Absolute

[The Absolute is]

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle

on which all speculation is impossible,

since it transcends the power of human conception...

[It] is the rootless root of 'all that was, is, or ever shall be'.

-Helena Blavatsky

That which is not thought about by the mind

but which makes the mind think - know that as the Absolute.

-Kenopanishad

What you call the absolute is not the absolute,
for it is what you have defined, and so it is relative.
-Paul Ferrini

Wind, spirit, breath are all symbols of emanation,
to which the forth-pouring from the Absolute is comparable.
-G. A. Gaskell

The Absolute is the Great Affirmative.

-Ruth Lambek

Akashic

The universe itself has a memory.

It records and remembers everything that ever happened

and is equipped with a dimension of consciousness

that stores these memories,

a dimension that is sometimes called the Akashic Records.

Akasha is a Sanskrit world meaning

"primarily substance, that out of which all things are formed."

It is the crystallization of spirit.

It is so sensitive that the slightest vibration anywhere in the universe

(any thought of action) registers an indelible impression upon it.

In modern times is the Book of Life.

-Shirley Maclaine

If we are able to attune our consciousness

to the level called by the Hindus the Akasha

we shall touch upon the origin of all things, all actions,

a place where reality remains eternally unchanged

in the perennity of an archetypal vibratory structure.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

All

Each being contains in itself the whole intelligible world. 

Therefore, 

All is everywhere. 

Each is All and All is each. 

-Plotinus

Alone

I come alone,

I die alone;

In between times

I am alone day and night.

-Sengai

Who not with others bides

And always lives alone,

If he’s not God himself,

Must into God have grown.

-Angelus Silesius

Angels

What is the wisdom of a book

compared with the wisdom of an angel?
-Friedrich Holderlin

Angels are the powers hidden 

in the faculties and organs of man.
-Idries Shah

The angel personifies something new
arising from the deep unconscious.
-Carl Jung

Your mind is designed
to be your guardian angel.
-Rebecca Clark

The archangel of your being is your own soul.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The picture of the angels that we read of in the scriptures

as sitting upon clouds and playing harps
is by an expression of a mystical secret.
Playing the harp is vibrating harmoniously;
the angels have no actual harps.
They themselves are the harps.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The angels seek a means of expressing their glorification - light and vibration...
By our acts of glorification we commune and hence communicate
with them at their level.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Animals

A train of rings

of an earthworm,

which one is true?

-A Zen Forest

A sacred tortoise

clumps over the land:

How can it erase 

a trail in the dirt?

-A Zen Forest

A famous swift horse

can't catch a mouse

So skillfully

as a lame kitten.

-A Zen Forest

Under the fierce tiger's jaw -

a golden bell!

In the blue dragon's cave -

a bright pearl.

-A Zen Garden

One roar

of a lion

Cracks the brains

of a hundred beasts.

-A Zen Forest

Attachment

The world is all attachment.

Yet you get worried because you are attached.

-Neem Karoli Baba

A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something 

is your clue that there's work to be done.

-Ram Dass

It is easy to tie a knot of attachment,

but it is difficult when you wish to unravel it.

-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Attachment to spiritual things is...

is just as much an attachment

as inordinate love of anything else.

-Thomas Merton

Abandon the attachment that fetters you.
-Saraha

The secret of happiness
is not to become attached to anything.
Enjoy the smell of the flower, but see God in it.
-Yogananda

In order to arrive at spiritual attainment

two gulfs must be crossed:

the sea of attachment and the ocean of detachment.

-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Awakening

Man lives on earth not once, but three times: 

the first stage of his life is his continual sleep; 

the second, sleeping and waking by turns; 

the third, waking forever.

-Gustav Fechner 

Truth require sudden awakening,

but the phenomenal level calls for gradual cultivation.

-Saying

Awake Awhile
It does not have to be Forever,
Right Now.
One Step upon the Sky's soft skirt
Would be enough.
-Hafiz

As I awaken you,
I awaken me.
-Joe Vitale

I am awake; I am in the world -
I expect
no further assurance.
-Louise Gluck

The essence of awakening to true reality

is to eat all day and not to swallow a grain or rice,

to walk all day and not tread an inch of ground,

to have no distinction at all between subject and object,

and to be inseparable from all things all day long.

-Zen Master Pan Yun (paraphrased)

Awareness

You are the unchangeable awareness

in which all activity takes place.
-H. L. Poona

You are pure awareness.
Awareness is naturally vigilant.
It is vigilant to itself,
and it is always, in truth, aware of itself.
-Merle Antoinette Roberson (Toni), "Gangaji"

An enlightened awareness is within each one of us, right at this moment.

This enlightened awareness is truly unborn and marvellously illuminating;

and everything is perfectly managed by it.

-Bankei

I dare to say

that an awareness without a spiritual foundation

is like a stool with only two legs.

-W. Brugh Joy

Why chase after thoughts, which are superficial ripples of present awareness?
Rather look directly into the naked, empty nature of thoughts;
then there is no duality, no observer, and nothing observed.
Simply rest in this transparent, nondual present awareness.
Make yourself at home in the natural state of pure presence,
just being, not doing anything in particular.
-Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche

Pure awareness embodies space.
-William Douglas Horden

Whereas the physical universe is measured in time and distance,
the mystical universe is measured in terms of levels of awareness.
These levels should not be viewed as separate boundaries,
for awareness is a continuum.
-David A. Cooper

Awareness may be termed the Heart of all Beings.
-Yoga Vasishtha

The Light of the Divine Awareness 

has risen in my heart

like the sun over the horizon

and it will never set

-Al Hallaj

Awareness is Divine Light shining.

-Sivananda Radha

Beauty

Beauty is as much of divinity 

as can be expressed through any one form.

-Alice Bailey,  (The Tibetan Djwhal Khul)

Being

Every religion teaches us

to love the one Being who gives life.

This Being who fills the universe

can be found everywhere:

in the earth,

in plants,

in water,

in air,

in fire,

in our own bodies,

in the sun and the stars,

everywhere.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Being is not born.

-Ramana Maharshi

Out of the depths of Non-Being

arose the Being

which is the Logos.

-N. Sri Ram

Motion, space and time
constitute an old metaphysical trinity,
which is as fundamental as can ever be conceived.
"Being" is the synthesis of all three.
-Dane Rudhyar

Being is the unity of time and eternity,
of evolution and transcendence.
It is the unity of nature and spirit,
and of the historical and the temporal.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

Being, while transcending both nature and the self,
unifies them in its creative essence.
Being manifests itself as nature on the outside
and as the self on the inside.
It is not to be equated with either exclusively.
Nature and self are the objective and subjective poles of the Supreme Being.
They are inseparably interrelated manifestations of the Supreme.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

No one can stand outside of the only Being,
and therefore each and everyone is in the only Being.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The real being is not the intellect,
nor the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind,
but the divinity within.
-Aurobindo Ghose

To become complete in being,
in consciousness of being, in force of being, in delight of being
and to live in this integrated completeness is the divine being.
-Aurobindo Ghose

The real being,

with no status,

is always going in and out

through the doors of your face.

-Lin-Chi

Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.

-Nisargadatta

To inhere in one's own Being,
where the 'I', or ego, is dead,
is the perfect State.
-Ramana Maharshi

Beyond

Gone. Gone. Gone beyond. Gone beyond beyond.
Hail the enlightening voyager.
-Sanskrit Mantram

Birds

You are your own nest,

why do you search for a nest?
-Nasir Ali

The conditions of the solitary bird are five:
the first, that it flies to the highest point;
the second, that it does not suffer from company,
not even of its own kind;
the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;
the fourth, that it does not have a definite color;
and fifth, that it sings very softly.
-San Juan de la Cruz

Bliss

In all the Tibetan traditions great emphasis is giving to warning meditators
not to become attached to 3 basic states:
bliss, thought-lessness, and super-clarity.
Any grasping or clinging to pleasant experiences is eschewed.
We tend to think that if we can have a more stable state of bliss,
we have won the game.
But any state is temporary, because of that we begin suffering again
as we can't ever stabilize or grasp permanent bliss
or the 'wow' of some awakening experience.
Awareness has no form of its own or super special state.
It is only the 'I' thought that gets caught up in those sort of bliss chasing stories.
And all those bliss chasing stories simply and harmlessly arise in Awareness
along with all experiences.
-Jackson Peterson

Bliss arises when the inner fire blazes throughout the body...

when the male and female essences unite in the heart...

the whole body is suffused with undefiled rapture.

-Karen Armstrong

Wherever you find satisfaction,
the very essence of bliss will be revealed to you
if you remain in this place without mental wavering.
-Vijnanabhairava Tantra

For the one who has no inner angry thoughts,

who has gone past being a someone, a this or a that,

that one is free from fear and is blissful.

