“What gets taken away are all the exterior means we thought we wanted love to come to us. You have the choice to notice the perfect set up to see love is exactly what you are.”

It’s wearing spiritual clothing and spiritual concepts, but it is really no different than a drunk in the gutter who doesn’t want to feel the pain anymore.

An ordinary man seeks freedom through enlightenment. An enlightened man expresses freedom through being ordinary.

Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy.

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control.

We are birthed into sangha, into sacred community. It is called the world.

True love has nothing to do with liking someone, agreeing with him or her or being compatible. It is a love of unity, a love of seeing God wearing all the masks, and recognising itself in them all..

As I often tell my students, the person you’ll have the hardest time opening to and truly loving without reserve is yourself. Once you can do that, you can love the whole universe unconditionally.

If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being.

The you who is chasing enlightenment will never become enlightened. Instead of striving towards some distant goal that you will never reach,

Usually we think that we are looking at a tree, but the tree is looking at itself through us. Without this instrument, the tree does not get to see itself. We are sensing instruments of the Divine.

Wisdom without love is like having lungs but no air to breathe. Do not seek wisdom in order to acquire knowledge but in order to live and love more fully.

When the eternal and the human meet, that’s where love is born — not through escaping our humanity or trying to disappear into transcendence, but through finding that place where they come into union.

Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion.

You will only lose when you resist reality; you will only struggle when you disagree with what is.

You must choose between your attachments and happiness.

People, instead of competing, they can actually support each other, in music.

I think ultimately what you really want is a few people within any label that are into the band enough to really work on it every day for a long time and to actually try a little bit.

it was actually mummified, skin and all – but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire.

I actually had less time and the exact same budget on Hairspray, which was few years ago and this is a much bigger movie [then Rock of Ages]. That’s the way studios do it now.

Practically no one actually does.

Realizing that everyone (consciously or subconsciously) feels alone too – but no matter what, we’re actually ALL together – is what has helped evolve my way of thinking about it.

One that actually relates to all Latin American literature: that is, not every author is interested in being a representative of his or her national culture on the global stage.

I think that’s actually fine, and I would encourage that all the time.