If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
You always have a choice but you forget that you have it. Do you remember the energy and enthusiasm you had on the first day of your first job? You consciously chose to do the work you had gladly accepted to do. But then you gradually fell asleep to the choice you made, and the day became "I have to" go to work, instead of "I want to" go to work. You forgot to see all the opportunities which come with work - opportunities like learning, nourishing and being nourished by others, developing new relationships, expanding your personal capacity. Instead you decided it was just something that you had to do to 'get the money'. This is why most people are sleep-walking through their lives, and they dont know it. The solution, choose your work every day, put the energy of love into your relationships...every day, even if you dont particularly like your job or the people around you. And you'll be amazed at how your life transforms. When you choose to put love into what you do, the universe will move heaven and hell to let you do what you love.
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
If words come out of the heart, they will enter the heart, but if they come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond the ears.
When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being - you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate - you have found your roots.
Otherwise, ordinarily, everybody is moving without roots, not knowing from where their heart goes on receiving energy, not knowing who goes on breathing in them, not knowing the life juice that is running inside them. It is not the body, it is not the mind - it is something transcendental to all duality, that is called bhagavat - the bhagavat in the ten directions ....
Your inner being, when it opens, first experiences two directions: the height, the depth. And then slowly, slowly, as this becomes your established situation, you start looking around, spreading into all other eight directions. And once you have attained to the point where your height and your depth meet, then you can look around to the very circumference of the universe. Then your consciousness starts unfolding in all ten directions, but the road has been one.
The mind is like a parachute - it works best when it is open. How quickly we make assumptions, jump to conclusions and close our mind. How easily we form and hold fast to our opinions and then close our mind. How fast do we make a judgement, slap on a label and then close our mind. A closed mind never knows the delight of playing with possibilities, being enlightened by others point of view or enjoying the diversity of human life. An open and understanding mind never assumes, doesnt jump to conclusions and wont hold fast to any opinion. Perhaps it is no wonder a closed mind is not a very relaxed mind.
Ambition is like a venus fly trap. If a frog were to sit on it, the fly trap could bite and bite but it wouldn't hurt the frog because it only has tiny little plant teeth. Then some other stuff could happen and that would be like ambition.
An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
When you are alone you are not alone, you are simply lonely - and there is a tremendous difference between loneliness and aloneness. When you are lonely you are thinking of the other, you are missing the other.
Loneliness is a negative state. You are feeling that it would have been better if the other were there - your friend, your wife, your mother, your beloved, your husband. It would have been good if the other were there, but the other is not. Loneliness is absence of the other.
Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. It is a presence, overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.
You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give.