Even the gods cannot win such serenity.

-Buddha

Seated on the same ground,
wearing the same garment of light,
they dwell together in eternal bliss.
-Jnaneshwar

Bodies

The centre of the soul's being, the True Self, 

is above the lower nature, and enthroned in the causal-body (throne)
where It is within the atmic-buddhic truth (the Garden).
The Self is begotten in Buddhi which ensouls the causal body (the Divine City).
-G. A. Gaskell

The "Body"must be taken to mean the astral body of desire;
the "Mind" the mental-body;
and the "Heart" the causal-body,
"and the shrine of the Spirit of the man."
The "Perfect Man" is the Archetypal Man.
-G.A. Gaskell

The whole of our life in the present incarnation
is contained in the etheric body.
-Rudolf Steiner

The goal of evolution is to reach the point
at which each of the higher bodies incarnates
in the corresponding lower body.
Only then will human beings receive full illumination,
because divine nature will then dwell within them.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

The Lankavatra Sutra
points out that by concentrating
the thoughts or energies of the mental body
one can fly and be born in heaven.

Concentrating the desires or energies of the astral body,
it seems, causes one to fall.
-David Tansley

When the mind is saturated
with Bliss, Wisdom and Love of the Higher Consciousness states,
it automatically transforms your astral body
into a positive, radiant and happy emotional state.
-Imre Vallyon

Body

The body is God,

the body is the temple,
the body is the worshiper,
the body is the sacred shrine.
The body is the incense,
the lamp, the sacred offerings;
it is the body I worship
with broken petals.
-Pipa

May my body be a prayerstick for the world.
-Joan Halifax

In this body, the mount Meru - i.e. the vertebral column
is surrounded by seven islands;
there are rives, seas, mountains, fields; and lords of the fields too.
There are in it seers and sages; all the stars and planets as well.
There are sacred pilgrimages, shrines; and presiding deities of the shrines.
The sun and moon, agents of creation and destruction, also move in it.
Ether, air, fire, water and earth are also there.
All the beings that exist in the three worlds are also to be found in the body;
surrounding the Meru they are engaged in their respective functions.
-Siva Samhita

The sun came out of his eyes, the moon from his mind,
Indra and Agni (fire) from his mouth,
wind from his breath, air from his navel,
sky from this head, earth from his feet.
-Rig Veda

There's a moon in my body, but I can't see it!
a moon and a sun.
-Kabir

Within the body abide all the continents,
world and the nether regions.
-Jagat Singh

The human body is the truest shrine,
Of gems of knowledge the greatest mine.
-Amar Das

The human body is the only true temple,
the only true mosque, the only true church,
where the Lord can be found.
-Charan Singh

Without a human form,
How can God speak to us?
He speaks through the screen
Of the body.
-Kabir

There is no member of my body
which is not the member of some god.
-Book of the Dead

Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
-Tulsi Sahib

What you cannot find in your body
you will never find anywhere else.
-Eastern Saying

Very beautiful is that body-bride.
-Amar Das

The physical body is the body as examined by others;
the subtle body is the way you feel yourself.
-Alan Watts

I am not one of those who neglect the body
in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul,
since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

The body consciousness is a patient servant
and can be in its large reserve of possibilities
a potent instrument in the individual life.
-Aurobindo Ghose

This human body
With which the Lord has bless you
Is a symbol of divine grace;
use it for true worship of the Lord
So that your karmas will be burned
And your soul will be make pure.
-Dayal Singh

This body is not a home but an inn, 

and that only briefly. 

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

In the retreat hut that is my own body
I sweep away the dirt.
-Shabkar

Your Abode is where the physical body exists not -
why are you then tied down to this body?
-Dayal Singh

Nothing is revealed while the person
is still under the spell of the body.
-Zohar

Cease being a prisoner of your body.

-Lahiri Charan Mahasaya

The original sin is 'I am this body.'
That is the cause of all problems.
So when you have a vehicle,
the vehicle is to take you to the destination,
but not to identify with it.
-Vishnudevananda

Contemplate the constituents of the body -

Muscles and blood and marrow and bones -

As radiantly dancing emptiness.

Tender One,

Practice this and be born

Into the steady light of being.

-Lorin Roche

Forget all of your ideas about the body -

It's this way or it's that way.

Just be with any area of it,

This present body

As permeated with limitless space,

Drenched in freedom.

-Lorin Roche

At death the net of the body is at last torn apart
Taking down the boundaries of one's retreat.
-Shabkar

Your body stands on its own
when it's up with the clouds.
-Hsu Yun

Books

Knowledge in books remains in books.

-Sanskrit Proverb

I remember taking this book with me
to read among the flowers
and realize that another year has passed.
-Yang Wan-li

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, and snow and moon.
-Ikkyu Sojun

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books.
Truth is lived, not taught.
-Hermann Hesse

Don't read books...
It's so much better
to close your eyes, sit in your study
lower the curtains, sweep the floor,
burn incense,
take a walk when you feel energetic,
and when you're tired go to sleep.
-Yang Wan-li

Merely reading or reciting holy scriptures,
All pundits have come to grief;
Without a true Master
And without the Surat Shabd practice,
No one has ever crossed
The dread ocean of this world.
-Dayal Singh

If one read the nine, the eighteen,
The four and then the six,
He would lose the essence of Truth;
Unless the soul merges with the Shabd,
He is a mere parrot,
However much he may be learning.
-Tulsi

Who can know the Real?
Who can know his or her own true Self?
Only those who have experienced it.
Information, intellectual movements of the mind
that circle around the inner heart cave,
have no conception of what they are missing.
Will the thought of milk ever quench one's thirst?
-John A. Grimes

Spiritual teachings destroy ignorance,
and therefore remove darkness,
but they cannot throw light on the inner Self,
for the Self is Light.
-Brahmananda

If one reads for years, month upon month;
If one reads for a lifetime, breath upon breath;
Nanak, only one thing is of value -
All else is vain indulgence, urged on by ego.
-Nanak

Reading volume after volume,
Men tire themselves to death,
But not one becomes a real scholar;
Who learns the small word 'love'
It truly learned.
-Kabir

The soul in its ecstatic estate grasps in an instant
more truth than can be arrived at by many months, or even years,
of painstaking thought and study.
-St. Teresa of Avila

When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning.
-Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.
-Li-Young Lee

You had better burn your books in mind and heart,
but not the books in black and white.
-Zen Master

Under the trees, among the rocks, a thatched hut;

verse and sacred commentaries lives there together.

I'll burn the books I carry in my bag,

but how can I forget the verses written in my gut?

-Ikkyu

Once one knows the truth of the Supreme,
study of the scriptures becomes unnecessary
because there is nothing more to be gained.
-Ramana Maharshi

The book in which all mysteries lie is man himself;
for he himself is the book of the being of all beings,
seeing that he is the similitude of God.
-Jacob Boehme

Breath

Man has two fold breathing,

one of the body and the other of the spirit;

these two respirations [can] also be conjoined.

-Emmanuel Swedenborg

Breath flows

Into this body

As a nectar of the gods.

-Lorin Roche

The breath that does not repeat the name of God

is a wasted breath.

-Kabir

Buddha / Buddha Nature

Clinging to both the worldly and saintly states

is the presence of passion with the absence of the Buddha-nature.

-Pai Chang

A monk asked Chan master Pai-chang:

"Who is the Buddha?"

"Who are you?" answered Pai-chang.

-Zen Humor

If you can get the point directly, 

you wear Buddha's clothing,

eat Buddha's food,

speak Buddha's language,

do what Buddha does;

that is, you are Buddha.

-Wumen

A Buddha is just someone with no concerns.

-Deshan

Center

The universality of the mandala is in its one constant, the principle of center.
The center is the beginning of the mandala as it is the beginning of all forms and of all processes, including the extensions of form into time . . .
The center is symbolic of the eternal potential.
From the same inexhaustible source all seeds grow and develop,
all cells realize their functions — there is a structural law,
a cosmic principle by which perceptible forms are sustained
and which governs the processes of transformation in all things.
This can be realized only because the center principle manifests itself through man
in the same ways as it does through a flower or a star;
in it we may discover our cosmic commonality — our community . . .
At the core, each man is the center of his own compass and experiences,
his own cardinal points, North, South, East and West.
-Jose Arguelles

Find out your Centre.
Dwell always in this Centre.
This Centre is Atma or your inner most Self.
-Sivananda

Achieving a center,
being grounded in oneself,
is about the highest state a human being can achieve.
-Fritz Perls

Unless you find paradise at your own center,
there is not the smallest chance
That you may enter.
-Angelus Silesius

The center is everywhere.

