your anxiety. Isn’t that crazy? You can be happy in your depression. But you can’t have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you think happiness was excitement or thrills? That’s what causes the depression. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You’re thrilled, all right, but you’re just preparing the way for your next depression. You’re thrilled but you pick up the anxiety behind that: How can I make it last?
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You’ve got to make sure of your “being” before you swing into action.
(a) identify the negative feelings in you; (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality; (c) do not see them as an essential part of “I”; these things come and go; (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.
“When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger.”
there’s nothing so clear-sighted as true love, nothing. It’s the most clear-sighted thing in the world. Addiction is blind, attachments are blind. Clinging, craving, and desire are blind. But not true love.
that the final barrier to finding God is the word “God” itself and the concept of God. It gets in the way if you’re not careful.
Ideas actually fragment the vision, intuition, or experience of reality as a whole.
When we start off in life, we look at reality with wonder, but it isn’t the intelligent wonder of the mystics; it’s the formless wonder of the child. Then wonder dies and is replaced by boredom, as we develop language and words and concepts. Then hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll return to wonder again.
That explains the conflict I sometimes have between the role of spiritual director and that of therapist. A therapist says, “Let’s ease the suffering.” The spiritual director says, “Let her suffer, she’ll get sick of this way of relating to people and she’ll finally decide to break out of this prison of emotional dependence on others.” Shall I offer a palliative or remove a cancer? It’s not easy to decide.
It’s not the cold outside that matters, but the thermometer. It’s not reality that matters, but what you’re saying to yourself about it.
awakening is the death of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
