If anyone thinks he can help you, he will inevitably mislead you, and the less phony he is; the more powerful he is, the more enlightened he is, the more misery and mischief he will create for you.

Society or culture or whatever you might want to call it, has created us all solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its continuity and status quo.

Your situation and prospects only seem hopeless because you have ideas of hope. Knock off that hope and the crippling feelings of helplessness go with it.

There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know, you imagine. Imagination must come to an end...I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension - THAT is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all. It is not an experience.

Food, clothing and shelter — these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception.

The plain fact is that if you don't have a problem, you create one. If you don't have a problem you don't feel that you are living.

I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize -- that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize -- and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" That blasts you.