Bent is the path of eternity.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Placed at the centre of the 'cosmic wheel',
the perfect sage moves it invisibly,
by his mere presence,
without sharing in its movement,
and without having to concern himself
with exercising any action whatever.
-Rene Guenon

Permanently established at the centre of all things,
he "is unto himself his own law",
because his will is one with the universal Will
(the "Will of Heaven"of the Far-Eastern tradition,
which effectively manifests itself at the very point where that being resides);
he has obtained the "Great Peace",
which is none other than the "Divine Presence"
(Es-Sakinah, the immanence of the Divinity
at that point which is the "Centre of the World");
being identified, by his own unification, with the principal unity itself,
he sees unity in all things and all things in unity,
in the absolute simultaneity of the Eternal Present.
-Rene Guenon

Christ

The life of Christ, understood psychologically,

represents the vicissitudes of the Self as it undergoes incarnation in an individual ego.

-Edward F. Edinger

The Christ is a present and numinous factor in the psyche of humankind;

the Christ-Image is a symbol of the the whole and transpersonal Self.

The Christ archetype is a "mediator" between Spirit and Matter,

representative of the One Soul of Humanity.

-Jacquelyn Small 

Christ dances on the cross -

he doesn't hang there - times have changed.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

To be Christed is to know only Love.
-Yael and Doug Powell

If they did not show the Christ to you,
you did not show the Christ to them.
-A Course in Miracles

You have come to be married as two,
but now you are three because Christ is making a third,
and now you are three with Christ,
through Christ you can become one.

-from a Marriage Ceremony 

Clarity

Become like a crystal, crystal clear,
totally receptive to the passage of light,
In the crystal the molecules have aligned themselves
in such a manner as to enable light waves to pass.
Matter has adapted itself to becoming transparent to light.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Just do not give birth to a single thought:

let go and become crystal clear.

-Yuanwu

Without leaving where you are,

there is constant clarity.

-Yongjia

Color

Colour is the soul of nature and of the whole cosmos,

and we participate in this soul 

when we enter into the experience of colours.

-Rudolf Steiner

The bodies of the Higher Intelligences are shapes of flames

changing with the strength and speed of their thoughts.

The Spirit-Presences speak in this colour-language.

The colours indicate different thoughts.

The succession of colour-effects implies a succession of thoughts;

in the same way as a sequence of sentences implies a sequence of ideas.

-Syed Mehdi Imam

He is colorless

and we must adopt His hue.

-Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi 

Conditioning

Refuse to be conditioned:
our desire to free ourselves from all conditioning
will have the immediate effect
of cooling down our emotional conditioning,
passing from joy to peace.
Buddhist monks speak of enshrouding oneself with a zone of silence
and placing a sentinel at the doors of perception.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Creator, Creation

He who creates the worlds without ceasing is threefold.
He is Brahma the Father;
he is Maya, the Mother;
he is Vishnu, the Son;
Essence, Substance and Life,
each included the others,
and all three are one in the Ineffable.
-Upanishads

Man is a wonderful creation.
He carries not only his past history with him,
but the whole creation - visible and invisible -
and the Creator himself.
-Sawan Singh

The natural depth of man is the whole of creation.
Look at the scope of yourself.
-Wilson van Dusen

It is you, cerebral man,
who distinguishes what creates from what is created.
-R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz

There is no man alone,
because every man is a microcosm,
and carries the whole world about him.
-Thomas Browne

But now I hold the powers of creation
in the palm of my hand -
-Ravidas

Cross

The medieval mystics say 

that the true image and the true real

met once and for all on the cross: once and for all:

and yet they still meet daily.

-Madeleine L'Engle

We would rather be ruined than changed,

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

-W. H. Auden

The Cross I chose to be my treasure of high value,

My body's plow it is and also my soul's anchor.

-Angelus Silesius

The cross stands there with roses woven thickly.

Who was it who with roses adorned the cross?

The coronal wreath on all sides unfurls richly,

Softening the stark wood's loss.

-Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe

Crystallization

You are on earth by the necessity immanent in the cause,
and you must therefore realize the cosmic Ego, the absolute I,
by the crystallization in yourself of absolute consciousness.
-R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz 

Regeneration of consciousness is made possible only through
the decrystallization and redistribution of internal energies.
-Elman Bacher

The universalist is decrystallized to such a degree
that whatever he has of love-service potential
is radiated to all those who need it.
-Elman Bacher

Death

To give oneself up to impure loves

is to plight one’s troth to death.
-Eliphas Levi

Perversity, by modifying the organism whose equilibrium it destroys,
creates at the same time a fatality of needs
which urges it to its own destruction, to its death.
-Eliphas Levi

There is no death other than forgetfulness.

The forgetfulness of our Real Nature is living death.

-Shankara

Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies -
this is good fortune.
Know your deepest being
and live securely in a world of insecurity.
-Zen Saying

While you are living, know you are dying.

Awareness of mortality focuses the mind.
-Zen Saying

You don't understand death,

you learn to acquiesce in death.

-Joseph Campbell

I don't believe in death; if every hour I die,

I then shall have each time discovered a better life.

-Angelus Silesius

No creature can attain a higher grade of nature

without ceasing to exist.

-Ananda Coomaraswamy

Be like a person who has died the great death:

after your breath is cut off,

then you come back to life.

Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space.

Only them do you reach the point 

where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.

-Yuanwu

When a person is spiritually ready,
he can give up physical life in whatever way he chooses.
In my tradition, there are five ways to go, which are called "untying."
There is water untying, fire untying, weapon or metal untying,
earth untying and wood untying.

-Hua-Ching Ni

Deities

In many cultures,
important transcendent qualities
are personified as transcendent beings.
-Jill Mellick

A deity is generally depicted
as representing one dominant aspect of the Divine,
and, being besides being the focal point of devotional expressions,
a deity's attributes are symbols
meant primarily to orient one's thoughts and feelings.
Images give tangible expression to universal truths,
abstract concepts of philosophy, and mystical realization.
they serve as links between the infinite and the finite,
the eternal and the transcendental, the formless and that with form.
-John A. Grimes

They even forget,
that all deities reside in the human breast.
-William Blake

Open your hearts,
tell the spirits of light
that they are welcome,
that you need them.
Ask them to come in and purify you;
ask them to give you their light.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Desire

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning.
Desire, the primal seed and germ of the Spirit.
-Rig Veda

A madman stood 

In the middle of town.

Thousands were going and coming

To and fro on all sides.

He shouted:

"Going in a hundred directions

How can you get anywhere?

You have a single heart

But many and many a heart's desire.

-Attar of Neishapur

Desires are too numerous to count,

since they rise up endlessly like waves in the ocean.

Even if the stars are numbered, desires are not.

The desires of even a single individual are countless -

and what about the totality of them?

Each desire is too vast to be satisfied, because it is insatiable;

too strong to be resisted; and too subtle to be eluded.

-Tripura Rahasya

And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire
Grow large as all the regions of thy soul,
Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being,
And of created purpose reach the ends.
-Lascelles Abercrombie

Look into the nature of desire,
and there is boundless light.
-Padmasambhava

I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted,
because of all the desires I have ever known
just one did I cling to for it was the essence of all desire:
to know beauty.
-Saint John of the Cross

The only desire that remains true for all times and places
is the desire for fulfillment.
All other desires are manifestations of that one desire:
the desire for completion, for self-realization.
-Harish Johari

There is really only one fundamental desire
the desire for spiritual perfection.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Desire for Reality
leads to the annihilation of all desire.
-Anandamayi Ma

Renounce desire a hundred times
or else not once will you embrace your Desire.
-'Araqi

If your desires are not in accord with your spirit,
sacrifice them, and you will come to the end of your journey.
-Attar

If you make love with the divine now,
in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
-Kabir

Detachment

In order to arrive at spiritual attainment,

two gulfs must be crossed:
the sea of attachment and the ocean of detachment.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The ability to dissociate from the negativity

around you and inside you

is know as the power of detachment.

-Dadi Janki

We must be able to observe

the meanness, the mediocrity, and the selfishness of other people

without becoming personally or emotionally involved.

-Charles Bowness

Detachment means that one stands back from them
[the imperfection and weakness of the nature],
does not identify with them
or get upset because they are there,
but rather looks on them as something foreign
to one's true consciousness and true self, rejects them.
-Aurobindo Ghose

[Detached Observation is]

to observe with unconditional love and discernment

the activities of the phenomenal world

as if you were not part of that world.

This is assuming the role of the beholder.

