I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
We made the smell of banana in chemistry once, and I nearly cried because it actually smelled like bananas and was so simple and so fake.
Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons.
One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.
The present moment is a powerful goddess.
Disciple: Is there no afterlife? What about punishment for our sins?
Lama Thubten Yeshe: Why not enjoy your chocolate? Your life is here and now. Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end.
Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don’t even understand.
The losing of Paradise is enacted over and over again by the children of Adam and Eve. We clothe our souls with messages and doctrines and lose the touch of the great life in the naked breast of nature.
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and love him as they love a cow — for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them.
If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God exists, we should find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves do not exist, for it is the same thought.
The fact that our task is exactly as large as our life makes it appear infinite.
Self-importance is our greatest enemy. What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Thinking about the people in this floating world far into the night — my sleeve is wet with tears.
And yet his grief is a great guide through this world. Even, perhaps, the surest of guides. As long as guides are needed.
All points of view are potentially imperialistic; that is, all aspire to be that point of view from which one can survey the whole.
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never go to bed with a woman who has more troubles than you have.
It is one of the secrets of nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays a heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rains sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky.
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
