“The present is always changing the past.”

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.

The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of, Nothing is left but to love.

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.

The past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, To travel well is better than to arrive.

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back form the present.

There is no other reality than present reality.

Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.

The source of all light is in the eye.

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated.

You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Change is actually what you need to avoid.

It is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

We’re not the same people we were then. We’ve changed, we’ve grown.

Change is not popular; we are creatures of habit as human beings. ‘I want it to be the way it was.’ But if you continue the way it was there will be no ‘is.’

We do not need to be afraid, because God will change our hearts and give us the blessing reserved for those who allow Him to change them.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.