You witness the Law of Cause and Effect in operation 

as you see individuals and groups

sow and reap from the many levels of consciousness -

from the grossest to the finest.

You observe all without judgement, no labeling anything good or bad.

-John Randolph Price

Detachment means not to be caught by the glamor

of the physical, emotional or mental possessions you may have.

As a person detaches, he becomes more involved in life

in such a way that he is not involved in personal interests

but in doing something good for the whole world.

-Torkom Saraydarian

The first step in detachment

is to be detached from the body

with which you feel so much identified.

-Sivananda

Being detached does not mean running away from life

or being insensitive.

-Subramuniya

Detachment is a state,

it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.

-Wei Wu Wei

Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not;

indifference is simply no interest -

detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest,

but still with the capacity for non-clinging.

-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

In the real practice of detachment,

one feels greater love, kindliness, compassion, and unity -

never a lack of interest or indifference.

-Ashokananda

Detachment means letting go

and non-attachment means simply letting be.

-Stephen Levine

Detachment is being close

to what you most want to be free from

and using it to make you grow.

-Dadi Janki

Detachment is a plant of slow growth.

-Sathya Sai Baba

Detachment is like flying high:

the higher you fly,

the wider a landscape you are able to view.

-Jyotirmayananda

The detached observer's view

is one window on the world.

-Kenneth L. Pike

Detachment is not that you should own nothing,

but that nothing should own you.

-Ali Ibn Abi Talib

A mind which really lays hold of a subject
is not easily detached from it.
-Ida Tarbell

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, 

if only for a moment.

-May Sarton

To be detached from something that is not present

seems easier than to be detached in the face of full temptation.

-Peter Marchand

Learn to hold loosely all that is not eternal.
-A. Maude Royden

Those who are firm in their discrimination

excel at detachment.

-Haribhadra

Life's tangle is cut with detachment;

Uncut, the thread is endless.

-Tiruvalluvar

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions;
reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
 -Simone Weil

One must pass thru the portal of detachment into new horizons

leaving something of the old self behind.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

To detach oneself from one thing

always implies an attachment to something else.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

 

Before you detach yourself

from something that displeases or limits you,

you must attach yourself to something new,

something better quality.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

The power of detachment

is the power of silence, of peace.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

This is what Zen means by being detached -
not being without emotion or feeling,
but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked,
and through whom the experiences of the world
pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.
-Alan Watts

Detachment from the mental flux
is followed by detachment from even the observing ego,
eventually resulting in the realization
of the pure self as absolute freedom.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

True detachment is nothing other than this:
the spirit stands as immovable in all the assaults
of joy or sorrow, honor, disgrace or shame,
as a mountain of lead stands immovable against a small wind.
This immovable detachment brings about in man
 the greatest similarity with God.
-Meister Eckhart

He who would be serene and pure,
needs but one thing,
detachment.
-Meister Eckhart

We cannot be detached, we are never detached.
Life is one and nothing can separate it.
Detachment is only an illusionary aspect of life.
There is no such thing as detachment in truth.
How can there be detachment when life is one!
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Remaining conscious of yourself as a spiritual being
while playing your part in the material world
requires great detachment.
-Dadi Janki

True detachment from the world becomes possible
when there is increasing attachment
to the Divine Self within one's heart.
-Jyotirmayananada

Attachment to God -
that is what is called detachment.
-Ashokananda

The last bond of attachment may be snapped,
but this does not mean, however,
that we go away from the world.
It just means we participate in the Being of the world,
in the evolutionary process of this world,
in a spirit of non-attachment. 
This is the highest health and harmony we can attain,
because we are in the world but not of the world.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

The highest form of detachment comes from knowledge,
knowledge of the oneness of reality,
that exists equally between subject and object.
-Mathaji Vanamali

This absolute detachment renders him master of all things
because having passed beyond all oppositions inherent in multiplicity,
he can no longer be affected by anything.
-Rene Guenon

Detach from whatever you find
inside or outside yourself
and only then will you attain liberation.

-Lin-Chi 

This state of immaculate aloofness
can be likened to that of the sun,
which is untouched by the activities of life,
or to that of the all-pervasive ether,
which is not affected by the interaction of the complex qualities
of the other four elements.
-Ramana Maharshi

Detachment is as the sun.
-Baha'u'llah

Devas

The name given to a being
that is the rudimentary consciousness of any structure is deva.
This is a good short word that means god of a form.
-Itzhak Bentov

Essentially the devas and nature spirits
are aspects of our own selves,
guiding us toward our true identity,
the divine reality within.
-The Findhorn Garden Book

Devotion

I recognize

Only one relationship: devotion

-Tulsidas

The firm desire that enters
Can neither be taken from my heart by beak or nail.
-Arnaut Daniel

Devotion is the head of meditation.

-Kagyu Saying

Standing or sitting, asleep or awake,
yea, with every breath, contemplate the Lord.
-Adi Granth

Forget Him not for a moment,
night or day, any hour, any instant.
-Adi Granth

The moment He is out of your mind
is the moment of ingratitude.
-Bahu

Never be remiss in remembering the Lord,
although it is sharper than the sword.
-Bahu

The true devotee does not stop reciting prayers
even when he is lying on a bed of thorns.
-Noor Mohammed

Devotion to the Lord,
I am unable to offer;
For the Five thieves,
That are after me,
Prevent my doing so.
-Dulan Das

There is only one virtue and only one sin
for a soul on the path:
virtue when he is conscious of God    
and sin when he is not.
-Abu Hashim Madani

O God, grant only this boon:
I may never forget Thee.
-Tukaram

Die

Die while living;

Such is the yoga at which one should labor.

-Nanak

If it isn't good, let it die.

If if doesn't die, make is good.

-Ajahn Chah

Die while you're alive

and be absolutely dead.

Then do whatever you want:

it's all good.

-Bunan

Die before death and resurrect now.

-Sufi Saying

Differences

There are no differences but differences of degree 

between different degrees of difference and no difference.
-William James

Once you transcend the external differences,

anything can be merged with anything.

-Liezi

To direct the mental current towards the basic unity of all things
and to divert it from the observation of differences is 'observance';
therein lies transcendent bliss.
-Tejo-bindu Upanishad

Direction

Day after day, day

dawns in the earth;

Day after day, day's

done in the west.

-A Zen Forest

The tree splits

the spring wind 

in two -

Southern branches stretch to warmth;

northern, to cold.

-A Zen Forest

Asking for the east,

to be told, "There's the west!"

-A Zen Forest

The vacant sky -

no front, no back;

The bird's paths -

no east, no west.

-A Zen Garden

On the foggy sea:

the compass pointing south.

On a night trip:

the North Star.

-A Zen Forest

Watch the North Star,

your face to the south.

-A Zen Forest

On the southern mountain,

drumming: dancing on the northern.

-A Zen Forest

Distinctions

On no account make a distinction
between the Absolute and the sentient world.
-Huang-Po

Distinctive knowledge is good only so long as union has not taken place.
But when the ultimate light has appeared,
there remain no distinctions.

-Unknown 

Divine

It is the spirit which, with the help of the soul,
turns the consciousness toward the Highest, the Divine,
and it is in the spirit that the consciousness
can begin to understand the Divine.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"

The Divine, within and without, can be worshipped at three levels:
the intellectual or wisdom based (absolute non-duality).
the emotional or devotional (qualified non-duality),
and the physical or external (duality).
First, one may communicate with the Divine
externally, in the form of an image, statue, murti.
The worshipper is one entity, and the worshipped is another,
completely separate.
Second, one may meditate on the Divine, internally, within one's heart,
as the inner ruler (antaryamin).
The worshipper and the worshipped are not exactly identical
but not exactly different either.
Finally, one may contemplate the Divine as oneself,
as omnipresent, all-pervasive.
Or to put it in other words, first one is in the Light.
The Light is one thing, there, and you are another, here,
and you are in the Light's presence.
Then, one can turn within and find that the Divine can be wherever one is.
The Light is within oneself.
Finally, one is the Light.
-John A. Grimes

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate.

Only certainty will do.

Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

-Simone Weil

Doing

Do not seek to find out "what to do."

Every "what to do" is only an abstraction.

You will never come to the truth of your own being

by riding on the back of an abstraction.

If you know "what to do," you can be sure it is the wrong thing.

-Bernard Phillips

There are only two things to be done -
the necessary and the impossible.
-Ibn 'Arabi

There is nothing else to do but remain in an undistracted state.
-Maitripa

Whatever is done is not forgotten,

Even in thousands of years:

When causes and conditions combine,

Results and consequences are naturally experienced.

