Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking.
Eckhart TolleEnlightenment means choosing to dwell in a state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is.
Eckhart TolleWhatever you do in your daily life - driving from here to there, trying to reach someone on the phone, doing this or that - you always are going toward somewhere. That's inevitable.
Eckhart TolleAn enlightened person or business is not concerned primarily with making money, because when you are concerned with making money you want the future more than the present. Whenever you want the future more than you want the present, true intelligence cannot flow into what you do, because it can do so only when you are totally aligned with the present moment.
Eckhart TolleAfter having been lost in the world, suddenly, through the pressure of suffering, the realization comes that the answers may not be found out there in worldly attainment and in the future. That's an important point for many people to reach. That sense of deep crisis-when the world as they have known it, and the sense of self that they have known that is identified with the world, become meaningless.
Eckhart TolleWhen faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Eckhart Tolle