“You are born to be mystics. Unless… you have come to know existence as a mystery… you have not taken the challenge of life, you have been a coward. You have wings, but you have forgotten it.”
“Not you but your coat is recognized by others; so you go on embroidering your coat, dressing yourself.”
“It is easy to renounce the world, but how are you going to renounce the mind? Because the mind is the real world!”
Buddha answered, “I am just an excuse – they are surrendering. It is not a surrender to me; it is simply a surrender – I am just an excuse.”
“If man gets tired, if horses get tired, then wooden posts also get tired. The whole existence is a manifestation of one energy.”
“Eat like an emperor. That doesn’t depend upon the quality of the food, it depends on the eater, the way he celebrates it. Even with just bread, butter, and salt, you can be an emperor.”
“You will interpret any message, any commandment, any order to you, in the way which appeals to you most.”
“You can drop your mind this very moment because the mind cannot hold you. Mind is just a mechanism, a machine; you can get out of it any moment.”
“Suddenly the benediction of emptiness spreads all over you. To be empty is to be divine. To be empty is to have come home.”
“When the spring comes trees will bloom, and when the right time has come the fruits will ripen,” states Osho
“Although they were blind, they started finding that this man walks in a different way, talks in a different way, knows things that they don’t know. He says, ‘Now it is sunrise.’ He says, ‘Now the whole sky is full of stars’ – and those blind eyes could not see any star.”
“I have been telling you: drop it. Now sit down. Be just human. Here nobody is an emperor and nobody is a beggar. Here everybody is himself. Just be yourself.”
“Alexander the Great, or others of his category – are perhaps searching for something else, and are not aware of it. They are searching for greatness – but greatness does not come from acquiring an empire. Greatness comes from becoming your real self, bringing your potentiality to actualization.”
“Not only Buddha, nobody has come down from the seventh heaven, ever. But a few people get obsessed, identified with their reflections.”
“When your senses are unable to see… even then you are a witness. And to perceive the inner witness the senses are not needed.”
Last article in Shanti’s series, where he quotes under the section, Fragrances of human flowering, personalities from various fields
In Part 18 of his series, Shanti quotes under the section, Fragrances of human flowering, from more mystics
Tagore’s insight “that the moon is the moon whether you have a very beautiful mirror or a very ordinary mirror.”
This whole Part 17 of Shanti’s series, subtitled Fragrances of human flowering, is dedicated to the Persian poet and mystic Hafiz
Part 16 of Shanti’s series quotes these scientists: Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Galileo Galilei, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Camille Flammarion
“Whatsoever you believe becomes effective,” says Osho. “You see only that which you are looking for.”
In Part 15 of Shanti’s series: Friedrich Nietzsche, Rabindranath Tagore, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Ruth St. Denis, Dalai Lama
“Sex is only the alphabet of love, bricks out of which you can make a Taj Mahal. But Taj Mahal is not just bricks,” states Osho
For Part 14 of his series, Shanti’s invited to speak: Walt Whitman, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu
“First you have to become a receiver, first you have to attain to silence, then communion is possible, not before it.”
In part 13, Shanti lets the mystics speak: Gautama Buddha, Dōgen Zenji, Hakuin Ekaku, Kabir and Ramakrishna
“The original mind is egoless. It does not know the ‘I’, because ‘I’ is a shrinking. The original mind is infinite, like the sky.”
In part 12, Shanti lets artists and poets speak: Michelangelo, Robert Frost, Rabindranath Tagore, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Miguel de Cervantes, Gertrude Stein, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Maria Angelou, Sappho
“All paths can lead to it because in a way it is already achieved. It is within you. You are not seeking something new. You are seeking something which you have forgotten.”
In Part 11 of his series, Shanti calculated costs and savings when switching to an efficient and renewables energy system using our present defense budgets
“Life itself is enough unto itself. And if you are trying to fulfill some goal, you will miss life.”
In Part 10 of the series, Humans Are Still Young, Shanti discusses the size of global military spending and the concept of nations
“Don’t start seeking, just start looking at what is the case. Looking into the reality as it is, is enough.”
In Part 9 of his series, Shanti explores the socio-economic and earth-system trends of the new geological epoch called Anthropocene
Part 8 of Shanti’s series: “The Holocene has seen many of us creating… some of us have flowered as caretakers… in scientific research, on the path of devotion, or exploring beyond the frontiers of the known.”
In Part 7 Shanti writes, “We may have shown our ugliest face to the mirror, to others and to life on the planet, but we have also expressed our potential.“
“The seeker is the sought. Just a few unnecessary things are crowding you. The search is negative – drop them and you discover yourself in all your glory.”
In Part 6 Shanti writes, “The next step in the development of human societies… cannot be other than One World and a World Administration. “