“If I had been born in Germany with family of Nazis and if I had been raised with those beliefs, there was very little chance that I wouldn’t be exactly like all those guards and all those people who tortured everybody.”

We all inhabit our lives, in different ways to some degree. We see ourselves a certain way, and based on how we see ourselves, that’s how we see the world.

I chant to save my miserable ass. That’s what I do.

Hanuman not only gives liberation, he also fulfills our beneficial desires.

Devotion is a disease. And you catch it from those people who have it.

We are just here, right? We are just people doing our thing. And the most important aspect of anything we do is our motivation, why we do it.

Can you imagine what it would be like to all of a sudden see another color that nobody else sees?

When we start to talk about gurus, we’re talking about beings who actually know what this is all about. They know who we were, where we came from, and where we’re going. They are not imprisoned in a selfish or self-centered view of the universe.

This is what I do to keep my head screwed on semi-straight and keep my heart open. Whenever I sing, that’s why I sing. Whether it’s at the Grammys, whether it’s in the bathroom, whether it’s in front of 10,000 people or three people, by my guru’s grace, my head stays in that place.

Love is what we are; we don’t get it from somebody, we can’t give it to anybody, we can’t fall in it or fall out of it. Love is our true Being.

The heart in us is deeper than any emotion or psychological issue.

On the Path, it’s impossible to know how you are doing because it’s the judger who is disappearing.

It takes two to tango! I need everybody to sing with me.

I knew that if I did not start chanting with people, that I would never be able to clean out the dark corners of my own heart. I knew it with every cell in my body and mind.

When you fall in love, nobody has to tell you. You know what you feel.

The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff – guilt, anger – this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.

It’s inexplicable why somebody can lose a leg and it doesn’t effect them at all emotionally; and another person can lose a foot and be destroyed for the rest of their lives.

To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….

Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing i could never have him.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.

Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.

The people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst.