The First Truth is the fact of suffering. All desire happiness. . . . Yet all find that life brings . . . frustration, dissatisfaction, incompleteness. . . . Life is change, and change can never satisfy desire. Therefore everything that changes brings suffering.

The Second Truth is the cause of suffering. It is not life that brings sorrow, but the demands we make on life. . . . Thinking life can make them happy by bringing what they want, people run after satisfaction of their desires . . . [demanding] what experience cannot give: permanent pleasure unmixed with anything unpleasant. But there is no end to such desire; that is the nature of the mind. Suffering because life cannot satisfy selfish desire is like suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.

[B]esides the instinct to preserve living substance and join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and to bring them back to their primaeval, inorganic state. That is to say, as well as Eros there was an instinct of death. The phenomena of life could be explained from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of these two instincts.

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), in Peter Gray, ed., The Freud Reader (New York: Norton, 1989), p. 754.

When any situation desired . . . is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things."

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, in Gray, Freud Reader, p. 729.

Instead of urging the patient to say something upon some particular subject, I now asked him to abandon himself to a process of free association—that is, to say whatever came into his head, while ceasing to give any conscious direction to his thoughts."

Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925), in Peter Gray, ed., The Freud Reader (New York: Norton, 1989), p. 24.

You do not realize your own situation. You are in prison. All you can wish for, if you are . . . sensible . . . is to escape. But how to escape?

A musician, if he’s a messenger, is like a child who hasn’t been handled too many times, hasn’t had too many fingerprints across his brain."

Jimi Hendrix, "An Infinity of Jimi’s," Life magazine, October 3, 1969.

The most important [commandment] . . . is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

John 8:7

Luke 17:22

You suppose that I have come to bring peace on earth? I tell you, No. I have come to bring division. The father will be divided against the son, and the son against the father.

Luke 12:51

But if I go to the east, he is not there;

If I go to the west, I do not find him.

When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;

When he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.

But he knows the way that I take

Job: 23:8–10

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

Gal. 6:7

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.

We have acknowledged that these [psychological] issues cannot be separated from spiritual life. It is not as if we get our psychological house in order and then strike out to attain nirvana. As our body, heart, mind and spirit open, each new layer we encounter reveals both greater freedom and compassion and deeper and more subtle layers of underlying delusion. Our deep personal work and our meditative work must necessarily proceed together. What American practice has come to acknowledge is that many of the deep issues we uncover in spiritual life cannot be healed by meditation alone. Problems such as early abuse, addiction, and difficulties of love and sexuality require the close, conscious and ongoing support of a skillful teacher [or therapist] to resolve.

All too often the mistaken belief that enough sincere practice of prayer or meditation is all that is needed to transform their lives has prevented teachers and students from making use of the helpful teachings of Western psychology. In an unfortunate way, many students of Eastern and Western spirituality have been led to believe that if they experience difficulties, it is simply because they haven’t practiced long enough or somehow have not been practicing according to the teachings. . . . In truth, the need to deal with our personal emotional problems is the rule in spiritual practice rather than the exception. At least half of the students at our annual three-month retreat find themselves unable to do traditional Insight Meditation because they encounter so much unresolved grief, fear, and wounding and unfinished developmental business from the past that this becomes their meditation.

The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy. You want to be consciously happy: the moment you are consciously happy, happiness is gone."

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Penguin Krishnamurti Reader (London: Penguin, 1970), "Questions and Answers."

Truth is a pathless land.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 1.

Don’t agree. Find out.

Krishnamurti, Total Freedom, p. xiv.

I am the eggman

They are the eggmen

I am the walrus

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "I Am the Walrus," Magical Mystery Tour (London: EMI Records, 1967).

Sometimes in his life a man becomes dissatisfied and, not content with what he has, he seeks the satisfaction of his desires through prayer to God. His mind is gradually purified until he longs to know God, more to obtain his grace than to satisfy his worldly desires. Then, God’s grace begins to manifest. God takes the form of a Guru and appears to the devotee, teaches him the truth and, moreover, purifies his mind by association. The devotee’s mind gains strength and is then able to turn inward. By meditation it is further purified and it remains still without the least ripple. That calm expanse is the Self.

The Guru is both external and internal. From the exterior he gives a push to the mind to turn it inwards. From the interior he pulls the mind towards the Self and helps in the quieting of the mind. That is the Guru’s grace. There is no difference between God, Guru and the Self.

David Godman, ed., Be as You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 96.

Surrender appears easy because people imagine that, once they say with their lips ‘I surrender’ and put their burdens on their Lord, they can be free and do what they like. But the fact is that you can have no likes or dislikes after your surrender; your will should become completely non-existent, the Lord’s will taking its place.

Godman, Be as You Are, pp. 83–84.

What is right and wrong?  There is no [objective] standard by which to judge something to be right and another to be wrong. Opinions differ according to the nature of the individual and according to the surroundings.

David Godman, ed., Be as You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 215.

Creation is neither good nor bad; it is as it is. It is the human mind which puts all sorts of constructions on it, seeing things from its own angle and interpreting them to suit its own interests. A woman is just a woman, but one mind calls her "mother," another "sister," and still another "aunt" and so on. Men love women, hate snakes, and are indifferent to the grass and stones by the roadside. These value-judgments are the cause of all the misery in the world. Creation is like a peepul tree: birds come to eat its fruit, or take shelter in its branches, men cool themselves in its shade, but some may hang themselves on it. Yet the tree continues to lead its quiet life, unconcerned with and unaware of all the uses it is put to. It is the human mind that creates its own difficulties and then cries for help. Is God so partial as to give peace to one person and sorrow to another? In creation there is room for everything, but man refuses to see the good, the healthy and the beautiful. Instead, he goes on whining, like the hungry man who sits beside the tasty dish and who, instead of stretching out his hand to satisfy his hunger, goes on lamenting, "Whose fault is it, God’s or man’s?

Godman, Be as You Are, p. 210.

All naturalism in morality, that is, all healthy morality, is ruled by an instinct of life. . . . some restriction and hostility on life’s path is thereby shoved aside. Anti-natural morality—that is, almost every morality that has been taught, honored and preached up to now—turns, in contrast, precisely against the instinct of life; it is a sometimes stealthy, sometimes loud and bold condemnation of these instincts."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1888), in Steven M. Cahn, ed., Classics of Western Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), p. 996.

Breakdowns come

And breakdowns go

So what are you going to do about it?

That’s what I’d like to know.

Paul Simon, "Gumboots," on Graceland (Warner Brothers Records, 1986).

Is there a difference between yes and no?

Is there a difference between good and evil?

Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!

Feng and English, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 20.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.

All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Feng and English, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 2.

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.

There are already enough names.

One must know when to stop.

Knowing when to stop averts trouble.

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, trans., Tao Te Ching (New York: Vintage, 1997), Chapter 32.

You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run.

When I set out on my journey, I didn’t have the right intention to study Zen and learn the way; I just wanted to go to the eastern capital and listen to one or two scriptures and treatises to sustain me for everyday life. I didn’t expect that I’d end up traveling around until I happened to meet the Zen master Shou-san. Getting stuck by him, I simply ran with sweat. At that time, I unconsciously bowed, but I’ve never gotten over my regret.