-Huo-an

As long as you have no self-unity,
what difference does it make what you decide to do?
-Sanai

Dualities

The more you focus on sin,
the more you become a sinner.
The more you focus on God,
then you become one with That.
-Ramakrishna

Do not cling to good,
Do not reject evil!
Purity and defilement -
If you depend on neither,
You will grasp the empty nature of sin.
-Ma-Tsu

There is no right and no wrong.

But right is right and wrong is wrong.

-Seung Sahn

As soon as you get into yes and no,

You lose your body and forfeit your life.

-Wumen

The guardian of the best
with the face of the worst.
-Jean Carteret

The wise should not dwell
in the middle either.
-Nagarjuna

Complete like empty space,
lacking nothing, no excess.
-Third Patriarch of Zen

Effort

The wise men and the sages are idle and carefree;

they reap the harvest without ploughing.

God does their work for them.

People don't see God's work,

so they sweat and fret, hustle and beg,

from morning till night.

-Jalal al-Din Rumi

Elements

The soul is given life by the four-elements.

-Sultan Valad

He is not the four elements;

he is the one who can use the four elements.

-Rinzai

I could flood the world with my tears;

or, I could burn the world with my flame.

-Djalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

May the sun, moon, winds, waters, earth, etc. all be mine.
-Vedic Prayer

O human soul,

How like to the water,

O human destiny,

How like to the wind.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Stone that is Mercury, 

is cast upon the Earth, 

exalted on Mountains, 

resides in the Air, 

and is nourished in the Waters.
-Michael Maier

By the earth we fall down,

by the earth we stand up.

-Shunryu Suzuki

The four elements soon dissociate;

they cannot be long maintained.

-Won Hyo

The five elements have become one.
-Devara Dasimayya

When that happens the five elements in you
earth, water, fire, wind, and ether will dissolve, 

and you'll be free to merge in the Supreme.
-Mahendranath Battacharya

When the Yogi has full power over his body
composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether,
then he obtains a new body of spiritual fire
which is beyond illness, old age and death.
-Upanishad

They burn with fire - we burn with water;
they wash with water - we wash with fire.
-Jan Baptist Von Helmont

Emotion

Emotion causes a swirl in the astral body,
and if that body be in a strong state of agitation,
it isolates the consciousness,
and makes it impossible for mental vibrations to pass outwards.
-Annie Besant

Stop!

Dive deeper.

Witness the elemental motion of emotion.

     Fire burning, illuminating,

     Water gushing, cleansing,

     Air inspiring, soothing,

     Earth supporting, holding,

     Space expanding, embracing.

Go deeper still and rest in essence,

Awake to infinite spiritual energy

Surging into form.

-Lorin Roche

Emptiness

I cried, for happiness, for sadness,

but most of all, for emptiness.

-Daul Kim

The emptiness referred to in the teachings

is not a vacancy of a hollowness.

It is not an escape from ourselves;

it is the laying bare of ourselves.

-Judith Blackstone

People are afraid of the emptiness of space,
or the absence of company, the absence of shadow...
It is generally a fear a space,
a fear that we will not be able to anchor ourselves to any solid ground,
that we will lose out identity as a fixed and solid and definite thing.
-Chogyam Trungpa

Emptiness is the countermeasure against a dark cloud
Of contaminated knowledge and emotions.
He who wishes to achieve enlightenment soon
Should meditate on emptiness.
-Bodhicharyavatara

Look upon the body as unreal,
an image in a mirror,
the reflection of the moon in water.
Contemplate the mind as formless,
yet bright and pure.
Not a single thought arising,
empty, yet perceptive;
still, yet illuminating;
complete like the great emptiness,
containing all that is wonderful.
-Han Shan Te'-Ch'ing

The mind has neither color nor form.
Search for it: it is nowhere.
Emptiness!
-Shabkar

No matter how hard you try to find the root,
you'll only find emptiness.
-Master Geumo

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
-Heart Sutra

The emptiness of one thing
Represents the emptiness of all things.
-Chatuhstaka

Unborn emptiness has let go of the extremes of being and non-being.

Thus it is both the center itself and the central path.

Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves.

-Tsongkhapa

Harmonize all that which emerges before you
With its fundamental nature of emptiness.
-Sahara

Your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness,
if you would only allow it to penetrate you.
-Anonymous

There is no end to the fullness of emptiness.
-Chandra Mohan Jain "Osho"

In the volume of skylike emptiness,
Write with letters of pure awareness and wisdom.
Impart instructions for many diverse methods -
Proclaim the teachings in a stream that's unceasing!
-quoted by Miranda Shaw in
Passionate Enlightenment; Women in Tantric Buddhism

Energy

The principle is a simple one:
each higher energy has the power of organizing the lower ones...
Consciousness can organize sensitivity.
-J. G. Bennett

When we struggle against our energy,

we reject the source of wisdom.

-Trungpa Rinpoche

There are no bad energies,

only energies badly used.

-Elisabeth Haich

All life is energy.
If that energy is allowed to glow
without any contradiction, without any friction,
without any conflict,
then that energy is boundless, endless.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Spirit and energy should be clear as the night air;
In the soundless is the ultimate pleasure all along.
-Sun Bu'er

Synergy is the perfect movement of energy,
which seeks its own kind and gathers itself
within a particular pulsation within a most divine timing,
until that energy meets itself as critical mass.
It builds up to a particular pitch and then explodes,
creating a kind of fission from which something new entirely proceeds.
-Chris Griscom

Error

The gravest error is not to discern the essential.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Error is lack of love.
-A Course in Miracles

Evolution

Life will give you whatever experience
is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.
-Eckhart Tolle

The secrets of existence

are only accessible to an extent

corresponding to man's own degree of maturity.

-Rudolf Steiner

It is an occult law

that no man can rise superior to his individual failings
without lifting, be it ever so little,
the whole body of which he is an integral part.
-Helena P. Blavatsky

The more evolved you are,
the more of the universe is in your view.
-Yasuhiko Kimura

The goal of evolution is to reach the point
at which each of the higher bodies incarnates
in the corresponding lower body.
Only then will human beings receive full illumination,
because divine nature will then dwell within them.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanov

The archetypal assignment for all individualized beings
through the entire span of sequential incarnations
is the conscious re-attainment of perfect equilibrium.
-Elman Bacher

The beauty of the person is the final issue of evolution.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Eye

All this universe is in this eye of mind,

-Seppo

Your only fear should be 

that your own correct eye is not yet perfectly clear.

This will cause you to fall into duality,

and then you will lost touch with reality.

-Yuanwu

I am the eye with which the universe

Beholds itself, and knows itself divine

All harmony, of instrument or verse

All prophecy, all medicine is mine.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Face

Looking into an old well
I see my own face
then another behind it.
-W. S. Merwin

The original face has nowhere to hide -

When the world disintegrates, this does not decay.

-Wumen

Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.
-Farid ud-Din 'Attar

Fire

Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification

which lights the fire.

-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"

You want a fire?
 Take it easy. This passion
 is incandescent. Touch it.
 It will light your own.
-Ibn Arabi

Tend the fire that changes
the shape of metal.
-Lalla Ded

Kindle the fire's flame!

Fire is the chief of all.

He who the fire stole - 

Great deed - shall have the highest name.

He who has kindled it,

Into alloy rendered it,

Forged it and plied it,

Crown now his head.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Bridge of fire thrown between real and unreal
constant co-existence of being and non-being.
-Roger Asselineau

Cosmic Fire is Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.

-Imre Vallyon

Flame

For I am a torch, and the flame of me is God.
-Lascelles Ambercrombie

The eternal flame is devoid of fire,
And is met within thyself.
-Keshodas

There's a well inverted, in skies within,
A flame-eternal, still-doth burn therein.
-Paltu

There burneth a transcendent flame
No oil needs, no wick the same.
-Paltu

Come, dwell within the eyes;
Withdraw and become one at this point.
Here duality will depart
And you will behold the Flame.
-Dayal Singh

Vigilance is a sacred, quiet, peaceful vigil
at the flame of truth.
-Merle Antoinette Roberson (Toni), "Gangaji"

Where the Divine Melody plays,
Burns there the resplendent Flame,
The strains of bani (Word) emanate
From deep within the flame.
-Nanak

The unbroken strains of the Word
Come from deep within the Flame;
those who see the Flame and hear the Word
Become attached to the true Lord.
-Nanak

With access to the Inner Flame
heard I the symphonic strain.
-Bhai Gurdas

Both night and day doth gaze he on that undying Flame.
No thought secrete his mind absorbed in His Name.
-Gobind Singh

Losing thyself thou dost realise true life,
And beholdest the eternal Flame.
-Darya

And when the Flame resplendent the mind doth light within
Then hath he grown enlightened:
name of khalsa [sovereign, free] doth win.
-Gobind Singh

No life can express, nor mouth describe,
the fire of the inflaming love of God.

-Jacob Boehme 

Flowers

If you are an oak,

don't pretend you are a flower.

-Matsuo Basho

You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
-Han Shan

One flower opens:

Spring everywhere.

-A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters

Zen flowers are formless,

in and out of bloom in our hearts.

-Huai-Jang

The temple bell stops

but I still hear the sound

coming out of the flowers.

-Matsuo Basho

Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance
as before a storm.
Beauteous soul! when a storm approaches thee,
be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.
-Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Having seen them long,
I hold the flowers so dear
That when they scatter
I find it all the more sad
To bid them my last farewell.
-Saigyo

Because the flowers blooming
In our original home
Are everlasting,
Though springtimes may come and go
Their colors do not fade.
-Dogen

Do not go to the garden of flowers!
O Friend ! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus,
and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.
-Kabir

Forces

There are always forces above and around us

upon which we can draw upon -

draw into ourselves to restore,

to fill up again with strength and faith and joy

and the power that perseveres and  conquers.

It is really a habit that one has to get

of opening to these helpful forces

and either passively receiving them or actively drawing upon them -

for one can do either.

It is easy if you have the conception of them above and around you

and the faith and the will to receive them;

for that brings the experience and the concrete sense of them

and the capacity to receive at need or at will.

It is a question of habituating your consciousness

to get into touch and to keep in touch

with these helpful forces;

and for that you must accustom yourself to reject

the impressions forces upon you by others.

-M. P. Pandit 

Freedom

The essence of all practices leading to freedom is the same;
that is, developing a mind which does not cling to anything at all.
No preferences.
No distinctions.
No judgements.
No clinging.
No condemning.
-Joseph Goldstein

I don’t mind what happens. 

That is the essence of inner freedom. 

It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, 

deep inside yourself, you’ll feel good no matter what.”

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom is the dream you dream
While putting thought in chains again.
-Giacomo Leopardi

Go on saying, "I am free."

Never mind is the next moment delusion comes and says,

"I am bound."

Dehypnotize the whole thing.

-Vivekananada

Freedom is identification with the Real.
-Imre Vallyon

Freedom: there's none unless you know the Self.
but if you know the truth, then you are free.
-The Upanishads

Only spiritual freedom is absolute and unlimited;
when it is won through persistent effort,
it is won forever.
-Meher Baba

To pass through to freedom,

you must get beyond form, sensation, conception, 

motivational synthesis and consciousness.

-Yuanwu

Your only freedom is in intercourse with Christ.
-Phillips Brooks

Man will not be free
until he vibrates in harmony with the cosmic spirit.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

One is only free when one is fulfilling the divine will.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

At the end of the way is freedom. 

Till then, patience. 

-Buddha

If you surrender to the truth
that no phenomenon can ever touch,
you are free.

-Merle Antoinette Roberson (Toni), "Gangaji"

Freedom means completeness,

no lack anywhere -

no lack of knowledge,

no lack of power,

no lack of anything.

-Paramananda

Attainment of perfection
means absolute Freedom.
-William Walker Atkinson, "A. P. Mukerji"

Let us live happily, then, free
from all ailments among the ailing!
-Buddhist Saying

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it -
basically because you feel good, very good,
when you are near or with them.
-Charles Bukowski

O, man - if you only knew that you are free.

It is your ignorance of your freedom 

that is your captivity.

-Fariduddin Attar

Garden

Our seeds are in our minds and hearts.

if moistened, all will sprout.

-Huai-Jang

The smallest seed 

corresponds to the concept of the burden of the world.

-Agni Yoga Society, Brotherhood

Flowers fall with our attachment,

and weeds spring up with our aversion.

-Dogen

A weed is a treasure
and a treasure is a weed.
By valuing some things and not others,
the value of everything is missed.
-Zen Saying

You plant the seed, water it, tend it, nourish it,
weed it and see that no animal coms to destroy it.
The rest is not in your hands.
Growth is not in your hands, leaves are not in your hands,
flowers are not in your hands, fruits are not in your hands.
It will come in time.
It will take care of itself.
The only thing you can do is to water, that's all you can do.
The result of Sadhana will take care of itself.
Self-realization, God-realization, peace, all will come to you naturally in time.
Don't worry about that.
That's called taking care of the plant.
-Vishnudevananda

I find one vast garden spread out all over the universe.
All plants, all human beings, all higher mind bodies
are about in this garden in various ways,
each has his own uniqueness and beauty.
Their presence and variety give me great delight.
Every one of you adds with his special feature
to the glory of the garden.
-Ananandamayi Ma

How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony
-Matsuo Basho

That man's life is but a dream -
is what we now come to know.
Its house abandoned,
the garden has become home
to butterflies.
-Sougi

Eden which is the Wisdom of God.
-Philo

Gate

When you notice an inner gateway,

Enter with love, as one coming home,

You belong here.

-Lorin Roche

Why does the gate have to be narrow?

Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.

-Wendell Berry

Before thou canst approach the foremost gate
thou hast to learn to part thy body from thy mind,
to dissipate the shadow, and to live in the eternal.
For this, thou hast to live and breathe in all,
as all that thou perceivest breathes in thee;
to feel thyself abiding in all things, all things in Self.
-Helena P. Blavatsky

Gems

If you keep seeking the jewel of understanding,

then you are a mine of understanding in the making.
If you live to reach the Essence one day,
then your life itself is an expression of the Essence.
Know that in the final analysis you are that
which you search for.
-Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

If you wish for a pearl,

you must leave the desert
and wander by the sea.
-Sanai

However priceless,

a piece of gold

In the eye

is nothing but grit.

-A Zen Forest

A diamond is just a piece of charcoal
that handles stress exceptionally well.
-Anonymous

Like jade, more lustrous as it's polished,
Like gold, brighter as it's refined.
-Sun Bu'er

When pure gold enters the fire

its color becomes brighter still.

-Zen

Jewels on Indra's net

Reflect each other

endlessly.

-A Zen Forest

God

The Godhead is a source from which all things do rush,

And then return to it. An ocean it is thus.

-Angelus Silesius

The God who is pure emptiness
Is created as form:
Becoming substance, light and darkness,
The stillness and the storm.

-Angelus Silesius

What is God after all?
An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
-Auorbindo Ghose

Childhood is busy with toys.

Youth is busy with sex and romance.
Middle age is busy with money and material security.
Old age is busy with sickness and worries about death.
No one is busy with God.
-Shankara

You say that you will see God and His light some day;
O Fool! You never shall, you must see Him today.

-Angelus Silesius

Wherever you turn is God's face.

-Muhammed

God cometh in the garb of man,
and cometh He to awaken the world.
-Bulleh

Thank you God for coming to me in this form.
-Unknown

Man is a reflection of God;
but the reflection cannot exist without the object reflected;
so man must know what God is,
if he would know himself.
-Paramananda

As the fragrance is in the flower
And the reflection in the mirror,
So is God within thee,
In thine own body shouldst thou seek him.
-Teg Bahadur

Anyone whose reward from God is deferred until tomorrow

has not truly worshipped him today.

-Abu Yasid al-Bistami

God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.
-R. S. Thomas

God is our centre and yet it is for us to acknowledge that he is the centre...
Even while he is at the centre of all things he waits outside us
and knocks to come in.
-Mister God, This is Anna

Whoever believes he can reach God by his own efforts toils in vain;
whoever believes he can reach God without effort
is merely a traveller on the road of intent.
-Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz

The voice of God is heart; Listen within and seek;

Were you but always silent, he's never cease to speak.

-Angleus Sileisu

The only way to be with God is in total silence.

-Leonard Jacobson 

The ability to return to God
surpasses everything.
-David A. Cooper

Who wants to savor God and will in him inhere,

Should, like the morning star, to its own sun draw near.

-Angelus Silesius

God dwells in light supreme, no path can give access;

Yourself must be that light, if you would there progress.

-Angelus Silesius

Man, wrap yourself in God, abscond into His Light:

I swear that you will thus escape the devil's sight.

-Angelus Silesius

In no part of His Universe can God be passive.
-Phillips Brooks

Mind, Spirit and the Word, they teach you clear and free,

That you may apprehend how God is One, yet Three.

-Angelus Silesius

There is only one God.
He is our Lord of the Meeting Rivers.
-Basava

Indeed one can name God by all His highest names

And then again one can each one withdraw again.

-Angelus Silesius

Five sphere there are in God: serf, friend, son, bride and spouse.

