Grist for the Mill Quotes

“In India when we meet and part we often say, “Namasté,” which means: 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. Namasté”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“The optimum strategy is to act as if we have free choice and to choose always that which we feel is most in harmony with the way of things.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Ram asks Hanuman, “Who are you, Hanuman?” Hanuman answers, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“To live another's dharma, to try to be a Buddha or to be a Christ because Christ did it, doesn't get us there; it just makes us mimickers”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“Most of us are so caught in righteousness, we’re afraid of truth.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“The abstract point of this is that we don’t do anything to anybody else, anyway. Actually, people do things to themselves, and we are merely the environment in which they do it when they are ready.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“My commitment is to truth, not consistency.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“We end up going through hell in meditation to quiet our mind, not because somebody says, “You ought to quiet your mind,” but because our agitated mind is driving us up the wall, and it’s keeping us from getting on with it.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“We recognize now that we are bringing our external world genuinely and honestly into harmony with our inner perceptions, and we don't need to try so hard to create an external space to prove anything.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“If we follow our heart, there is nothing to fear. As long as our actions are based on our pure seeking for God, we are safe. And any time we are unsure or frightened about our situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra—“The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me”—which we can repeat to ourselves. It will protect us. Grace will surround us like a gentle force field. Through an open heart, one hears the universe.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“My Guru, Maharaj-ji, once told me, “Enjoy everything!” These days I try to simply love everything that comes my way, whether animate or inanimate, pleasant or painful. I hope you too can learn to absorb life’s ecstasies and distresses into your spiritual practice so they are just more grist for the mill.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Many people say to me, "Should I be a vegetarian or shouldn't I?" "Should I have sex or shouldn't I?" "Should I meditate forty minutes or shouldn't I?" People that meditate exactly the right number of minutes, eat exactly the right food, do all the things perfectly, can also be caught in the chain of gold, in the chain of righteousness and ritual. This is not liberation. But eventually one does perform the spiritual practices, not out of obligation, not out of guilt, but because we've got to do it. Because it's demanded of us by us. We end up going through hell in meditation to quiet our minds, not because someone says, "You ought to quiet your mind," but because our agitated minds are driving us up the wall, and it's keeping us from getting on with it. We'll learn how to pray, and read holy books, and practice devotional acts and chants, opening our hearts and asking Christ to fill us with love, not because we're good, but because with a closed heart we know we cannot come into the flow of the universe.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“The reason we form a conscious marriage on the physical plane with a partner is in order to do the work of coming to God together. That is the only reason for marriage when one is conscious. The only reason. If we marry for economics, if we marry for passion, if we marry for romantic love, if we marry for convenience, if we marry for sexual gratification, it will pass and there is suffering. The only marriage contract that works is what the original contract was -- we enter into this contract in order to come to God, together. That's what conscious marriage is about. In fact, that is what everything we're doing is about.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“You have all the time in the world, but don’t waste a moment.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“At the moment of death, if we let go lightly, we go out into the light, toward the One, toward God. The only thing that died, after all, was another set of thoughts of who we were this time around.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“A less pure teaching of a lineage traps us in the lineage, makes us a Buddhist or a Christian or a Hindu, not a free being, because when the people who lead do not have the full connection, they cling to the vehicle rather than to the truth toward which the vehicle is directed, and vehicles (institutions) corrode unless they are constantly fed by the living spirit. And the living spirit comes only through beings who are it. We can become organizational groupies as part of our path, but if we know it’s not enough, we must have the honesty to let it go.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“The pure Buddha, the mind that is clear of attachment, exists anywhere in perfect harmony with all the forces around it.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“In the icy peaks of the Himalayas, we see the perfection of it all in the evolutionary journey of beings. And at the same moment, the caring part of us is like the bleeding heart of Jesus, and we look down and see the blood on the snow. We keep both of those in mind at every moment so we can help beings who are suffering in the way they need to be helped. If we are really going to help them get out of the illusion, we ourselves must not get lost in the illusion.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Sooner or later the realization comes that nothing we can think of is going to do it.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“It is like that moment depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where the hands of God and man are about to touch. It's just at the moment when the despair is greatest, when we reach up, that the grace descends, and we experience the knowledge or the insight or the remembrance that it all isn't in fact the way we thought it was. If it happens too violently, we decide you've gone insane. And there are people who are all too willing to reassure us that we have, and there are places for that. In hunting tribes, mystics are treated as insane--they're an inconvenience because the tribe has to be kept mobile and old people and crazy people have to be put away somewhere. But if we're in a certain position at the moment of seeing through, if the view has been gentle or if we're with somebody else that knows, or if we had intellectually known but didn't believe, all of which is a karmic matter, if we had some kind of structure or support system, we says, "Even though everybody else thinks I'm mad, I'm not.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: The Mellow Drama, Dying: An Opportunity for Awakening, Freeing the Mind, Karmuppance, God & Beyond

“What you feel is most important may not be seen as most important to someone else. This is a very complex society we are a part of. Stay in the world, do your part, raise your children, earn your living, and assume your responsibility at every level.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Strategies in the book involve ways to use the mind to go beyond the mind, ways to understand states of consciousness that are beyond thought, and ways to identify ourselves other than through our mind, through our intuition, and so forth.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“Thank you.” He’s not putting them on or up-leveling them. He’s saying, “There’s a teaching here, and I’m getting it; thank you.” What’s bizarre is that we get to the point where somebody lays a heavy trip on us and we get caught, and then we see through our caughtness and we say, “Thank you.” We may not say it aloud because it’s too cute. But we feel, Thank you. People come up and are violent or angry or write nasty letters or whatever they do to express their frustration or anger or competition, and all I can say is thanks.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“I am the thought I.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“The freaky thing about death is the anticipatory fear of it.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“A lineage that is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn’t designed to make us followers of the lineage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

“And it all just is, but without form. Because in order to know form, we have to be separate from it.”
― Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness