Ram Dass Quotes

Fear of death only comes through the brittleness of the ego.

The fun is having friends who help each other get free.

Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.

This is the pathless path. Where the journey leads is to the deepest truth in you. It is really just returning to where you were initially before you got lost.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love-for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another.

Witness your thoughts. Your thoughts are attachments.

If you rest in the silence inside, all those you meet will have their spiritual hearts resuscitated.

You are joy, wisdom, peace, compassion, and love

I like walking in the pool. That isn't what makes me feel spiritual. But alive.

There is a larger frame to the painting than the one that bounds our life's events.

In an evolutionary perspective, the rational mind takes a certain distance and no further, & we must be able to transcend it.

Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure... except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap... the desire to know it all and still be you, "the knower." This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can't know it all. The goal is non-dualistic - as long as there is a "knower" and "known" you are in dualism.

At first you think that your sadhana Is a limited part of your life. In time you realize that Everything you do is part of your sadhana.

We gain internal freedom through external actions.

The suffering is in the mind. The mind. In the mind. Witness it. From your spiritual heart.

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

The way you come to fully appreciate the infusion of the Spirit is to more and more come fully into the moment, where this moment is enough.

Words engage our minds, but in the silence we hear the Presence of God.

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent.This is unlikely.After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.

In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?

Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.

I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.

Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.

The richness of a moment comes when it's both full and empty at the same time. The truth is, we live simultaneously in time and timelessness.

Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.

When our hearts open, when we know that we are in fact the world, when we experience the pain of others in our own blood and muscle, we are feeling compassion.

When you want to become free, your righteousness and anger are much less interesting than they used to be.

I like to look at a tree and see that it's love. Don't you?

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

Be open to all teachers And all teachings, And listen with your heart.

A Oneness of all. An evolution in consciousness of us all that isn't about the egos.

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.

The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it--just don't get lost in it.

When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn't.

What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.

Prolong not the past Invite not the future Do not alter your innate wakefulness Fear not appearances There in nothing more than this

Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success- none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

When the heart is open, it's easier for the mind to be turned toward God.

Don't take yourself so personally.

Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.

Caring is a reflex...You live, you help.

Institutions don't change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.