Who goes beyond becomes oblivious to those.

-Angelus Silesius

When the paintings are hidden, you will see the Painter.
O brother, I will tell you the mystery of mysteries.
Know, then, that painting and Painter are one!
-Farid ud-Din 'Attar

The Beloved is of beautiful and variegated color
and He manifests himself in color after color.
When the divine vision takes place,
then [all] colors are contained in [one] color.
-The Bujhn Niranjan

Whilst you exist, God cannot be.
-Sanai

I have bought God, I have bought God.
The bargain was easy.
I gave myself completely
And got him completely in return.
-Mirabai

Man, if you live in God, and die to your own will,

How simple it will be His precepts to fulfill.

-Angelus Silesius

Tell between me and God the only difference?

It is (put in one word) nothing by otherness.

-Angelus Silesius

God was and there was no thing with Him.

-Hadith

I am like God and God like me.

I am as Large as God, He is as small as I.

He cannot above me, nor I beneath him be.

-Angelus Silesius

I am He whom I love,
and He whom I love is I:
We are two spirits dwelling in one body.
If thou seest me, thou seest Him,
And if thou seest Him,
thou seest us both.
-Mansur al Hallaj

Uniting with the Lord
I have myself become the Lord,
no darkness now remains in me.
For I have reached that dwelling,
where even the wind cannot go.
-Mulukadasa

God known in ecstasy of love
Wedding himself to utterance of himself
-Lascelles Abercrombie

By glorifying God

you create Him as yourself.

-Muhammed

Here a person becomes so divinized
that everything he is and does,
God does and is in him.
-Johannes Tauler

As many souls as there are, so many gods there are.

-Sanskrit Saying

He becomes as great at the sky
including within himself the whole universe.
he bears the night in the form of non-existence.
-Jnanadeva

Goodness

And peruse objects no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good,
and their adjuncts good.
-Walt Whitman

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind,
goodness is the greatest,
being the character of the Deity.
-Francis Bacon

The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms
that it takes whatever turns to it.
-Dante Alighieri

Goodness is not goodness
unless it is a rapture.
-Robert Norwood

The highest good alone does offer blessedness,

Why is it then forsaken for what is clearly less?

-Angelus Silesius

Growth

Growing is cultivating and sustaining

the fire of our own inner Spirit.

-Chetanananda

The only that really grows

is our awareness of our own nature.

-Chetanananda

Hands

The right hand and the left hand are both His.
-Phillips Brooks

When God said, "My hands are yours,"
I saw that I could heal any creature in this world.
-Rabia al-Basri

He whose hand is without wound may touch poison:
poison cannot enter where there is no wound.
-Dhammapada

Head and Heart

He breathes not the fragrance of divine mysteries

whose head is not warmed by his heart.

-Wali

When the weather is hot, keep a cool mind.

When the weather is cold, keep a warm heart.

-Ajahn Brahm

You must descend from your head into your heart.

At present your thoughts of God are in your head.

And God Himself is, as it were, outside you,

and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior.

Whilst you are still in your head,

thoughts will not easily be subdued

but will always be whirling about,

like snow in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in summer.

-Theophan the Recluse

Heart

A heart makes a good home for the friend.

-Yunus Emre 

The heart is like the eye: a tiny little grain.

When it is in your heart, already causes pain.

-Angelus Silesius

Go, clear out your heart's chamber;
arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
When you go forth, He will come in,
and to you, with self discarded,
He will unveil His beauty.
-Mahmud Shabistari

The light of the beloved
rises from the horizon of my heart.
-Moulana Shah Maghsoud

The heart of a lover, a true devotee of God,
constantly burns with the fire of love, so much so,
that whatever intrudes upon its sanctity is burnt to ashes.
-Baba Farid

The beloved sat facing my open heart for so long that,
but for Her Attributes and Nature,
nothing remained of my heart.
-Maghribi

Metaphorically, the heart is the sun,
the pulsing, energetic center of our biophysical "solar system".
-Paul Pearsall

The heart is a dwelling-place
of that which is the essence of the universe.
-Farid ud-Din Attar

The entire Universe is condensed in the body,
and the entire body in the Heart.
Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the whole Universe.
-Ramana Maharshi

The heart is wide as a spiral galaxy.

-Lorin Roche

Heart is merely another name
for the Supreme Spirit.
-Ramana Maharshi

Once the heart has become the ocean of life

it accommodates all things and all beings.

-Vilayat Inayat Khan

If you want the secret of Buddhism,

Here it is: Everything is in the Heart!

-Ryokan Taigu

Heaven

To Heaven you can't go, stop all the agitation,

Unless you are, before, yourself a living heaven.

-Angelus Silesius

Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens,
and then at last cease to admire worthless things.
-Boethius

We mustn't be so heavenly bound 

that we are of no earthly good.

-Unknown

Hell

In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.

-Issa Kopayashi

Once I discovered that I could enter heaven by embracing hell,

embracing hell became a core practice.

-Christopher M Bache

Hell is the forgetting of this Heaven,

the exhausting flight from the Now,
the seemingly endless search in time for that which can never be found in time.
Hell is the infinite pain of self-denial,
an excruciating longing for Home.
-Jeff Foster

Higher and Lower

In mythological stories and legends
the fight between the lower mind and the higher mind
is illustrated as that of man
being tempted by the devil on one hand
and helped by a guardian angel on the other.
-Vishnu-devananda

When the higher incorporates the lower into its service,
the nature of the lower is transformed into that of the higher.
-Meister Eckhart

The below can never contain the above.
-G. A. Gaskell

In reality, it is only the movements
of your lower nature that stop functioning.
Your higher nature, on the contrary,
begins to vibrate and radiate so fast
and with such intensity that it appears
to be absolutely motionless.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov 

I

What is ego?

We all have the awareness of "I".

It exists naturally within us, and it is pure.

If we leave that "I" as it is,

that "I" is God.

But we always add something to the "I,"

and as soon as we do that

it becomes ego and causes all our troubles.

-Muktananda

The fundamental foundation or principle on which yoga and meditation is based

is that two things exist, subject and object.

Subject is 'I am,' and object is everything other than the 'I',

including the body, the sense, the organs and the intellect.

-Vishnudevananda

When "I" consciousness becomes attracted to other things,

it becomes limited.

-Muktananda

This "I and mine"

causes the whole misery.

-Vivekananda

When we look with the "I"
We dream.
When we look for the "I"
We awaken.
-Anthony Paul Moo-Young, "Mooji"

Is there an "I" which subsumes these multiple "I's"?
And "I" of all others which has mastery over our entire being,
over all our inner beings?
-Gaston Bachelard

The supreme task of education is to take possession
of one's transcendental self,
to be at once the 'I' of one's 'I'.
-Novalis

The one real thing in us is the 'I'
which embraces all existences
and all possible contraries of existence.
-Satprem

For the Divine Spiritual "I," is alone eternal,
and the same throughout all births;
whereas the "personalities"
it informs in succession are evanescent.
-Helena P. Blavatsky

I am not a little exclusive I
but the great inclusive, allied I.
It is the play of stellar electricity in my soul.
-Frank Crane

What we call "I" is just a swinging door
which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
-D. T. Suzuki

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
-Juan Ramon Jimenez

If the "I" does not exist,
How can there be the "mine?"
-Mulamadhyamaka-karika

Avoid "I," beyond body be.
-Akha

Burn to ashes all that is not I, bind
The ashes to the fidelity of the wind.
-Farid ud-Din Attar

I liberated myself from my"I"

as a snake sheds its skin.

-Bayazid Bastami

Ignorance

Unless a man live an ordinary life
and check every incident as the projection of the Self,
not swerving from the Self in any circumstances,
he cannot be said to be free from the handicap of ignorance.
-Tripura Rahasya

Ignorance is of the Self,
and to remove it, Self-awareness it required.
When you come to an awareness of the Self, ignorance vanishes.
If you don't lose contact with the Self, ignorance can never arise.
-Annamalai

If you can witness the real nature within the shell of ignorance,

then instantaneously the essence underlying ignorance is brought into play.

-Yuanwu

When one approached darkness with light in hand, the darkness vanishes;

when the light if inquiry is turned on ignorance, ignorance disappears.

