The first thing, the very very first thing, "Find out what your greatest characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different. Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.

Two things in life are infinite; the stupidity of man and the mercy of God.

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

The first reason for people's slavery is our ignorance, and above all, our ignorance of ourselves.

Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering.

Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.

Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively.