Lotus

“Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then.
In the faces of men and women I see God,
and in my own face in the glass.
I find letters from God dropt in the street,
and every one is sign’d by God’s name.
And I leave them where they are,
for I know wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

~ Walt Whitman

Lotus

“It is not enough to simply know that ‘I am Consciousness.’ Consciousness has to go further and rediscover its absolute identity with all things. It has to discover that ‘I am everything,’ that this Consciousness right here is identical with that reality ‘out there.’”

~ Rupert Spira

Lotus

“When I say ‘I am,’ I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus. I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows. I have nothing to desire, for I am complete forever.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Lotus

“Whatever you want, be it. If you want connection, it’s because you are connection. Be what you want, and then it happens all around you. If you want love, be it. You’ll have more love than you know what to do with. Whatever you are inside, you receive a thousandfold on the outside.”

~ Adyashanti

Lotus

“When our identity expands to include everything, we find a peace with the dance of the world. The ocean of life rises and falls within us — birth and death, joy and pain, it is all ours, and our heart is full and empty, large enough to embrace it all.”

~ Jack Kornfield

Lotus

“You and I know there is no outside. So, if there is any residue of beliefs left and it doesn’t arise in me, then the grace is that I have you to bring me that belief. . . . I can remain faultlessly here. Absolutely belief-less. I have you to bring them to me. I have the whole world to undo me. I am the whole world. You say it, I say it — what’s the difference? It’s all me. You are my relationship. You are me. There is no other.”

~ Byron Katie

Lotus

“Who is the other whom you want to serve? Who is the other? All are your parts, you see? All are your parts. There’s only One. Why do you divide? Everything, all beings — humans, animals, birds, rocks, plants — the sum total of this is you. How beautiful this will be if you behave like this. Then there will be peace among us in the universe.”

~ Sri H.W.L. Poonja

Lotus

“Is there an outside and an inside? Without referring to a thought, is the bird’s expression other than your own?”

~ Mukti

Lotus

“The most important point is to forget yourself. What we do most of the time is exactly the opposite. We reinforce the self. When you truly forget yourself, a very different scenery is revealed in front of your nose. The other shore is where you stand. The buddhas’ life is your life. So please, however you have been practicing, really focus on forgetting yourself.”

~ Taizan Maezumi Roshi

Lotus

“Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. I am not addicted to self-descriptions. I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. Anxiety and hope are born of imagination. I am free of both. I am simple being and I need nothing to rest on. Being shines as knowing: knowing is warm in love. It is all one.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Lotus

“We live in confusion and the illusion of things.
There is a reality.
You are that reality.
When you know that,
You will know that you are nothing,
And, in being nothing,
You are everything.
That is all.”

~ Kalu Rinpoche

Lotus

“You can stay intimate with the moment of experience even if it’s a painful moment. You can stay connected: ‘I’m really glad to be here for this moment.’ Even when you feel, ‘I don’t like this moment,’ your heart is glad to be here for this moment. The spiritual heart is so glad to be here for this moment. That’s the ever-deepening.”

~ Adyashanti

Lotus

“You might be looking at a mountain, and you have relaxed into the effortlessness of your present awareness, and then suddenly the mountain is all, you are nothing. Your separate-self sense is suddenly and totally gone, and there is simply everything that is arising moment to moment. You are perfectly aware, perfectly conscious, everything seems completely normal, except you are nowhere to be found. You are not on this side of your face looking at the mountain out there; you simply are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly, just so.”

~ Ken Wilbur

Lotus

“We can still function very well in the apparent world of time and space without the sense of being a separate entity. In fact, free of the limited notions of being a separate entity — and the desires and fears that are required to maintain this position — life becomes vibrant, vital, and alive.”

~ Rupert Spira

Lotus

“Though others may talk of the Way of the Buddhas as something to be reached by various pious practices and by sutra-study, you must have nothing to do with such ideas. A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen.”

~ Huang Po

Lotus

“The lesson of spiritual practice is not about gaining knowledge, but about how we love. Are we able to love what is given to us, to love in the midst of all things, to love ourselves and others?”

~ Jack Kornfield

Lotus

“Open your mind while you have the opportunity, thereby gaining the treasures of wisdom, which in turn you can share abundantly with others, bringing them happiness.”

~ Zen Master Dogen

Lotus

“Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done.”

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Lotus

“You can stop telling your story in less than an instant. Even if it is a good story, stop indulging the telling of it and immediately the truth can be experienced. . . . The possibility is to recognize that all our stories, however complex and multi-layered, however deeply implanted in our genetic structure, are only stories. The truth of who you are is not a story. The vastness and the closeness of that truth precedes all stories. When you overlook the truth of who you are in allegiance to some story, you miss a precious opportunity for self-recognition.”

~ Gangaji

Lotus

“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”

~ Lao-tzu

Lotus

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Lotus

“Just resting is like the great ocean accepting hundreds of streams, all absorbed into one flavor. Freely going ahead is like the great surging tides riding on the wind, all coming onto this shore together. How could they not reach into the genuine source? How could they not realize the great function that appears before us? A patch-robed monk follows movement and responds to changes in total harmony.”

~ Zen Master Hongzhi

Lotus

“When there is no engagement with the body, mind, or world, the default position of Consciousness is to remain as it is: transparent, luminous Presence, open, empty, silent, and available, ready to take its shape as the totality of experience at every moment.”

~ Rupert Spira

Lotus

“When we enter the gateless gate, we come to the end of seeking. Before this in our life we may have tried many ways to find enlightenment or become something special. Finally, we enter the gate of the eternal present and discover that we are not going anywhere. Where we are is the place, the only place for the perfection of patience, peace, freedom, and compassion.”

~ Jack Kornfield

Lotus

“Gratitude is sensing the inherent beauty of existence itself. It is the divine. It is the Source itself. When our eyes open and we realize in our heart the essence of our own being, there’s this uprising of tremendous gratitude — a tremendous love, uncaused. We immediately sense the inherent beauty and dignity and value of all of existence.”

~ Adyashanti

Lotus