-Yoga Vasishta

Illusion

A person who thinks all the time
has nothing to think about except thoughts.
So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
-Alan Watts

In illusion, what is true?
Illusion is from the outset true.
In illusion what is manifested?
The very illusion itself is manifestation.
If this is so, then one can never be apart from illusion.
No matter how you seek illusion, you won't find it.
-Ts'ao Shan

All spiritual practices are illusions
created by illusionists
to escape illusion.
-Ram Dass

If you see that everything's an illusion
you just let it go.
There's not need for training.
If you let it go, you wake up.
There's no need for gradual steps.
-Seosan Hyujeong

Immortality

A man has only one way of being immortal on this earth.
He has to forget that he is mortal.
-Jean Giraudoux

Initiation

Initiation is equivalent to a basic change in existential condition.
-Mircea Eliade

The unknown territory of initiation will open before us

only to the extent that we turn our whole being consciously toward it.

-Jack Kornfield

Intelligence

IT does not progress; it does not need to.
IT forever manifests, operates, differentiates
and presents different aspects or viewpoints of ITSELF.
But these different phases are neither  good, better or best,
neither bad nor worse - simply different shades and colorings
of the One and Only Intelligence.
-George W. Carey

Isness

If you reject what IS,

you get what is not.

-Kenneth G. Mills

Everything is true just as it si:

Why dislike it?

Why hate it?

-Zen Saying

Everything that once was 

still is,

only in another form.

-Hopi Wisdom

Joy

Joy is when Spirit touches the body and mind

with a glimpse of the Infinite.

-Keith G. Lowenstein

The Supreme is Joy itself.

-Anandamayi Ma

Your inherent nature is joy, ananda, which is eternal.

-Vishnudevananda

When one has real inner joy,

one sees that Heaven is all around Him.

He is in Heaven or he has become Heaven itself.

-Sri Chinmoy

Don't worry about being disloyal to your pain

by being joyous.

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Knowledge

Where is the expert when Truth can come from the bird, 

the chirping cricket, the cloud in the sky,

the mistake in the experiment, or the innocent novice?

No matter how thick the credentials, one walks before Knowledge 

a humble servant.

Knowledge finds no home in small minds.

Knowledge pours through those who seek the good of others.

Knowledge is a humble prayer to heal the individual, the situation,

the problem, the environment.

-Kurt Abraham

Liberation

As I understand it

when there is not word to utter,
not a sign to see,
nothing to take cognizance of
and when there is complete detachment
from every form of questioning
then only enters the gate of "Advaitam" -
nonduality or emancipation.
-Manjushri

Remember the pendulum:
volatile bodies always seek their fixation,
and the liberation of Consciousness
is precisely the possibility of no longer falling back toward corporeal fixity,
Consciousness itself becoming the corporeal fixity.
-R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz

Stabilize the mind in the practice of meditation,

concentrate the consciousness in the heart-sky;

this is liberation.

-Nityananda

Life

Life is a field.

All you have to do is cultivate it.

-Kabir

The life you lead

conceals the light you are.
-Aurobindo Ghose

It is your thought
that speaks there
and not your life.
-Jones Very

Life does not need to be changed.
Only your intent and actions do.
-Swami Rama

The great thing, if one can,
is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things
as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life.
The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions
are precisely one's real life -
the life God is sending one day by day.
-C.S. Lewis

Wake up.
This is your life for God's sake.
It's time to face up to it.
You can't get anywhere, can't get over anything,
if you don't let yourself feel anything in the first place.
It's time.
-Julie Buxaum

When you get out of the driver's seat,
you find that life can drive itself,
that actually life has always been driving itself...
Life becomes almost magical.
The illusion of the "me" is no longer in the way.
Life begins to flow,
and you never know where it will take you.
-Stephen Gray, "Adyashanti"

The sum total of our life
is a breath spent in the company of the Beloved.
-Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

Light

The sphere of light is growing larger and larger 

and brighter and brighter like a thousand suns.

The light streaming forth leaks through the cloud of the mind

creating a beautiful disk, Divine Mother in its centre.

-Sivananda Radha

Sunyata, The Void
Become like a crystal, crystal clear,
totally receptive to the passage of light,
In the crystal the molecules have aligned themselves
in such a manner as to enable light waves to pass.
Matter has adapted itself to becoming transparent to light.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The faculty of being luminous
is assuredly a thing more perfect than that of seeing light...
more purity in the substance,
more homogeneity in the parts,
more delicacy in the structure.
-Jean-Baptiste Robinet

Life, such as we wish to consider it, 

is but a struggle between two substances, 

or a continual exchange of light and darkness. 

One of these substances alternatively takes the place of the other, 

sometimes taking the male function and sometimes the female. 

And in a manner pleasing to the divine author, 

everything either changes into a pure light, 

or returns to the Cimmerian darkness, 

which shows that light and darkness are but one and the same thing, 

changing in form and value by the expansion or contraction of the substance.

-The Hermetic Recreations

Man must let his true nature blossom,

for there is inside him a light that asks only to shine.

-Zengzi

I have in me the light of Nature; 

I am dark and bright; 

I spring from the Earth and I come out of Heaven. 

I am well known and yet a mere nothing. 

All colours shine in me and all metals by the beams of the Sun. 

I am the Carbuncle of the Sun.

-Coelum Terrae (1650)

All light is one

but colors a thousandfold.

-Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi

Light and vessel are always in balance,
because light comes from an infinite source
and thus will fill a vessel to its capacity.
-David A. Cooper

The smallest prisms contains the entire spectrum of light.
-William Douglas Horden

Love

When one has risen above human love

divine love springs forth.

-Vilayat Inayat Khan

When Divine Love is formulated into concrete science and knowledge,

a new heaven and a new earth shall come into being.

-Lucille Cedercrans

We will master this science and read this book of love.

God instructs.
Love is His school.
-Yunus Emre

Science is the language of the Temporal world,
Love is that of the Spiritual world.
-Honore de Balzac

He who would know the secrets of both worlds
will find that the secret of them both is Love.
-Farid ud-Din Attar

In love itself, there is no need,

no absence of anything, no void.

When we find it inside,

we discover we have enough for ourselves and for everyone else,

and we need go no further.

We become like a well;

we quench our own thirst

and have water enough for anyone who passes by.

-Chetanananda

Khusro! the river of love has a reverse flow
He who enters will drown, he who drowns will get across.
-Amir Khusrow Dehlawi

Love's conqueror is he
whom love conquers.
-Hakim Sanai

Love, oneness, is no separation between you and life.

It is a progressive letting go,

a progressive not fault-finding.

-Ajahn Brahm

Love is what is left 

when you've let go of all the things you love.

-Jnaneshvara Bharati

If you live in love, you possess spiritual fertility.

-Anwar El Sadat

And the breath divine is love.

-William Blake

From each a mystic silence
Love demands.
-Farid al-Din 'Attar

The highest proof of spirit is love.
-Albert Schweitzer

Love is the gift of the spirit
and wants nothing but - to love.
-Alan Leo

The love between the soul and Spirit
is the perfect love.
-Yogananda

Love is the union spirits.

Love is spiritual fire, spiritual heat.

-Emmanuel Swedenborg

The deepest love is often hidden.

-Yamamoto Tsunemoto

When you have attained ecstatic love 

you have found the rope to tie God with.

-Ramakrishna

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I feel within me a consuming fire of heavenly love

which has burned up in my soul

everything that was contrary to itself

and transformed me inwardly into its own nature

-William Law

Love reaches its omega when it transcends itself
Becoming one with the object itself
Producing the unity of being.
-Hakim Jami

Whatever thou lovest,
That become thou must;
God if thou love God,
Dust if thou love dust.
-Hymn, "Though Christ a Thousand Times"

There is no greater intoxication than that of love
when it transcends the human object
and is directed towards the divine being.
-Vilayat Inayat Khan

It is God whom every lover
loves in every beloved.
-Ibn 'Arabi

The being of the lover and Beloved
Are the same, for where is Love without
A lover and Beloved to be found?
-Shah Nematollah Vali

Where love is,
there God is also.
-Mohandas Gandhi

I have found nothing in all the worlds
that could match His love,
This love that harrows the sands of my desert.
-Rabia al-Basri

The whole world is bewitched by his tale,
but wise are those who are lost in his love.
-Sarmad

Now, tell I of Love,
which is God Himself and beyond words.
God's creation is a fraction of God,
but It (Love) is the deepest eternal joy.
-Prananath

I, who am infinite, seek infinite works -
that is, an infinite perfection of love.
-St. Catherine of Siena

Love is the wise man's stone: It divides gold from mud,

It makes nothing of self and turns me into God.

-Angelus Silesius

If you take what the Buddha and Christ said,
and all the great yogis, saints, sages,
mystics, and lovers of God,
it can be reduced to two words:
Choose Love.
There is nothing higher than Love,
nothing purer,
nothing more selfless,
nothing more powerful,
and it is present in every moment.
Choose Love.
In all times, in all places -
Choose Love,
for Love has already chosen you.
-Lawrence Edwards, "Kalidas"