Part 2 Quote 4
“The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. If our attachment is to the thinking mind, it dies with the brain and the body. I am interested in what is beyond the thinking mind, leaving behind the thoughts of the ego, allowing the essence of our deeper being to shine forth. The soul is infinite, eternal, beyond space and time.”
Part 2 Quote 2
“Surrender is a tough one to accept for Westerners. Our reality is based on a conceptual thought of how we think it is. If we give up that thought, give up our power and free will, we may succumb to someone else’s control and lose ourselves forever. That’s the fear. It turns out that giving up conceptual thought is not so scary after all—in fact it’s a relief. So-called objective reality is only relatively real compared to the deeper reality of the Self.”
Part 3 Quote 7
“Contentment is not a feeling of accomplishment from doing something. Contentment is a practice.”
Part 3 Quote 6
“There are billions of tiny acts that create suffering in the world—acts of ignorance, greed, violence. But in the same way, each act of caring—all the billion tiny ways that we offer compassion, wisdom, and joy to one another—serves as a preservative and healing agent.”
Part 3 Quote 5
“Everything we do to work on ourselves—going on retreat, meditating, opening our hearts, quieting our minds—transforms our being. Whatever we have to offer, as a physiotherapist, or a bus driver, or a parent, is all part of that work. It’s not the forms of the game—those are the vehicles.”
Part 3 Quote 4
“Once, when I was in Jerusalem, I passed two Hasidic Jews coming across a square. They were wearing the usual black hats and black coats, and I heard one of them say, ‘That’s Ram Dass! That’s who got me into this.’ They had taken drugs and read Be Here Now. In Burma, I met two Westerners who were studying to be Buddhist monks. ‘You’re the one who got us into this,’ they told me.”
Part 3 Quote 3
“Old age and childhood offer a kind of spacious time other seasons do not, because they are not filled with busyness and rushing around. This quiet openness allows the soul to enter, just like quieting the mind in meditation.”