Tatvamasi

The best place you can find God is within yourself.

Perseverance

No one succeeds without effort... Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.

Ramana Maharishi

Self-Realization

Increase your capacity. Purify yourself. Acquire that gentle strength within. God will come and say to you, “I want to enter this living temple that you are.” Prepare yourself for that situation. Remove the impurities – and you will find that he who wants to know reality is himself the source of reality.

Swami Rama

Knowledge

Knowledge of theories that prove the existence of God is not as important as learning to discipline oneself, so that God can be experienced directly.

Swami Rama

Knowledge

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Jiddu Krishnamurthy

Atheism

It takes all kinds of people to make a world and the atheists by their tirades continue to unwittingly spread the cause of God.

Anonymous

History and Religion

The dead never return; the past night does not reappear; a spent-up tidal wave does not rise anew; neither does a person inhabit the same body over again. So from the worship of the dead past, we invite you all to the worship of the living present; from the regretful brooding over bygones, we invite you to the activities of the present; from the waste of energy in retracing lost and demolished pathways, we call you back to broad new-laid highways lying very near. Those that are wise, let them understand.

From an essay by Swami Vivekananda

Prayers

When in doubt, pray and give it your best shot.

Anonymous

Knowledge & Perfection

Although the world and knowledge thereof rise and set together it is by knowledge alone that the world is made apparent. That Perfection wherein the world and knowledge thereof rise and set, and which shines without rising and setting, is alone the Reality.

Ramana Maharishi

The Philosopher

The true philosopher strives to destroy nothing, but to help all.

Swami Vivekananda

The Two Monks - A Zen Story

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman.
Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across.
One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable
to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid
any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried
her!"

"Brother," the second monk replied, "I set her down on the other side, while you are
still carrying her."

Concentration

He who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his servant.

Swami Vivekananda