A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.
Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.
Up to now my involvement in the Tibetan freedom struggle has been part of my spiritual practice, because the issues of the survival of the Buddha Teaching and the freedom of Tibet are very much related. In this particular struggle, there is no problem with many monks and nuns, including myself, joining.
Expand your love, your consciousness, and your loving compassion by experiencing everything that everyone does or says as though you had done or said it.
After all the years of [spiritual] work,. . . I've realized this: that everything and everyone is precious beyond words. Everything and everyone is holy. And the point of our being on this sweet planet is to be of service to all of it. And when we understand this truth in our bones, joy fills our hearts.
Let your courage mount with difficulties. There would be no will if there were no resistance.
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
It is a pity that the words "spiritual life" were ever invented, for they have caused so much confusion. For, in truth, there is only life-everyday life-which is simply what is at every moment.
A hypocrite [is the one who] wants to impress others with an external facade of religious piety that he knows is devoid of internal spiritual substance.
If you pay sufficient attention, everything in life is magnificent, everything is a doorway to the Divine.
I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage.
You are not here to please other people or to live your lives their way. You can only live it your own way and walk your own pathway. You have come [here] to fulfill yourself and express love on the deepest level. You are here to learn and grow. . . When you leave the planet. . . the only thing you take is your capacity to love!
A man without religion or spiritual vision is like a captain who finds himself in the midst of an uncharted sea, without compass, rudder and steering wheel. He never knows where he is, which way he is going and where he is going to land.
To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
It is the pain of ignorance which makes one into a seeker.
I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
We can invoke spiritual compensation when we find ourselves in situations of material lack. In other words, what happens for most of us is that we are tempted and we are taught, we are trained as it were, to meet limited circumstances with limited thought.
I went through a lot of phases and studied many religions. I am not into religion, I am spiritual.
The spiritual traditions of all the religions have certain similarities that are unmistakable. They share many of the same basic practices like sacred reading, spiritual guidance, moderation in eating, drinking and sexual expression, and above all, trying to be aware of the presence of God in other people and in everyday life.